I'm sorry that I let my inner uber-bitch have the password to my blog yesterday.
But, now that she knows it, there is a chance she might post entries when ever she wants.
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Friday, December 09, 2005
Buzzards, Turtles, Cats, and Road Kill
I like buzzards.
They can't help it that their Momma and Daddy were ugly. It's like assuming women with big tits are dumb and want bige ones. They had nothing to do with it, it's just the DNA code they ended up with. Obviously buzzards aren't aware that they aren't cute, and that rotting meat isn't yummy.
We have a very tall TVA tower on a back corner of our property. In the summer, during the day, hawks perch there. We planted lots of pine trees, and some day we won't be able to see it at all. But I've grown fond of watching the huge flock of buzzards that use it for a roost. Every year the flock seems to double in size. When all the space on the scaffolding is full, the late-comers line up on the power lines. I've never seen a nest anywhere, so I looked up their nesting habits. Our buzzards have black heads and their nests are on the ground or on tree stumps or in a hollow in a tree. This year there are well over 100 birds there. The winter winds must be very cold up there. They gather in the evening, spend the night and head out when the sun starts shining. I'm glad they like our tower. I just want to put little sweaters, hats and boots on them.
One year we had an ice storm. When I woke up and went to the kitchen to make coffee, I realized that the ground in between the house and the woods was covered with ice clad buzzards. They had ice on their heads, backs and wings with little icicles hanging off of them. They were standing around on the snow waiting to thaw out. Some of them could open their wings. Some of them picked at the ice. One couple picked ice off of each other. When the sun came up, more of them stood with their backs to the sun and opened their wings. As each of them thawed they flew away. I wish I had pictures, but I still haven't learned how to operate my new camera.
I thought they were ugly and creepy when I was younger. We all see their road crews at work and recoil at the thought of what they are eating. It is hard to imagine salivating at the smell of bloated carcass. I thought the name of a road we traveled frequently, should be changed to "Dead Bunny Drive". Another rural road out here has a beautiful name, "Snow Bird Hollow Road", but you are likely to see more flat 'possums, bunnies, little birds, turkeys, squirrels, turtles and dead deer, per foot, on that road, than any other road out here. And cleaning all that up is the buzzard's job.
Road kill turtles are the ones that freak me out the most. There is no excuse for running over a turtle. You can't get away with saying, "He just ran out in front of me before I had time to react!" You hit a turtle, your only excuse is you just weren't paying attention. I have moved lots of turtles, big and small, out of the road. Around here we have box turtles and snapping turtles. The snapping turtles can get very large, much bigger than a dinner plate, but smaller than the tire on your car.
Box turtles are easy to pick up. I used to bring them home and put them in our creek. The first few I put in would sink to the bottom and not move. I would stand on the bank searching my brain for any box turtle knowledge that might be hiding in there. I'd be getting very nervous, worrying that I had just drowned them. With the first couple, I just hoped for the best and left, but I hated not knowing how things turned out for them, so with the next one or two, when I couldn't stand the suspense any longer, I'd retrieve them and put them on a rock at the edge of the creek, so they could decide whether to head for land or water on their own. Now I skip the dunking and just put them on the rock.
My best intentions sometimes go horribly wrong, like the time I picked up a box turtle that was near a parking lot and dropped it over a wire fence, into a wooded area behind the place I worked, an old log cabin that had been turned into offices. The next day a lady from the office that had windows on that side, asked me what I had dropped over the fence. She was curious anyway, but mainly because she saw a coyote walk over to it right after I left.
The big snapping turtles are a whole 'nother problem. First, they can be huge and have very long necks. Making a bite from that strong beak easier than you would expect from a turtle. Second, they make a point of shitting inside your car. Big and messy. I know these guys like the water. I was more cautious with the last couple that I took off the road. I tried to shove them into an empty gym bag that was in the car and put them in the trunk. No way I'm fishing a foul smelling snapper out from under the car seat again.
A lady pulled over to help me with the last one. It was really big. She wanted to know why I was doing it. Did it have anything to do with soup? I drove to a river and carried it in the bag to the bank. I dumped it out, but the bank was steep and it slid to a stop, upside down, wedged between various sized tree trunks and brush. I couldn't leave it like that, so I made my way down to it and moved it with my foot until it toppled into the river and swam off.
The most horrible turtle story was when I was stopped at a light and saw one in the right hand lane up ahead. I had every intention of doing my thing, when the driver of a mini van that had made it through the light saw the turtle as it passed it. The van stopped, began backing up, ran over the turtle and sped away! I freaked out, screaming at what I had just seen. It was outrageous! I was too shocked even, to chase them down and flip them the bird or ram their mini van or force them off the road and beat the driver to a pulp. I may be a girl, but I can get one hell of a bitch on with assholes like that. Bring it on turtle killers!
!@#$%&*(x+!@#$%&*!
My cat died in November. That morning, before I woke up, I was dreaming that Sox had changed into a bird and flown away. I was not worried about him. I knew he would be happy to be so free, to fly as a bird and would no longer need us. I told my son about the dream when I woke up. Around noon, I started looking for him, to feed him. My husband usually feeds him breakfast while I'm still sleeping.
I saw him "sleeping" in the grass near the back porch and tapped on the window to get his attention. No response. I opened the window and called to him. No response. Then I knew. He was in his comfortable, napping-in-the-yard position, so I guess he went in his sleep. He was a beautiful cat, 11 or 12 years old.
I haven't told my daughter yet. She won a goldfish at a school carnival when she was little and after it spent most of the day in a plastic bag, it didn't look too perky. She named it Skippy and it died within a day or two. When she discovered him dead, she became inconsolable. She mourned for Skippy so deeply, after only having him for such a short time, that I was really moved by her pain. We had a little funeral, not the toilet kind, and she kept sobbing, Skippy, Skippy. So I want to break the news of Sox' death to her in person, maybe when we get back to the U.S.
I made a deep grave for him and lined it with a layer of pine needles, and covered him with a layer of pine needles before filling it with the dirt. I covered it with flat stones because I didn't want anything digging him up. I found a really nice flat stone and wrote his name, etc. on it with magic marker and sprayed a clear finish over that, so it wouldn't fade.
They can't help it that their Momma and Daddy were ugly. It's like assuming women with big tits are dumb and want bige ones. They had nothing to do with it, it's just the DNA code they ended up with. Obviously buzzards aren't aware that they aren't cute, and that rotting meat isn't yummy.
We have a very tall TVA tower on a back corner of our property. In the summer, during the day, hawks perch there. We planted lots of pine trees, and some day we won't be able to see it at all. But I've grown fond of watching the huge flock of buzzards that use it for a roost. Every year the flock seems to double in size. When all the space on the scaffolding is full, the late-comers line up on the power lines. I've never seen a nest anywhere, so I looked up their nesting habits. Our buzzards have black heads and their nests are on the ground or on tree stumps or in a hollow in a tree. This year there are well over 100 birds there. The winter winds must be very cold up there. They gather in the evening, spend the night and head out when the sun starts shining. I'm glad they like our tower. I just want to put little sweaters, hats and boots on them.
One year we had an ice storm. When I woke up and went to the kitchen to make coffee, I realized that the ground in between the house and the woods was covered with ice clad buzzards. They had ice on their heads, backs and wings with little icicles hanging off of them. They were standing around on the snow waiting to thaw out. Some of them could open their wings. Some of them picked at the ice. One couple picked ice off of each other. When the sun came up, more of them stood with their backs to the sun and opened their wings. As each of them thawed they flew away. I wish I had pictures, but I still haven't learned how to operate my new camera.
I thought they were ugly and creepy when I was younger. We all see their road crews at work and recoil at the thought of what they are eating. It is hard to imagine salivating at the smell of bloated carcass. I thought the name of a road we traveled frequently, should be changed to "Dead Bunny Drive". Another rural road out here has a beautiful name, "Snow Bird Hollow Road", but you are likely to see more flat 'possums, bunnies, little birds, turkeys, squirrels, turtles and dead deer, per foot, on that road, than any other road out here. And cleaning all that up is the buzzard's job.
Road kill turtles are the ones that freak me out the most. There is no excuse for running over a turtle. You can't get away with saying, "He just ran out in front of me before I had time to react!" You hit a turtle, your only excuse is you just weren't paying attention. I have moved lots of turtles, big and small, out of the road. Around here we have box turtles and snapping turtles. The snapping turtles can get very large, much bigger than a dinner plate, but smaller than the tire on your car.
Box turtles are easy to pick up. I used to bring them home and put them in our creek. The first few I put in would sink to the bottom and not move. I would stand on the bank searching my brain for any box turtle knowledge that might be hiding in there. I'd be getting very nervous, worrying that I had just drowned them. With the first couple, I just hoped for the best and left, but I hated not knowing how things turned out for them, so with the next one or two, when I couldn't stand the suspense any longer, I'd retrieve them and put them on a rock at the edge of the creek, so they could decide whether to head for land or water on their own. Now I skip the dunking and just put them on the rock.
My best intentions sometimes go horribly wrong, like the time I picked up a box turtle that was near a parking lot and dropped it over a wire fence, into a wooded area behind the place I worked, an old log cabin that had been turned into offices. The next day a lady from the office that had windows on that side, asked me what I had dropped over the fence. She was curious anyway, but mainly because she saw a coyote walk over to it right after I left.
The big snapping turtles are a whole 'nother problem. First, they can be huge and have very long necks. Making a bite from that strong beak easier than you would expect from a turtle. Second, they make a point of shitting inside your car. Big and messy. I know these guys like the water. I was more cautious with the last couple that I took off the road. I tried to shove them into an empty gym bag that was in the car and put them in the trunk. No way I'm fishing a foul smelling snapper out from under the car seat again.
A lady pulled over to help me with the last one. It was really big. She wanted to know why I was doing it. Did it have anything to do with soup? I drove to a river and carried it in the bag to the bank. I dumped it out, but the bank was steep and it slid to a stop, upside down, wedged between various sized tree trunks and brush. I couldn't leave it like that, so I made my way down to it and moved it with my foot until it toppled into the river and swam off.
The most horrible turtle story was when I was stopped at a light and saw one in the right hand lane up ahead. I had every intention of doing my thing, when the driver of a mini van that had made it through the light saw the turtle as it passed it. The van stopped, began backing up, ran over the turtle and sped away! I freaked out, screaming at what I had just seen. It was outrageous! I was too shocked even, to chase them down and flip them the bird or ram their mini van or force them off the road and beat the driver to a pulp. I may be a girl, but I can get one hell of a bitch on with assholes like that. Bring it on turtle killers!
!@#$%&*(x+!@#$%&*!
My cat died in November. That morning, before I woke up, I was dreaming that Sox had changed into a bird and flown away. I was not worried about him. I knew he would be happy to be so free, to fly as a bird and would no longer need us. I told my son about the dream when I woke up. Around noon, I started looking for him, to feed him. My husband usually feeds him breakfast while I'm still sleeping.
I saw him "sleeping" in the grass near the back porch and tapped on the window to get his attention. No response. I opened the window and called to him. No response. Then I knew. He was in his comfortable, napping-in-the-yard position, so I guess he went in his sleep. He was a beautiful cat, 11 or 12 years old.
I haven't told my daughter yet. She won a goldfish at a school carnival when she was little and after it spent most of the day in a plastic bag, it didn't look too perky. She named it Skippy and it died within a day or two. When she discovered him dead, she became inconsolable. She mourned for Skippy so deeply, after only having him for such a short time, that I was really moved by her pain. We had a little funeral, not the toilet kind, and she kept sobbing, Skippy, Skippy. So I want to break the news of Sox' death to her in person, maybe when we get back to the U.S.
I made a deep grave for him and lined it with a layer of pine needles, and covered him with a layer of pine needles before filling it with the dirt. I covered it with flat stones because I didn't want anything digging him up. I found a really nice flat stone and wrote his name, etc. on it with magic marker and sprayed a clear finish over that, so it wouldn't fade.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
I'll Be On Vacation
In a few days, I'm going to England and Italy for a couple of weeks, to spend the holidays and travel around with my daughter, A. Beauty.
After she graduated from college, she moved to Italy, and has been working there as an au-pair, since the end of the summer.
She's decided that she's not the nanny-type; she's really the world traveler type. But she has learned so much by doing it. The life changes, of motherhood, won't be a total shock, should she ever decide to become a parent, after 24/7 with twin babies in Macerata. She was really surprised by the "macho absent male + chattel" family dynamic. The wife didn't speak English and A. Beauty had no way to get to town to take an Italian class. There was no way the mother was going to accommodate her anyway. She was too isolated in the country villa to explore the area, which was something she thought she would be able to do on her days off. There were no days off. She said, on a visit, one of the Grandmothers kept yelling "Schwepps" at her. She still hasn't found out what that means other than a soft drink brand. But she said the context for these outbursts made it unlikely that she was asking her if she would like a soda(A. Beauty doesn't drink sodas.)
She terminated her services with the first family and found a great family in Rome, who drove all the way to Macerata to pick her up. They have two young boys, early elementary school aged. Her main function beside keeping an eye on them after school in the afternoons is to teach the children English. The parents speak Italian, Thai, and English; the kids speak Italian and Thai. She's much happier living in Rome and has lots of free time to see the sights and she likes this family. The small private apartment she has attached to their villa is nice too, it even has a kitchen. It's too bad that she got so burnt out with the first family.
Someone in her Italian language class said that if she ever considered marrying an Italian man, her advice was, "NO, RUN!" A. Beauty is very independent and I guess that would be a problem for many of the men she has observed there.
I can't wait to see her. She has planned out our travel to various cities, hotels, etc. I'm going to spend a couple of days in London, so I can get over my notoriously crabby jet-lag, before I join her in Rome. I have a few museums I want to see while I'm in London. She will be returning to the U.S. with me just before New Year's Day.
I hate to fly coach, but I'm in a coach kind of income bracket. THE SEATS ARE TOO SMALL!! I have gotten plump, but I carry my fat on the front, not on my hips. I'm no wider than an average man, but THE SEATS ARE TOO SMALL! My brother gave me some good advice. If they have perfume dispensers in the toilet rooms, dump them all down the toilets after take off. Perfume makes me feel like I'm going to vomit. Nice Brother; one of several habitual world travelers in the family. Sometime I'll have to get a copy of my youngest sister's "Flight From Hell" story, on a Korean Airline, on her way home from Hong Kong. It is hilarious the way she tells it.
After she graduated from college, she moved to Italy, and has been working there as an au-pair, since the end of the summer.
She's decided that she's not the nanny-type; she's really the world traveler type. But she has learned so much by doing it. The life changes, of motherhood, won't be a total shock, should she ever decide to become a parent, after 24/7 with twin babies in Macerata. She was really surprised by the "macho absent male + chattel" family dynamic. The wife didn't speak English and A. Beauty had no way to get to town to take an Italian class. There was no way the mother was going to accommodate her anyway. She was too isolated in the country villa to explore the area, which was something she thought she would be able to do on her days off. There were no days off. She said, on a visit, one of the Grandmothers kept yelling "Schwepps" at her. She still hasn't found out what that means other than a soft drink brand. But she said the context for these outbursts made it unlikely that she was asking her if she would like a soda(A. Beauty doesn't drink sodas.)
She terminated her services with the first family and found a great family in Rome, who drove all the way to Macerata to pick her up. They have two young boys, early elementary school aged. Her main function beside keeping an eye on them after school in the afternoons is to teach the children English. The parents speak Italian, Thai, and English; the kids speak Italian and Thai. She's much happier living in Rome and has lots of free time to see the sights and she likes this family. The small private apartment she has attached to their villa is nice too, it even has a kitchen. It's too bad that she got so burnt out with the first family.
Someone in her Italian language class said that if she ever considered marrying an Italian man, her advice was, "NO, RUN!" A. Beauty is very independent and I guess that would be a problem for many of the men she has observed there.
I can't wait to see her. She has planned out our travel to various cities, hotels, etc. I'm going to spend a couple of days in London, so I can get over my notoriously crabby jet-lag, before I join her in Rome. I have a few museums I want to see while I'm in London. She will be returning to the U.S. with me just before New Year's Day.
I hate to fly coach, but I'm in a coach kind of income bracket. THE SEATS ARE TOO SMALL!! I have gotten plump, but I carry my fat on the front, not on my hips. I'm no wider than an average man, but THE SEATS ARE TOO SMALL! My brother gave me some good advice. If they have perfume dispensers in the toilet rooms, dump them all down the toilets after take off. Perfume makes me feel like I'm going to vomit. Nice Brother; one of several habitual world travelers in the family. Sometime I'll have to get a copy of my youngest sister's "Flight From Hell" story, on a Korean Airline, on her way home from Hong Kong. It is hilarious the way she tells it.
Saturday, December 03, 2005
I Finished a Faulkner Book!
This was my second attempt to read something by William Faulkner, and I have to say I feel like I just choked down a dirt sandwich. It was "As I Lay Dying". Addie's stench is still making me queasy. To make it that real is pretty amazing. Faulkner really has a unique story here, and I liked the short chapters, each told by various members of the cast. If you are going to get inside the heads of strange people, and let them tell the story, their way of expressing themselves is bound to be difficult to understand. And if some of them are idiots they are bound to get into some excruciating situations. He did that masterfully. I want to read for pleasure not a work-out, but I bet I'll read it again someday.
I tried to read "Absalom, Absalom!" and I just couldn't make it to the end. I know that people of certain eras had to beat around the bush to tell something scandalous, without actually using the words that would tell you what they are talking about. Being frank, was considered rude. Well, actually, it still is, but half way through the book, I realized that I was mentally shouting at the book, "Spit it out, already!" I couldn't take it. I had to read an on-line synopsis to bring down my blood pressure.
I have "The Sot-Weed Factor" by John Barth and "Swan's Way" by Marcel Proust on my bedside table, next in line for my tandem reading style. Get sick of one, try the other one for a while. I can run through a stack of Kurt Vonnegut books without any frustration. I'm just curious about what all the fuss is about with the "classics". Any blood pressure warnings would be appreciated.
I tried to read "Absalom, Absalom!" and I just couldn't make it to the end. I know that people of certain eras had to beat around the bush to tell something scandalous, without actually using the words that would tell you what they are talking about. Being frank, was considered rude. Well, actually, it still is, but half way through the book, I realized that I was mentally shouting at the book, "Spit it out, already!" I couldn't take it. I had to read an on-line synopsis to bring down my blood pressure.
I have "The Sot-Weed Factor" by John Barth and "Swan's Way" by Marcel Proust on my bedside table, next in line for my tandem reading style. Get sick of one, try the other one for a while. I can run through a stack of Kurt Vonnegut books without any frustration. I'm just curious about what all the fuss is about with the "classics". Any blood pressure warnings would be appreciated.
Friday, December 02, 2005
About-Face on the Insanity Defense
Back before my youngest son became schizophrenic, I used be very cynical about the "insanity defense". I did agree that drowning all your kids, like Andrea Yates did, unquestionably qualified for the insanity defense. But, I thought the measuring stick for insanity should be something similar to: If the accused could drive a car and remember to stop at stop signs and find their way to a specified location, then they weren't insane enough for me. I was really convinced that I was on to something.
I was wrong. We live we learn.
It is strange how certain parts of a person's brain can be disfunctional while others seem unaffected. Needless to say, I have done an about-face.
We just got word, that his second attempt to be designated Disabled by the government was approved. The first request was denied because they did not receive the medical documentation from Hospitals, Doctors, etc., the paperwork that they needed to complete the process. This time we hounded everyone to send in the paperwork. He was also examined by a psychiatrist designated to do tests on him for the Social Security office. His father will be in charge of managing his money; they are sending him a packet of papers to fill out first. Hopefully this is a step toward being able to live on his own someday and get a chance to have part of the life that was robbed from him.
He knows his life has changed drastically from being the "Golden Boy" before his illness struck. The local newspaper even came out to our house to interview him and my husband and me. A reporter had contacted his high school, because they wanted to interview a student who was one of the best and brightest, someone who broke the mold of the slacker image of High School boys. His school suggested they interview Savant and his parents. I don't remember if this was before or after it was announced that he was the only Merit Scholarship Finalist in the whole school. He was pleasant and brilliant and normal. The cruelty of this illness is immense, partly, because he can remember when the world was his oyster.
This isn't the only horrible affliction, of course, but it is the one our family deals with. As his parents, it has broken our hearts and been very frightening and difficult, but we don't have the disease. I really can't come close to imagining the full extent of the suffering, confusion, frustration and isolation that Savant experiences.
I was wrong. We live we learn.
It is strange how certain parts of a person's brain can be disfunctional while others seem unaffected. Needless to say, I have done an about-face.
We just got word, that his second attempt to be designated Disabled by the government was approved. The first request was denied because they did not receive the medical documentation from Hospitals, Doctors, etc., the paperwork that they needed to complete the process. This time we hounded everyone to send in the paperwork. He was also examined by a psychiatrist designated to do tests on him for the Social Security office. His father will be in charge of managing his money; they are sending him a packet of papers to fill out first. Hopefully this is a step toward being able to live on his own someday and get a chance to have part of the life that was robbed from him.
He knows his life has changed drastically from being the "Golden Boy" before his illness struck. The local newspaper even came out to our house to interview him and my husband and me. A reporter had contacted his high school, because they wanted to interview a student who was one of the best and brightest, someone who broke the mold of the slacker image of High School boys. His school suggested they interview Savant and his parents. I don't remember if this was before or after it was announced that he was the only Merit Scholarship Finalist in the whole school. He was pleasant and brilliant and normal. The cruelty of this illness is immense, partly, because he can remember when the world was his oyster.
This isn't the only horrible affliction, of course, but it is the one our family deals with. As his parents, it has broken our hearts and been very frightening and difficult, but we don't have the disease. I really can't come close to imagining the full extent of the suffering, confusion, frustration and isolation that Savant experiences.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Dirt World View.... re: Being a Jackass
Yesterday, when I was watching the evening news about the outrageous activities of Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-California), I told my husband there should be a new charge called: Being a Jackass.
My thought being, that if you could catch them young enough, they would have a chance to turn their lives around.
Those that didn't stop being Jackasses might get rap sheets and they would be known as Habitual or Serial Jackasses.
I haven't, and won't, work out the fine print of this misdemeanor, and I'm usually in favor of fewer laws, not more, but, having this violation on your record, if the offense was committed after a "youthfull indiscretions" grace period, would prevent you from holding a public office or being in any branch of law enforcement, ...
My thought being, that if you could catch them young enough, they would have a chance to turn their lives around.
Those that didn't stop being Jackasses might get rap sheets and they would be known as Habitual or Serial Jackasses.
I haven't, and won't, work out the fine print of this misdemeanor, and I'm usually in favor of fewer laws, not more, but, having this violation on your record, if the offense was committed after a "youthfull indiscretions" grace period, would prevent you from holding a public office or being in any branch of law enforcement, ...
Monday, November 28, 2005
It Ain't Me Babe
As I was listening to this Bob Dylan song a few minutes ago, I found that I was changing the words as I sang along. "Someone to open each and every door", was coming out: "Someone to mop each and every floor...It ain't me babe, no no no it ain't me babe. It ain't me you're looking for, babe."
My childhood vision of myself as a grown-up never included being a "house wife". I'd be too busy riding my horse. Later it became a dream of being an Architect. I even went to the trouble of getting a degree in it in college. I have spent lots of time trying to understand why I was always letting life's circumstances grind my dreams into the dirt, some of which I could have grabbed hold of and changed, but didn't.
I have a bitter little place in my heart, that I hate. Some say learn forgiveness, including forgiving myself. I fear, often, that that dark little cancer will kill me again, as it does, over and over. I become too weak to stop the tears and anger. That sweet girl who's fondest dream was to be on a horse, running free...I miss her.
I don't know who I am any more, but I know it ain't me, babe.
My childhood vision of myself as a grown-up never included being a "house wife". I'd be too busy riding my horse. Later it became a dream of being an Architect. I even went to the trouble of getting a degree in it in college. I have spent lots of time trying to understand why I was always letting life's circumstances grind my dreams into the dirt, some of which I could have grabbed hold of and changed, but didn't.
I have a bitter little place in my heart, that I hate. Some say learn forgiveness, including forgiving myself. I fear, often, that that dark little cancer will kill me again, as it does, over and over. I become too weak to stop the tears and anger. That sweet girl who's fondest dream was to be on a horse, running free...I miss her.
I don't know who I am any more, but I know it ain't me, babe.
Sunday, November 27, 2005
My Kid's Fridge Pictures Are Different Than Yours #2
More Art done by Savant when he was between about 15 and 17 years old, before the schizophrenia hit at age 18. Despite his struggle with this tragic illness, he is still prolific and his style continues to evolve, is more abstract and amazingly beautiful.
Channel 1:
Construct:
Boxes:
Tribal:
Channel 1:
Construct:
Boxes:
Tribal:
My Kid's Fridge Pictures Are Different Than Yours
Some art done years ago by Savant. I know the images are much darker on my screen than they are on Savant's. My apologies to the artist. After his illness struck when he turned 18, we sold posters of his work on eBay for a while, then I got tired of running the auctions, but we can still make them if we need to. He is a prolific artist and his style changes as time passes. This is just a taste.
This abstract reminds me of Marcel Duchamp's painting "Nude Descending a Staircase no.2", but Savant says it is a visual of the sound a guitar string makes.
Chomsky:
[PS: (Feb. 2007) Noam Chomsky has this print now! I emailed Mr. Chomsky to get permission to use his quote, featured here, in a small edition of signed and numbered, 18" X 24" prints for sale. His representative gave permission and asked for one for Mr. Chomsky's own archives. Contact me or check eBay if you want one. Beautiful Mind Fine Art.]
A tribute to Noam Chomsky. It is a shame the text is unreadable at this size, because it goes so well with the art and is still politically relevant. He calls the character "Picasso's Bull". This one sold more posters than any other.
Chomsky text:
Top left frame:
They were called "scientific methods of strike breaking," and worked very effectively by mobilizing community opinion in favor of vapid, empty concepts like Americanism. Who can be against that? Or harmony. Who can be against that? Or, as in the Persian Gulf War, "Support our troops." Who can be against that? ....Anything that's totally vacuous.
Top Right Frame:
In fact, what does it mean if somebody asks you, Do you support the people in Iowa? Can you say, Yes I support them, or No, I don't support them? It's not even a question. It doesn't mean anything.
Bottom Left Frame:
The point of public relations slogans like "Support our troops" is that they don't mean anything. They mean as much as whether you support the people of Iowa. Of course there was an issue. The issue was, Do you support our policy?
But you don't want people to think about that issue.
That's the whole point of good propaganda.
Bottom Right Frame:
Its critical value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about. So you have people arguing about support for the troops? "Of course we don't not support them." Then you've won. That's like Americanism and harmony. We're all together, empty slogans, let's join in, let's make sure we don't have these bad people around to disrupt our harmony with their talk about class struggle, rights,...& that sort.
Nostalgia:
Not All Punk Gods:
This abstract reminds me of Marcel Duchamp's painting "Nude Descending a Staircase no.2", but Savant says it is a visual of the sound a guitar string makes.
Chomsky:
[PS: (Feb. 2007) Noam Chomsky has this print now! I emailed Mr. Chomsky to get permission to use his quote, featured here, in a small edition of signed and numbered, 18" X 24" prints for sale. His representative gave permission and asked for one for Mr. Chomsky's own archives. Contact me or check eBay if you want one. Beautiful Mind Fine Art.]
A tribute to Noam Chomsky. It is a shame the text is unreadable at this size, because it goes so well with the art and is still politically relevant. He calls the character "Picasso's Bull". This one sold more posters than any other.
Chomsky text:
Top left frame:
They were called "scientific methods of strike breaking," and worked very effectively by mobilizing community opinion in favor of vapid, empty concepts like Americanism. Who can be against that? Or harmony. Who can be against that? Or, as in the Persian Gulf War, "Support our troops." Who can be against that? ....Anything that's totally vacuous.
Top Right Frame:
In fact, what does it mean if somebody asks you, Do you support the people in Iowa? Can you say, Yes I support them, or No, I don't support them? It's not even a question. It doesn't mean anything.
Bottom Left Frame:
The point of public relations slogans like "Support our troops" is that they don't mean anything. They mean as much as whether you support the people of Iowa. Of course there was an issue. The issue was, Do you support our policy?
But you don't want people to think about that issue.
That's the whole point of good propaganda.
Bottom Right Frame:
Its critical value is that it diverts your attention from a question that does mean something: Do you support our policy? That's the one you're not allowed to talk about. So you have people arguing about support for the troops? "Of course we don't not support them." Then you've won. That's like Americanism and harmony. We're all together, empty slogans, let's join in, let's make sure we don't have these bad people around to disrupt our harmony with their talk about class struggle, rights,...& that sort.
Nostalgia:
Not All Punk Gods:
Saturday, November 26, 2005
Please Pass the Guilt, I Mean Gravy
Disclaimer:
I usually prepare a store-bought turkey breast for this puzzling holiday. Giving thanks for the bullets dodged, happy memories of the year, and a chance to spend a day with relatives or friends, is usually how I see the celebration. But, as an Anglo* who is a Native-American Sympathizer, I don't like what happened to the indigenous peoples after that meal they kindly provided for the strange interlopers on their shores. Even though none of us existed during the extermination of the "Indians", or when people owned African slaves, many of us carry around a kernel of "White Guilt". Lots of us are really sorry about it, even though we had nothing to do with it. *(Several years after I wrote this, my father had his DNA tested before he died. His Mitochondrial (mother's line) DNA is Native American (first wave). Blew our minds!)
Disclaimer Over.
I hope the big flock of wild turkeys who spent Spring and Summer on our land survived. They disappeared near the end of the summer and I've had a bad feeling about it, there are just so many hunters around here. I will be happy if all of them show up next year and have hundreds of chicks.
I called my first son (AP)Chimera to invite him and his wife over for the day. After many unanswered calls, Chimera's wife called to say they had other plans. I'm starting to doubt I'll ever meet his wife. I asked if Chimera was there and she said he was, but he was afraid to talk to me or his step-father. I said, that's silly, he's such a scared [(scarred)] little boy, put him on the phone, if he'll talk to me.
His paranoia is a long term thing, but his excuse for it this time was the "smash & grab" visit he paid me a week before. He thought his step-dad would be pissed off that he had hit me up for money. Chimera, we already know your ways and just say, "That's just who he is now". I still don't understand him though.
My husband has helped him so many times. He got him a construction job on a big project he had going in Kentucky one year when Chimera was off heroin. He even drove all night to get to Kentucky when Chimera called in the middle of the night to say that the drunk guys he had been hanging out with were going to beat the crap out of him because they had sent him out to get some marijuana, and he had failed to find any. He was hiding and need protection.
So seeing my husband as "the bad guy" is ridiculous. He won't hesitate to tell you when you have been behaving like a Jackass, but sometimes you need to hear the truth.
I am a cynical, "well" of second chances to get it right, please, no next time, please get it right. That is tricky when you also don't want to be an addict's enabler. An addict can smile and lie into your loving eyes to get what he wants.
He says they are planning to move to Denver because they have a really good Methadone clinic there. HUH!? I thought the idea was to get off drugs, not travel around, and get hooked up with another clinic. (He's been in de-tox, before, in Denver. That is another long story. He had just gotten out of the Air Force...)
So when he came over a week ago, I emptied some people food and cat food, toilet paper, etc., out of our pantry for him to take home. I met him at the gas station, put gas in his "newer-than-anything-we-own" SUV, bought 2 cartons of cigarettes, and gave him $40.00 cash. I know he wanted more money, but sorry, we'd hit my limit of generosity (being a fool for anyone who says they need food). The fact that he was dressed impeccably like a Wall Street executive, sporting a diamond ear ring that was at least 1 CT, made the "I'm unemployed and really need some money" story seem absurd. Knowing him, he wouldn't be caught dead with a CZ in his ear. (His father's sister charged a Rolex watch to her mother's charge card... all the kids used her charge cards, but JP and I certainly didn't have one when we were married.)
I hope their financial situation improves. They have both been through too many rough times.
I usually prepare a store-bought turkey breast for this puzzling holiday. Giving thanks for the bullets dodged, happy memories of the year, and a chance to spend a day with relatives or friends, is usually how I see the celebration. But, as an Anglo* who is a Native-American Sympathizer, I don't like what happened to the indigenous peoples after that meal they kindly provided for the strange interlopers on their shores. Even though none of us existed during the extermination of the "Indians", or when people owned African slaves, many of us carry around a kernel of "White Guilt". Lots of us are really sorry about it, even though we had nothing to do with it. *(Several years after I wrote this, my father had his DNA tested before he died. His Mitochondrial (mother's line) DNA is Native American (first wave). Blew our minds!)
Disclaimer Over.
I hope the big flock of wild turkeys who spent Spring and Summer on our land survived. They disappeared near the end of the summer and I've had a bad feeling about it, there are just so many hunters around here. I will be happy if all of them show up next year and have hundreds of chicks.
I called my first son (AP)Chimera to invite him and his wife over for the day. After many unanswered calls, Chimera's wife called to say they had other plans. I'm starting to doubt I'll ever meet his wife. I asked if Chimera was there and she said he was, but he was afraid to talk to me or his step-father. I said, that's silly, he's such a scared [(scarred)] little boy, put him on the phone, if he'll talk to me.
His paranoia is a long term thing, but his excuse for it this time was the "smash & grab" visit he paid me a week before. He thought his step-dad would be pissed off that he had hit me up for money. Chimera, we already know your ways and just say, "That's just who he is now". I still don't understand him though.
My husband has helped him so many times. He got him a construction job on a big project he had going in Kentucky one year when Chimera was off heroin. He even drove all night to get to Kentucky when Chimera called in the middle of the night to say that the drunk guys he had been hanging out with were going to beat the crap out of him because they had sent him out to get some marijuana, and he had failed to find any. He was hiding and need protection.
So seeing my husband as "the bad guy" is ridiculous. He won't hesitate to tell you when you have been behaving like a Jackass, but sometimes you need to hear the truth.
I am a cynical, "well" of second chances to get it right, please, no next time, please get it right. That is tricky when you also don't want to be an addict's enabler. An addict can smile and lie into your loving eyes to get what he wants.
He says they are planning to move to Denver because they have a really good Methadone clinic there. HUH!? I thought the idea was to get off drugs, not travel around, and get hooked up with another clinic. (He's been in de-tox, before, in Denver. That is another long story. He had just gotten out of the Air Force...)
So when he came over a week ago, I emptied some people food and cat food, toilet paper, etc., out of our pantry for him to take home. I met him at the gas station, put gas in his "newer-than-anything-we-own" SUV, bought 2 cartons of cigarettes, and gave him $40.00 cash. I know he wanted more money, but sorry, we'd hit my limit of generosity (being a fool for anyone who says they need food). The fact that he was dressed impeccably like a Wall Street executive, sporting a diamond ear ring that was at least 1 CT, made the "I'm unemployed and really need some money" story seem absurd. Knowing him, he wouldn't be caught dead with a CZ in his ear. (His father's sister charged a Rolex watch to her mother's charge card... all the kids used her charge cards, but JP and I certainly didn't have one when we were married.)
I hope their financial situation improves. They have both been through too many rough times.
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Number One Son
As I said, before, I took my son, AP, to live in Austin, TX after the divorce. He was a very easy-going kid; the love of my life and reason to make a good life for the two of us. After a while my present husband joined us as a live-in boyfriend and about four years later we got married. I think AP is about eight years older than his half sister, A. Beauty, and ten or eleven years older than his half brother, Savant.
When AP was about thirteen, my husband's business went belly-up, along with the rest of the economy in Texas in 1986. Our marriage was going through a stressful time too. We decided to head back to his home state in the North-East, stay with his parents while he looked for a job, and make a fresh start.
AP had always been a good, normal kid. Our move prompted AP's Tennessee family to propose that he come to live there for a while, until we got settled. They, his Grandparents, said they would send him to a good private school (he had been a bright student), only the best for their only Grandson. I haven't sent anyone to a private school and didn't really care, but, I think they were trying hard to persuade me that he would be fine with them. I refused the offer based on what a frightening life I had experienced with the creepy control-freak his father is; that and he had no idea how to be a parent. He dropped acid the day AP was born and said he wanted to be the first one to turn our child on (give him hallucinogens).
Are you getting why I wanted to keep him away from them? No one else knew what a freak-show the kid would have to deal with every day with his dad and girlfriend. My mother and his other Grandparents were all lobbying to let the Tennessee side of his family have a turn to enjoy having him with them. I finally caved in, only because I truly believed that it was going to be only for a few months until we got settled up-North and he would then rejoin us. I also thought that JP's girlfriend couldn't be as wierd as he was. I thought she probably just got involved with him due to youthful stupidity, the way I had.
AP (Chimera evolving) soon figured out that he could do as he pleased, and that kind of power can go to a thirteen year olds' head. Things then got turned upside down. He knew that we had normal expectations for good behavior, rules, curfew, sobriety, doing your school work,... the basic parent-child stuff. According to Chimera, at his Dad's, he could sell marijuana for daddy dear or stay away for days without checking in with anyone... He began changing quickly and not in a good way. Did his father ever give him any of the "magic medicine" he took so frequently, himself?
He came up to see us in the summers now. He was a seriously conflicted kid now and I couldn't get him back. We made plans for him to start school and move back with us, but when he found out that he would get his driver's license a year earlier in Tennessee, the plan was off. One year he showed up with a Mohawk and an offensive fashion look that was sort of neo-Nazi. My husband and I are open to free self expression, but there are limits. He looked like one of those frightened young men who dresses up in "fuck you" fashions to cover up his insecurities.
To be continued....
When AP was about thirteen, my husband's business went belly-up, along with the rest of the economy in Texas in 1986. Our marriage was going through a stressful time too. We decided to head back to his home state in the North-East, stay with his parents while he looked for a job, and make a fresh start.
AP had always been a good, normal kid. Our move prompted AP's Tennessee family to propose that he come to live there for a while, until we got settled. They, his Grandparents, said they would send him to a good private school (he had been a bright student), only the best for their only Grandson. I haven't sent anyone to a private school and didn't really care, but, I think they were trying hard to persuade me that he would be fine with them. I refused the offer based on what a frightening life I had experienced with the creepy control-freak his father is; that and he had no idea how to be a parent. He dropped acid the day AP was born and said he wanted to be the first one to turn our child on (give him hallucinogens).
Are you getting why I wanted to keep him away from them? No one else knew what a freak-show the kid would have to deal with every day with his dad and girlfriend. My mother and his other Grandparents were all lobbying to let the Tennessee side of his family have a turn to enjoy having him with them. I finally caved in, only because I truly believed that it was going to be only for a few months until we got settled up-North and he would then rejoin us. I also thought that JP's girlfriend couldn't be as wierd as he was. I thought she probably just got involved with him due to youthful stupidity, the way I had.
AP (Chimera evolving) soon figured out that he could do as he pleased, and that kind of power can go to a thirteen year olds' head. Things then got turned upside down. He knew that we had normal expectations for good behavior, rules, curfew, sobriety, doing your school work,... the basic parent-child stuff. According to Chimera, at his Dad's, he could sell marijuana for daddy dear or stay away for days without checking in with anyone... He began changing quickly and not in a good way. Did his father ever give him any of the "magic medicine" he took so frequently, himself?
He came up to see us in the summers now. He was a seriously conflicted kid now and I couldn't get him back. We made plans for him to start school and move back with us, but when he found out that he would get his driver's license a year earlier in Tennessee, the plan was off. One year he showed up with a Mohawk and an offensive fashion look that was sort of neo-Nazi. My husband and I are open to free self expression, but there are limits. He looked like one of those frightened young men who dresses up in "fuck you" fashions to cover up his insecurities.
To be continued....
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Three Year Anniversary Apology
Dear Savant,
Has it really been three whole years sense you lost your sanity? I want to apologize for the shitty genes your father and I gave you; it was a total accident. I'm so glad you have been taking your medication lately. Have you noticed how it makes things go so much smoother? Your Dad and I sure have, and we know how difficult it is for you to remember to take them on schedule.
When you came home today and told me you were going to interview for a part time holiday job selling knives door to door, I hope you will forgive my negative take on that particular job being anything but a scam. You know that I called them and posed as a potential knife sales person to see if I could squeeze any specific information about the job out of them. When I asked if it mattered if I had a criminal history or suffered from insanity, they said,"No problem! Just come on in for an interview."
Well it's nice to know that at least one company that does "in home demonstrations of deadly weapons" (cutlery) does not discriminate in their hiring policies.
Two young men who were selling knives, came to my door before you were born. I wouldn't open the door and told them there was no way I was letting any strangers with knives come inside. But, hay, you know how I can always see potential problems where they probably don't exist. Maybe they don't sell knife sets at all. Maybe they just need mules to deliver drugs or plutonium in boxes that have pictures of knives on them.
I still think it's not the right job for you, but don't take it personally. I don't think it is a good job for anybody.
Love, Mom
Has it really been three whole years sense you lost your sanity? I want to apologize for the shitty genes your father and I gave you; it was a total accident. I'm so glad you have been taking your medication lately. Have you noticed how it makes things go so much smoother? Your Dad and I sure have, and we know how difficult it is for you to remember to take them on schedule.
When you came home today and told me you were going to interview for a part time holiday job selling knives door to door, I hope you will forgive my negative take on that particular job being anything but a scam. You know that I called them and posed as a potential knife sales person to see if I could squeeze any specific information about the job out of them. When I asked if it mattered if I had a criminal history or suffered from insanity, they said,"No problem! Just come on in for an interview."
Well it's nice to know that at least one company that does "in home demonstrations of deadly weapons" (cutlery) does not discriminate in their hiring policies.
Two young men who were selling knives, came to my door before you were born. I wouldn't open the door and told them there was no way I was letting any strangers with knives come inside. But, hay, you know how I can always see potential problems where they probably don't exist. Maybe they don't sell knife sets at all. Maybe they just need mules to deliver drugs or plutonium in boxes that have pictures of knives on them.
I still think it's not the right job for you, but don't take it personally. I don't think it is a good job for anybody.
Love, Mom
Monday, November 21, 2005
There's a Light On in the Fridge, But Only The Vegetables Are Home
The "Beard" post dredged up so many bad memories, I've been having trouble making myself continue with the story. I want the things that happen in this life to make sense to me, but lots of them just don't.
That child, my first son, AP, is in his early 30's now, and has just gotten married. It was a secret wedding.
Immature charming narcissist funny X-junkie. I love the little boy he was; and the shitty parents he was dealt, his shrew of a step-mother included, can't explain all the choices he has made for himself, but it's still significant. I got custody of him when I divorced his father, JP. I also got: $20.00 a week child support, a mattress set, a rocking chair, a little cash and my freedom. JP got to hit-up his parents for $20.00 a week and take AP to Tennessee for the summers. Actually JP"s father gave him a mimimum wage "job" at the oil company. The elder JAP (junior) had inherited several lucrative companies from his father, JAP the First. The job required some real work from time-to-time, but JAP III usually spent the day playing guitar.
After years of moving around the country on a less than shoestring budget (money begged from his parents) and my frequent escape attempts, JP, our son AP, and I were back in Tennessee, living in a little, old, country house that his parents owned. (If you put your ear to an outside wall, you could hear bees buzzing. I like to imagine that this house is insulated with one huge honeycomb. I'd like to be there, to see, if they ever knock it down.) It was at the end of a lane and backed up to a river. They had usually used it when his father wanted to go hunting. One of his employees lived in a house on the lane that the P. family owned and across the road from them was a small building that housed his collection of beautiful German Shorthair Pointer hunting dogs (the brown speckely kind). I think the employee was supposed to feed and water the dogs, but JP's father made sure they were under-fed, because he said that made them hunt better. I didn't know how bad the situation was. I didn't visit the kennel, because they kept it locked, and I assumed that the man across the street and JP's father took care of them.
I called the ASPCA after the winter most of them froze to death, but no one ever did anything to stop his mistreatment of the dogs. I walked down to their kennel, in the snow, to see them because they were transporting the survivors to the vet's to try to save them. I was shocked and furious at what I saw. Each of these beautiful dogs was in a separate pen divided by chain link fencing, so there was no way they could have huddled together for warmth. They were on a cold concrete floor and they had no bedding to keep them warm. They were skin and bones. I was told that this was not the first winter that this had happened. He would just replace the dead dogs. I had never liked the elder JAP, but now I hated him. To me those dogs symbolized the mind set of that family. I feared for any slaves their forefathers might have owned.
We took in an old friend of JP's (that I had never met). We were giving him temporary lodging, because the house had four bedrooms and he, A.T., would soon be renting a house of his own. JP's Grandmother owned a few old houses on the lane to the house we were in, and she knew A.T.'s family, so she agreed to rent one of her houses to him.
A.T.'s father had been the Mayor at one time, but they had moved to Montana before I moved to town. A.T.'s Grandmother still lived there, though, so he had been staying with her until he reconnected with my husband and his old friends. Sorry, Grand Ma, old friends are just more fun for long term hanging out.
For years, I had tried to figure out a way to finally leave JP, and live on my own with my son and make my own money to live on. One morning, just as I woke up, the solution hit me! I would divorce him, go back to school and get a job to support my son and me. I would be able to get loans and grants for school, because of my below-poverty-level income for the past years, which would help enormously. I was thrilled by the plan. I sat up in bed, ecstatic, and said, "I finally figured out how to leave you!" He looked shocked, probably more by my happiness than the news that I wanted a divorce. He already knew I wanted out, but I was usually stranded and had no way to get away. I had pretended to be happy so many times, just to survive and end the private hostage situations he put me in; but I had promised myself that the first chance I saw a way to leave and be able to take care of my son, I was out of there. When the baby was little, and we were in Eugene, Oregon, he would grab him and run out the door saying I would never see either of them again. They would live off of berries in the woods. I'd be running down the street after them, screaming and begging him to give me the baby (he was still nursing). JP was high on peyote buttons most of the time we were in Oregon. He made sure not to waste any of his peyote money on food. Why would anyone want out of that marriage?
Back to Tennessee: I was so naive that I drove to JP's parents' house and told them my plan and asked if they would help me financially to go back to school, etc.. The answer was, of course, no. JP then inflamed his relatives against me by telling them that the reason I wanted a divorce was that I was having an affair with A.T.. It was a lie of course, but they loved the story and came at me with the hate a cheating slut would deserve. I moved into a house in town that was occupied by people from "The Farm". We had become friends. They were pre-med and nursing students, and they had a spare room that my son and I could rent until the divorce was over. My parents helped me with the rent. I was going to move to Austin, Texas afterward to be near my family. They were no longer in Indiana and no longer married.
I didn't even know JP had told people the lie that I was screwing A.T., until JP's grandmother came over to the Farm People's house and stood out on the front lawn yelling at me to tell A.T. that she wouldn't rent her house to him now. I told her he wasn't there, and maybe he was living with his grandmother, but I didn't really know where she could find him. I thought it was really weird that she had come there looking for him. She was gone by the time I figured it out.
Yes, A.T. and JP, were both handsome, but I have never fooled around on either of my husbands. And, A.T. and I were just friends. JP used to try to get me to seduce a male friend of ours, so we could all have sex together. I told him he was out of his mind and it was out of the question, but every time JN would come over my husband would urge me to do it when he was out of JN's earshot or he would do those little eyebrow-jerking nods behind his back. I would just glare. The three of us were very good friends and that was how I wanted it to stay.
(My father was a cheatin' pole cat and I grew up with a very dim view of liars. If you want to fuck around, get divorced first, shithead. Unless you have a mutually agreed upon gay-dike set-up like the one described in the comment on the previous entry.)
A light bulb did go off for me when A.T. moved in, but it wasn't the one between my legs. He could reason like a normal person, he didn't make up an alternate reality with bizarre rules that he lived in. I had lived in Idiotland so long that every time I managed to get away from JP for any length of time, I felt like I was coming out of a very foreign land, back to the land and language of my birth. One where no one gave a shit what I ate, etc..
JP was, and has been supported by his parents' money his whole life. After we were divorced, he made pocket change with occasional part time jobs, most of which involved playing guitar at restaurants. He is a gifted musician, I'll give him that. It is his life's main obsession, and he has many; that and food phobias. He wanted me to be his anorexia buddy from the start; boy was I skinny back then, and hungry and did I say HUNGRY?! He never seemed hungry; I think it's the real deal when starving yourself is fun.
JP's parents had given me a brand new car for Christmas, but it wasn't until the divorce that I was let in on a little game the men in the family play. They all have the same name: JAP, JAP Jr., JAP III...., so if the suffix is absent on a document, JAP is whomever they want it to be. They always paid cash for everything, no loans like almost everyone else. So my lavish Christmas present was not legally registered in my name, but to JAP.
I have to confess to being infuriatingly fair minded. My attorney was an old friend from high school; he is now a member of the United States Congress, The House of Representatives in Washington D.C., Bart Gordon (D-TN). I thought that I should only ask for half of the value of the car, because JP's parent's were denying they gave me the car! What was all that fuss on Christmas morning then?
No one from JP"s family was present at the court for the divorce, not even JP, just their attorney. Back then they didn't have No Fault divorces in Tennessee. I plead mental cruelty. After the Judge listened to me on the witness stand, I could tell he was shocked at the life I had been subjected to by a member of one of their town's "fine families". He told me he would give me the car if my attorney had asked for it. I waited for Bart to speak up and ask him to let me keep my car, I really needed it, but he didn't say a word. I was too shy to speak up, and too fucking modest to say "I want it, and enough alimony and child support to live on." I think the Judge would have helped me if I had spoken up, but I was such a kicked puppy by then, that I couldn't stand up for myself. So I ended up with a couple of thousand dollars for letting them take the car away from me, and no alimony, because JP was a broke moocher. The fact that he had no living expenses, other than guitar strings and health food, was not brought to the judge's attention. JP's parents paid for all utilities, free car, free gas, free house, free clothes, free insurance...
I'm no where near finished with this story, but I'll work on this later.
That child, my first son, AP, is in his early 30's now, and has just gotten married. It was a secret wedding.
Immature charming narcissist funny X-junkie. I love the little boy he was; and the shitty parents he was dealt, his shrew of a step-mother included, can't explain all the choices he has made for himself, but it's still significant. I got custody of him when I divorced his father, JP. I also got: $20.00 a week child support, a mattress set, a rocking chair, a little cash and my freedom. JP got to hit-up his parents for $20.00 a week and take AP to Tennessee for the summers. Actually JP"s father gave him a mimimum wage "job" at the oil company. The elder JAP (junior) had inherited several lucrative companies from his father, JAP the First. The job required some real work from time-to-time, but JAP III usually spent the day playing guitar.
After years of moving around the country on a less than shoestring budget (money begged from his parents) and my frequent escape attempts, JP, our son AP, and I were back in Tennessee, living in a little, old, country house that his parents owned. (If you put your ear to an outside wall, you could hear bees buzzing. I like to imagine that this house is insulated with one huge honeycomb. I'd like to be there, to see, if they ever knock it down.) It was at the end of a lane and backed up to a river. They had usually used it when his father wanted to go hunting. One of his employees lived in a house on the lane that the P. family owned and across the road from them was a small building that housed his collection of beautiful German Shorthair Pointer hunting dogs (the brown speckely kind). I think the employee was supposed to feed and water the dogs, but JP's father made sure they were under-fed, because he said that made them hunt better. I didn't know how bad the situation was. I didn't visit the kennel, because they kept it locked, and I assumed that the man across the street and JP's father took care of them.
I called the ASPCA after the winter most of them froze to death, but no one ever did anything to stop his mistreatment of the dogs. I walked down to their kennel, in the snow, to see them because they were transporting the survivors to the vet's to try to save them. I was shocked and furious at what I saw. Each of these beautiful dogs was in a separate pen divided by chain link fencing, so there was no way they could have huddled together for warmth. They were on a cold concrete floor and they had no bedding to keep them warm. They were skin and bones. I was told that this was not the first winter that this had happened. He would just replace the dead dogs. I had never liked the elder JAP, but now I hated him. To me those dogs symbolized the mind set of that family. I feared for any slaves their forefathers might have owned.
We took in an old friend of JP's (that I had never met). We were giving him temporary lodging, because the house had four bedrooms and he, A.T., would soon be renting a house of his own. JP's Grandmother owned a few old houses on the lane to the house we were in, and she knew A.T.'s family, so she agreed to rent one of her houses to him.
A.T.'s father had been the Mayor at one time, but they had moved to Montana before I moved to town. A.T.'s Grandmother still lived there, though, so he had been staying with her until he reconnected with my husband and his old friends. Sorry, Grand Ma, old friends are just more fun for long term hanging out.
For years, I had tried to figure out a way to finally leave JP, and live on my own with my son and make my own money to live on. One morning, just as I woke up, the solution hit me! I would divorce him, go back to school and get a job to support my son and me. I would be able to get loans and grants for school, because of my below-poverty-level income for the past years, which would help enormously. I was thrilled by the plan. I sat up in bed, ecstatic, and said, "I finally figured out how to leave you!" He looked shocked, probably more by my happiness than the news that I wanted a divorce. He already knew I wanted out, but I was usually stranded and had no way to get away. I had pretended to be happy so many times, just to survive and end the private hostage situations he put me in; but I had promised myself that the first chance I saw a way to leave and be able to take care of my son, I was out of there. When the baby was little, and we were in Eugene, Oregon, he would grab him and run out the door saying I would never see either of them again. They would live off of berries in the woods. I'd be running down the street after them, screaming and begging him to give me the baby (he was still nursing). JP was high on peyote buttons most of the time we were in Oregon. He made sure not to waste any of his peyote money on food. Why would anyone want out of that marriage?
Back to Tennessee: I was so naive that I drove to JP's parents' house and told them my plan and asked if they would help me financially to go back to school, etc.. The answer was, of course, no. JP then inflamed his relatives against me by telling them that the reason I wanted a divorce was that I was having an affair with A.T.. It was a lie of course, but they loved the story and came at me with the hate a cheating slut would deserve. I moved into a house in town that was occupied by people from "The Farm". We had become friends. They were pre-med and nursing students, and they had a spare room that my son and I could rent until the divorce was over. My parents helped me with the rent. I was going to move to Austin, Texas afterward to be near my family. They were no longer in Indiana and no longer married.
I didn't even know JP had told people the lie that I was screwing A.T., until JP's grandmother came over to the Farm People's house and stood out on the front lawn yelling at me to tell A.T. that she wouldn't rent her house to him now. I told her he wasn't there, and maybe he was living with his grandmother, but I didn't really know where she could find him. I thought it was really weird that she had come there looking for him. She was gone by the time I figured it out.
Yes, A.T. and JP, were both handsome, but I have never fooled around on either of my husbands. And, A.T. and I were just friends. JP used to try to get me to seduce a male friend of ours, so we could all have sex together. I told him he was out of his mind and it was out of the question, but every time JN would come over my husband would urge me to do it when he was out of JN's earshot or he would do those little eyebrow-jerking nods behind his back. I would just glare. The three of us were very good friends and that was how I wanted it to stay.
(My father was a cheatin' pole cat and I grew up with a very dim view of liars. If you want to fuck around, get divorced first, shithead. Unless you have a mutually agreed upon gay-dike set-up like the one described in the comment on the previous entry.)
A light bulb did go off for me when A.T. moved in, but it wasn't the one between my legs. He could reason like a normal person, he didn't make up an alternate reality with bizarre rules that he lived in. I had lived in Idiotland so long that every time I managed to get away from JP for any length of time, I felt like I was coming out of a very foreign land, back to the land and language of my birth. One where no one gave a shit what I ate, etc..
JP was, and has been supported by his parents' money his whole life. After we were divorced, he made pocket change with occasional part time jobs, most of which involved playing guitar at restaurants. He is a gifted musician, I'll give him that. It is his life's main obsession, and he has many; that and food phobias. He wanted me to be his anorexia buddy from the start; boy was I skinny back then, and hungry and did I say HUNGRY?! He never seemed hungry; I think it's the real deal when starving yourself is fun.
JP's parents had given me a brand new car for Christmas, but it wasn't until the divorce that I was let in on a little game the men in the family play. They all have the same name: JAP, JAP Jr., JAP III...., so if the suffix is absent on a document, JAP is whomever they want it to be. They always paid cash for everything, no loans like almost everyone else. So my lavish Christmas present was not legally registered in my name, but to JAP.
I have to confess to being infuriatingly fair minded. My attorney was an old friend from high school; he is now a member of the United States Congress, The House of Representatives in Washington D.C., Bart Gordon (D-TN). I thought that I should only ask for half of the value of the car, because JP's parent's were denying they gave me the car! What was all that fuss on Christmas morning then?
No one from JP"s family was present at the court for the divorce, not even JP, just their attorney. Back then they didn't have No Fault divorces in Tennessee. I plead mental cruelty. After the Judge listened to me on the witness stand, I could tell he was shocked at the life I had been subjected to by a member of one of their town's "fine families". He told me he would give me the car if my attorney had asked for it. I waited for Bart to speak up and ask him to let me keep my car, I really needed it, but he didn't say a word. I was too shy to speak up, and too fucking modest to say "I want it, and enough alimony and child support to live on." I think the Judge would have helped me if I had spoken up, but I was such a kicked puppy by then, that I couldn't stand up for myself. So I ended up with a couple of thousand dollars for letting them take the car away from me, and no alimony, because JP was a broke moocher. The fact that he had no living expenses, other than guitar strings and health food, was not brought to the judge's attention. JP's parents paid for all utilities, free car, free gas, free house, free clothes, free insurance...
I'm no where near finished with this story, but I'll work on this later.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
I Did Not Understand That He Was Being True To Who He Is
My first husband told me, before bed on our wedding night, that we would be having a sexless marriage. It was fine with me, if two people of the same sex loved each other. I knew from a very early age that the opposite sex attracted me. Husband #1: JP and I had sex before we were married. I did get the feeling that it meant more to me than it did to him; but this post-wedding decree was a total shock to me. There was a cold finality to it. My first thought was, "He can't be serious!... Can he?" My second thought was that he would change his mind. I mean, he can't be gay, he just married me! Right?
I was on my own with this secret. I was too stupid to get an immediate annulment, and I had convinced myself that I could not live without him. When we began as travel buddies, my severe depression lifted, and I thought he was the drug that kept the hellish depression away. I had no one to explain to me, how I was supposed to live like this. I went from feeling beautiful and desirable, to feeling like I was truly sexually unattractive. I would beg, and cry for an explanation, or a kind touch, only to be ignored or chastised. Nothing about it made any sense to me.
I kept up a pretty good front, but I was miserable, and I kept thinking, if I just waited for a while, he would start to be more like he was before we married. Surely he couldn't resist my charms for long. Wrong. I did wrangle him into the act a few times, but he would get very angry with me after. Even an innocent touch of his hair was met with a cold stare. I tried to do things the way he wanted them: I ate what he ate, strict vegetarian; I did yoga, because he did yoga; I gave away all of my clothes and possessions except for a bare minimum because he didn't want excess possessions and what we didn't give away he sold. We were a cult of two, and I was the one who was brain-washed, willingly. Sure, there were happy times and times I thought I couldn't live like this for another day.
How did this stretch into a six year relationship? There were so many layers to those six years that I can only focus on one at a time, so it will take me a long time to uncover those years. I tried to leave him many times, but we were so poor, that many times, I literally did not have a dime for a phone call or any way to get to a phone to make a call. I'll cover the starvation, homelessness, his voracious appetite for peyote, mushrooms, LSD, Marijuana,....etc., in other essays.
I've told you that we eventually had a son. The way that happened is that we went to a yoga retreat, and I asked the yogi in front of a group, that included JP, "How often should married people have sex?" I had nothing to lose, and I was pretty sure the answer would not be: never. The Yogi said:four times a month. So after that I was allowed 4 times a month, and JP made sure I knew that it was not something he looked forward to. He hated the chemicals from my birth control foam, poisoning his purified body, and he refuse to get rubbers. Possibly he thought he had found a loop hole that would make it impossible for us to continue with sex. Then, in the health food store book rack, there was a book called "Astrological Birth Control". Don't look for it, it doesn't work. I wrote the authors to tell them that I was pregnant. Hmmmm... You're the only one it hasn't worked for, you must have done it wrong.
And so we have a precious son.
29 Aug 2019, Post Script: I did not finish this because bringing up the pain from the past felt so wrong. Why willingly dive into it again. Fourteen years later, I have come a long way in sorting it out. My first husband took a massive amount of LSD at Woodstock, before we were together as a couple. He was different after that. What he became focused on after that was purifying himself in every way. He warned me that he did not want anyone or anything in his life that interfered with that. But, I didn't understand clearly what he was about. I reacted to everything as though he was trying to hurt me. And I was very hurt. Only as an older, wiser person do I understand that if I had the courage, I would have known that I should not try to make a life with someone on a journey like his. He was being true to himself and I was not being true to myself, that is not his fault.
I was on my own with this secret. I was too stupid to get an immediate annulment, and I had convinced myself that I could not live without him. When we began as travel buddies, my severe depression lifted, and I thought he was the drug that kept the hellish depression away. I had no one to explain to me, how I was supposed to live like this. I went from feeling beautiful and desirable, to feeling like I was truly sexually unattractive. I would beg, and cry for an explanation, or a kind touch, only to be ignored or chastised. Nothing about it made any sense to me.
I kept up a pretty good front, but I was miserable, and I kept thinking, if I just waited for a while, he would start to be more like he was before we married. Surely he couldn't resist my charms for long. Wrong. I did wrangle him into the act a few times, but he would get very angry with me after. Even an innocent touch of his hair was met with a cold stare. I tried to do things the way he wanted them: I ate what he ate, strict vegetarian; I did yoga, because he did yoga; I gave away all of my clothes and possessions except for a bare minimum because he didn't want excess possessions and what we didn't give away he sold. We were a cult of two, and I was the one who was brain-washed, willingly. Sure, there were happy times and times I thought I couldn't live like this for another day.
How did this stretch into a six year relationship? There were so many layers to those six years that I can only focus on one at a time, so it will take me a long time to uncover those years. I tried to leave him many times, but we were so poor, that many times, I literally did not have a dime for a phone call or any way to get to a phone to make a call. I'll cover the starvation, homelessness, his voracious appetite for peyote, mushrooms, LSD, Marijuana,....etc., in other essays.
I've told you that we eventually had a son. The way that happened is that we went to a yoga retreat, and I asked the yogi in front of a group, that included JP, "How often should married people have sex?" I had nothing to lose, and I was pretty sure the answer would not be: never. The Yogi said:four times a month. So after that I was allowed 4 times a month, and JP made sure I knew that it was not something he looked forward to. He hated the chemicals from my birth control foam, poisoning his purified body, and he refuse to get rubbers. Possibly he thought he had found a loop hole that would make it impossible for us to continue with sex. Then, in the health food store book rack, there was a book called "Astrological Birth Control". Don't look for it, it doesn't work. I wrote the authors to tell them that I was pregnant. Hmmmm... You're the only one it hasn't worked for, you must have done it wrong.
And so we have a precious son.
29 Aug 2019, Post Script: I did not finish this because bringing up the pain from the past felt so wrong. Why willingly dive into it again. Fourteen years later, I have come a long way in sorting it out. My first husband took a massive amount of LSD at Woodstock, before we were together as a couple. He was different after that. What he became focused on after that was purifying himself in every way. He warned me that he did not want anyone or anything in his life that interfered with that. But, I didn't understand clearly what he was about. I reacted to everything as though he was trying to hurt me. And I was very hurt. Only as an older, wiser person do I understand that if I had the courage, I would have known that I should not try to make a life with someone on a journey like his. He was being true to himself and I was not being true to myself, that is not his fault.
Sunday, November 13, 2005
Stranger Than Fiction
My husband (#2) and I moved to Newton, MA, from Austin, TX in mid 1986. His family is from MA and the Texas economy was crumbling. My husband had a concrete company and contractors stopped paying for the slabs he had poured. Warning to some people in one ritzy section of North West Austin: We own the slabs your houses are sitting on! We filed liens, but found out that people could still buy the houses without clearing the liens if they "bonded around the lien". This is not the strange part.
Story #1:
In the middle of the night in Massachusetts, (insomnia) I was flipping channels on the TV. When I got to the PBS station, there on the screen, smiling out to all the world, is my mother and her husband! I freaked!
It was an episode of "Austin City Limits". The explanation for their close up is that one of my younger sisters, M., was working as an intern on the show for her degree in RTF: Radio, Television and Film. Later, M. got parts for various family members, who lived in Austin, as extras in the films she worked on. When she decided to become a single Mom, she got calls from a film crew, wanting to know when her baby was due. They needed a newborn for a TV mini-series. So they slathered her new daughter in the secret recipe for birth goo, most of it is fruit jelly, and a star was born. The actress that played her mother, Angelina something, became really famous a few years later. My sister got a job with a computer giant after that, so she would have the steady income a parent needs.
Next Story:
After my divorce from husband #1, I was in Austin waiting tables and taking classes at the community college; waiting for a year to pass, so that I could go to U.T. as an in-state student. My son stayed at a daycare that was near my apartment. I was parking my dad's car at the daycare to pick up my son, and looked over at the car parked next to me. It belonged to a girl who had a son in the same group my son was in. Her kid bit my kid a lot. Sitting in her passenger seat was a guy that hit all my desire buttons. I remember thinking, "where did she find a guy like that?", I wanted one. I couldn't picture them as a couple, because she was a very: the shoes match the bag, perfect makeup, jewelry, hair type; and he looked like a hot lumberjack's dream with a beard and ponytail. (late 1970's)
Skip forward a year or so. I begin waiting tables at a different restaurant, one that is very near my apartment. She was a regular customer, mostly in the bar part of the restaurant. Waiters and Bartenders come and go all the time. A guy who worked there and quit, before I began working there, got rehired. He became a full time bartender. I found out that he had been a teacher in Mass. and was divorced with no kids. We eventually became romantic. I was living in U.T. Family Housing with my son. It was a great, affordable little 2 bedroom apartment that backed up to the Colorado River. My boyfriend began telling me that his former girlfriend had lived across the street in the older group of Married Student Apartments even though she was not a student. Her, then, X-husband was the student, but she and her son continued to live there after the split. When he told me her son's name, the light bulb went on! He was the kid who used to bite my son. That day in the parking lot flashed back into my memory. He was the guy I had lusted after!
I've joked over the years that it was really my Dad's cars that caught his attention. My Dad and Mom were divorced and I rented an apartment in the same complex where my Dad lived so I could borrow one of his cars until I could buy my own. He had a purple Jaguar XKE and at least one Triumph, maybe 2, so I think they attracted attention first, and then you would notice the slim, buxom girl with the blue eyes and the long blond hair. (My present description would be a bit more bulky than the one from back then. Picture Benjamin Franklin in drag.)
Story 3:
After husband #2 and I were married and had a kid or two. He bought an older Jaguar and worked on the engine in his spare time. One day on the highway, I put the petal to the metal to pass someone, and the gas pedal became locked in the "down to the floor " position. I tried shoving my foot under it and pulling up, but it wouldn't budge! The car is flying and I'm panicked! I was standing on the break to no avail. I down shifted my way to neutral and turned off the key and pulled up on the emergency break. When I finally got it to stop, I was off the road in a parking lot of some sort, freaked out but unhurt.
I found a phone and called my husband. He drove out to investigate. It turns out that there is a thingy, that has to do with the accelerator linkage, that if it goes beyond a certain angle, picture 12:00 on a clock, if it goes past that even a little bit, the angle is too wide for it to return in the direction it came from and it gets STUCK in rocket mode! When my husband turned the key, the engine began to roar at full tilt again. He fixed it, but I was still afraid of that car.
When I see people on TV, trying to tell an investigative reporter that this has happened to them, sometimes with horrific results, I BELIEVE! The automobile companies always say it is impossible, and that the people were mistakenly flooring the gas pedal when they thought they had their foot on the break. BULL!
Story #4:
When Savant was in High School here in Tennessee, his best friend was a boy who had been raised in Saudi Arabia by an American father and a Syrian mother. I spent some time talking to them when I was picking my son up from their house one evening. During the course of the conversation, we realized that we had lived in Austin at the same time. We were all students at the University at the same time, and we had lived across the street from each other in the University Family Housing. We rode the same bus to and from classes. Small world, huh?
Story #5:
I was in the check out line at the grocery store near the U. of Texas Apartments, and up ahead of me, in line was a friend of mine from Tennessee! Jack, of the crackers and spam, in a previous entry. I was blown away to see him there. He visited us a few times before he moved on to parts unknown.
Story #6:
Husband #1 and I were in a park in Ashland, Oregon during a short stay there. We were talking about a yogi from India that we knew when we lived in Indiana, Yatishvarananda, and how he would always mispronounce the name of one of our friends. Less than a minute later we see this same fellow sitting on a bench in the park!
Story #1:
In the middle of the night in Massachusetts, (insomnia) I was flipping channels on the TV. When I got to the PBS station, there on the screen, smiling out to all the world, is my mother and her husband! I freaked!
It was an episode of "Austin City Limits". The explanation for their close up is that one of my younger sisters, M., was working as an intern on the show for her degree in RTF: Radio, Television and Film. Later, M. got parts for various family members, who lived in Austin, as extras in the films she worked on. When she decided to become a single Mom, she got calls from a film crew, wanting to know when her baby was due. They needed a newborn for a TV mini-series. So they slathered her new daughter in the secret recipe for birth goo, most of it is fruit jelly, and a star was born. The actress that played her mother, Angelina something, became really famous a few years later. My sister got a job with a computer giant after that, so she would have the steady income a parent needs.
Next Story:
After my divorce from husband #1, I was in Austin waiting tables and taking classes at the community college; waiting for a year to pass, so that I could go to U.T. as an in-state student. My son stayed at a daycare that was near my apartment. I was parking my dad's car at the daycare to pick up my son, and looked over at the car parked next to me. It belonged to a girl who had a son in the same group my son was in. Her kid bit my kid a lot. Sitting in her passenger seat was a guy that hit all my desire buttons. I remember thinking, "where did she find a guy like that?", I wanted one. I couldn't picture them as a couple, because she was a very: the shoes match the bag, perfect makeup, jewelry, hair type; and he looked like a hot lumberjack's dream with a beard and ponytail. (late 1970's)
Skip forward a year or so. I begin waiting tables at a different restaurant, one that is very near my apartment. She was a regular customer, mostly in the bar part of the restaurant. Waiters and Bartenders come and go all the time. A guy who worked there and quit, before I began working there, got rehired. He became a full time bartender. I found out that he had been a teacher in Mass. and was divorced with no kids. We eventually became romantic. I was living in U.T. Family Housing with my son. It was a great, affordable little 2 bedroom apartment that backed up to the Colorado River. My boyfriend began telling me that his former girlfriend had lived across the street in the older group of Married Student Apartments even though she was not a student. Her, then, X-husband was the student, but she and her son continued to live there after the split. When he told me her son's name, the light bulb went on! He was the kid who used to bite my son. That day in the parking lot flashed back into my memory. He was the guy I had lusted after!
I've joked over the years that it was really my Dad's cars that caught his attention. My Dad and Mom were divorced and I rented an apartment in the same complex where my Dad lived so I could borrow one of his cars until I could buy my own. He had a purple Jaguar XKE and at least one Triumph, maybe 2, so I think they attracted attention first, and then you would notice the slim, buxom girl with the blue eyes and the long blond hair. (My present description would be a bit more bulky than the one from back then. Picture Benjamin Franklin in drag.)
Story 3:
After husband #2 and I were married and had a kid or two. He bought an older Jaguar and worked on the engine in his spare time. One day on the highway, I put the petal to the metal to pass someone, and the gas pedal became locked in the "down to the floor " position. I tried shoving my foot under it and pulling up, but it wouldn't budge! The car is flying and I'm panicked! I was standing on the break to no avail. I down shifted my way to neutral and turned off the key and pulled up on the emergency break. When I finally got it to stop, I was off the road in a parking lot of some sort, freaked out but unhurt.
I found a phone and called my husband. He drove out to investigate. It turns out that there is a thingy, that has to do with the accelerator linkage, that if it goes beyond a certain angle, picture 12:00 on a clock, if it goes past that even a little bit, the angle is too wide for it to return in the direction it came from and it gets STUCK in rocket mode! When my husband turned the key, the engine began to roar at full tilt again. He fixed it, but I was still afraid of that car.
When I see people on TV, trying to tell an investigative reporter that this has happened to them, sometimes with horrific results, I BELIEVE! The automobile companies always say it is impossible, and that the people were mistakenly flooring the gas pedal when they thought they had their foot on the break. BULL!
Story #4:
When Savant was in High School here in Tennessee, his best friend was a boy who had been raised in Saudi Arabia by an American father and a Syrian mother. I spent some time talking to them when I was picking my son up from their house one evening. During the course of the conversation, we realized that we had lived in Austin at the same time. We were all students at the University at the same time, and we had lived across the street from each other in the University Family Housing. We rode the same bus to and from classes. Small world, huh?
Story #5:
I was in the check out line at the grocery store near the U. of Texas Apartments, and up ahead of me, in line was a friend of mine from Tennessee! Jack, of the crackers and spam, in a previous entry. I was blown away to see him there. He visited us a few times before he moved on to parts unknown.
Story #6:
Husband #1 and I were in a park in Ashland, Oregon during a short stay there. We were talking about a yogi from India that we knew when we lived in Indiana, Yatishvarananda, and how he would always mispronounce the name of one of our friends. Less than a minute later we see this same fellow sitting on a bench in the park!
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Name Dropper and Crack Whore Barbie Dolls
When I was adding the Music column to the sidebar, I had to stop, because I like some of every type of music. Though it's not my first choice, I even like the Eminem, Pink, Alicia Keys... radio station. Grunge, Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day,...Radio station. National Public Radio's Classical Music and their talk features. If I feel like crying or laughing it's a Country station. Sometimes I can find music from other cultures - I like it all. A Gregorian Chant, Celtic music, Chris Isaak, Jazz, Blues, Tribal music, Chinese singing: You name it I like some of it.
I was thinking about the Pink Floyd song "Comfortably Numb" when I was doing yard work yesterday. I love that song. There is a part where they sing:
When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons.
Now I've got that feeling once again
I can't explain you would not understand...
Did anyone else have this happen to them? It used to happen to me when I was a child and had a fever. I was surprised that someone had felt the same thing and written it into a song. And, that the guy that wrote it shares a name with me. My maiden name is Waters. Odds are we're not related, though, in my head I refer to him as cousin Roger sometimes. Pink Floyd can put on a concert! If they ever tour again, take your deaf grandmother, she'll like the light show.
Then I decided to do an entry devoted to brief brushes I've had with people who have names you might recognize. Not that I expect you to be impressed; it's just so I could tell some stories, because that's what I'm here for.
Garth Brooks' cousin (see, I told you not to be impressed): We were living in some apartments in Hermitage while we were building our first house on the land we bought in Franklin. The two kids left at home were approx. Middle School age. My daughter was pals with the young lady who wrote Faith Hill's first hit single (I think the word "Roses" was in the title), or should I say she seemed to like the company of the kids, and the other brother/sister pair (Blake and Andrea), that they spent most of their time with. She gave Blake a white dove someone had given her.
Let's get even more off topic. One day I came home and the 4 kids had transformed A. Beautie's Barbie Dolls into "Crack Whore Barbies". It was great! The dolls come with some pretty slutty outfits anyway, but they had given them the "been out trolling all night and catching a few winks under a park bench" skanky sluttyness. I laughed my ass off. God, I was proud of them! I think I have them packed away with their other toys. I think they learned about Crack Whores at school in their drug awareness class, that and how to set up a meth lab just about anywhere. (Wasn't the Scopes Trial near here?)
OK, I'm getting to the Garth Brooks' cousin part.(Idiot Like a Savant had not dubbed himself that name yet; the psychosis did not hit until he was about 18.) Anyway, he was either riding his bike or skate board on the tennis courts, and some boys who were about his age showed up with tennis rackets to play tennis. A dispute broke out and Savant came back to the apartment pissed off. He had bloody knuckles where one of the kids had hit him with the tennis racket. He said he took the racket away from the kid after that and hurled it into the woods next to the tennis court. He headed to his room to fume and calm down. Shortly after that there was a knock at the door. I opened the door and there stood what looked like a slim Garth Brooks with hair. The kids had told me Garth Brooks' cousin had moved into the apartments, but for some reason I had pictured someone in their early 20's, who might just be full of bull.
Whatta ya know, it's true. He wants his tennis racket. His kids told him my son had thrown it into the woods. He was not happy. I tell him about the bloody knuckles and get Savant to find the racket for him. He sees Savant's hand and apologizes. They go find the racket. The End
Saw Nanci Griffith at the veterinarian's office. Her dog was sick, my cat was sick. The End
Saw Donna Summer "the Queen of Disco" in the grocery store.
Saw Naomi and Wynona Judd on the highway near the airport. They were in a vintage American convertible, with the top down. It had the license plate "Red Heads". They had on scarves and sunglasses.
During the 1960's at my elementary school, Wooldridge, located a couple of blocks from the University of Texas in Austin, there was a teacher named Miss Curie. I was not in her class and never knew her first name, but we were told that she was the daughter of Madame Curie and her mother had won the Nobel Prize. Cool!(By the way, Madame Curie's mother and father also both won the Nobel Prize, the hard way.) I've always wondered if her mother was Irène Curie? Or if my kid memory and my old lady memorie have scrambled the story.
Saw a bunch of TV and Movie actors at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, one January. My husband and kids ski; I gave up skiing because I spend more time tempting serious spinal injury than enjoying it. So this was the perfect vacation combination for all of us.
Stevie Ray Vaughn: Late 1970's or early 1980's he was a regular fixture in the Austin music scene. Though I float back to those times in Texas, when I listen to his music, I never got to see him play, because I was a dutiful single mother and student who didn't allow myself much fun. But he and a couple of his pals (Double Trouble?) came into the restaurant where I was waiting tables. The place was packed and the hostess, who didn't know who they were, seated them next to the bathroom, which was near the door to the kitchen; in other words, the crappiest table in the place. I passed that table on the way to my section which was up a few stairs and much nicer. I saw them and thought "What Idiot put them there?" I didn't have any empty tables or I'd have moved them. They didn't stay long. The End
One of the waitresses at the restaurant inherited 6 figures from her father, when the airplane he was piloting crashed. She married the drummer in the band Pretenders, but soon became an O.D. widow. The End
My husband and I went to the U.S. Open (Golf) at Pinehurst the year Payne Stewart won, about six years ago. When we were sitting in some bleachers for a while, and my husband pointed out that the man sitting in front of me was Donald Trump: creepy hair, cute date. My husband is the golfer, but I was excited to see all the Greats of Golf: Tiger Woods, Payne Stewart, Phil Mickelson, VJ Singh, etc...
The End
Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash: Johnny Cash had a T.V. show that was filmed in Nashville. My friends and I went to this taping. Everyone knew which motel the guests stayed in, so after the show, everyone but about 3 of us, drove to the motel. I decided to be in the group that trotted there behind Bob Dylan's limo. I was surprised when the limo pulled over and Bob shouted out to some guy walking up the street. They talked a bit and then the limo moved on. When we got to the motel, we, and our friends who drove, were the only kids there. Joni and Bob were being picked up by Johnny and June to go to their house. I have all four of their autographs on a scrap of paper somewhere. The End
Are you impressed yet?
I missed Woodstock! Some of my friends went, and I was stuck in Indiana looking at it on the news, saying "I should be there! Crud!" I did go to the Atlanta Pop Festival. My daughter thought it was funny that I used the word "pop", but that is what we called them back then. We called one of my friends "Kathy California" because she used to live there. She had seen the famed "Monterey Pop" festival.
Back to Atlanta, a couple of car loads of us went. But, I for one, had given no thought to bringing much money or food or anything for that matter. Only one intrepid traveler had brought crackers and spam with him. It was 103+ degrees and our only shelter was a tarp pulled between two cars in the parking lot. We didn't qualify as hippies; they had built a fantastic community of huts, tents, lean-to's... in the woods, where you could get cool beads, pipes, hippie stuff, and any kind of mind bender you were looking for. I can't remember if it was a two or three day event, but I was really excited about seeing Jimi Hendrix play. He was a headliner, which meant it would be very late at night when he took the stage.
Everyone was so hot that a fence was pulled down on some land nearby, that had a pond. Pond, beautiful pond, pond good. I think the only thing I had to eat the whole time was a tiny bit of Jack's crackers and spam. I just remember being hungry most of the time. They didn't have much in the way of food & drink vendors back then, and I probably ran out of money before the first day was over.
Anyone who suffers from migraine headaches knows that: no food, dehydration, loud music, extreme heat and cheap marijuana are a sure fire combination to trigger a really bad one. I never saw Hendrix, but I got to hear him while lying in the parking lot under the tarp between the cars, while my head exploded with pain. Aspirin, had anyone brought any, has no power to calm a migraine, and they hadn't invented Imitrex yet.
Did I ever tell you I used to be an Idiot? The End
Saw Janice Joplin once. She hated everyone in the audience and cussed us out. Good concert. The End
I was thinking about the Pink Floyd song "Comfortably Numb" when I was doing yard work yesterday. I love that song. There is a part where they sing:
When I was a child I had a fever
My hands felt just like two balloons.
Now I've got that feeling once again
I can't explain you would not understand...
Did anyone else have this happen to them? It used to happen to me when I was a child and had a fever. I was surprised that someone had felt the same thing and written it into a song. And, that the guy that wrote it shares a name with me. My maiden name is Waters. Odds are we're not related, though, in my head I refer to him as cousin Roger sometimes. Pink Floyd can put on a concert! If they ever tour again, take your deaf grandmother, she'll like the light show.
Then I decided to do an entry devoted to brief brushes I've had with people who have names you might recognize. Not that I expect you to be impressed; it's just so I could tell some stories, because that's what I'm here for.
Garth Brooks' cousin (see, I told you not to be impressed): We were living in some apartments in Hermitage while we were building our first house on the land we bought in Franklin. The two kids left at home were approx. Middle School age. My daughter was pals with the young lady who wrote Faith Hill's first hit single (I think the word "Roses" was in the title), or should I say she seemed to like the company of the kids, and the other brother/sister pair (Blake and Andrea), that they spent most of their time with. She gave Blake a white dove someone had given her.
Let's get even more off topic. One day I came home and the 4 kids had transformed A. Beautie's Barbie Dolls into "Crack Whore Barbies". It was great! The dolls come with some pretty slutty outfits anyway, but they had given them the "been out trolling all night and catching a few winks under a park bench" skanky sluttyness. I laughed my ass off. God, I was proud of them! I think I have them packed away with their other toys. I think they learned about Crack Whores at school in their drug awareness class, that and how to set up a meth lab just about anywhere. (Wasn't the Scopes Trial near here?)
OK, I'm getting to the Garth Brooks' cousin part.(Idiot Like a Savant had not dubbed himself that name yet; the psychosis did not hit until he was about 18.) Anyway, he was either riding his bike or skate board on the tennis courts, and some boys who were about his age showed up with tennis rackets to play tennis. A dispute broke out and Savant came back to the apartment pissed off. He had bloody knuckles where one of the kids had hit him with the tennis racket. He said he took the racket away from the kid after that and hurled it into the woods next to the tennis court. He headed to his room to fume and calm down. Shortly after that there was a knock at the door. I opened the door and there stood what looked like a slim Garth Brooks with hair. The kids had told me Garth Brooks' cousin had moved into the apartments, but for some reason I had pictured someone in their early 20's, who might just be full of bull.
Whatta ya know, it's true. He wants his tennis racket. His kids told him my son had thrown it into the woods. He was not happy. I tell him about the bloody knuckles and get Savant to find the racket for him. He sees Savant's hand and apologizes. They go find the racket. The End
Saw Nanci Griffith at the veterinarian's office. Her dog was sick, my cat was sick. The End
Saw Donna Summer "the Queen of Disco" in the grocery store.
Saw Naomi and Wynona Judd on the highway near the airport. They were in a vintage American convertible, with the top down. It had the license plate "Red Heads". They had on scarves and sunglasses.
During the 1960's at my elementary school, Wooldridge, located a couple of blocks from the University of Texas in Austin, there was a teacher named Miss Curie. I was not in her class and never knew her first name, but we were told that she was the daughter of Madame Curie and her mother had won the Nobel Prize. Cool!(By the way, Madame Curie's mother and father also both won the Nobel Prize, the hard way.) I've always wondered if her mother was Irène Curie? Or if my kid memory and my old lady memorie have scrambled the story.
Saw a bunch of TV and Movie actors at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, one January. My husband and kids ski; I gave up skiing because I spend more time tempting serious spinal injury than enjoying it. So this was the perfect vacation combination for all of us.
Stevie Ray Vaughn: Late 1970's or early 1980's he was a regular fixture in the Austin music scene. Though I float back to those times in Texas, when I listen to his music, I never got to see him play, because I was a dutiful single mother and student who didn't allow myself much fun. But he and a couple of his pals (Double Trouble?) came into the restaurant where I was waiting tables. The place was packed and the hostess, who didn't know who they were, seated them next to the bathroom, which was near the door to the kitchen; in other words, the crappiest table in the place. I passed that table on the way to my section which was up a few stairs and much nicer. I saw them and thought "What Idiot put them there?" I didn't have any empty tables or I'd have moved them. They didn't stay long. The End
One of the waitresses at the restaurant inherited 6 figures from her father, when the airplane he was piloting crashed. She married the drummer in the band Pretenders, but soon became an O.D. widow. The End
My husband and I went to the U.S. Open (Golf) at Pinehurst the year Payne Stewart won, about six years ago. When we were sitting in some bleachers for a while, and my husband pointed out that the man sitting in front of me was Donald Trump: creepy hair, cute date. My husband is the golfer, but I was excited to see all the Greats of Golf: Tiger Woods, Payne Stewart, Phil Mickelson, VJ Singh, etc...
The End
Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash: Johnny Cash had a T.V. show that was filmed in Nashville. My friends and I went to this taping. Everyone knew which motel the guests stayed in, so after the show, everyone but about 3 of us, drove to the motel. I decided to be in the group that trotted there behind Bob Dylan's limo. I was surprised when the limo pulled over and Bob shouted out to some guy walking up the street. They talked a bit and then the limo moved on. When we got to the motel, we, and our friends who drove, were the only kids there. Joni and Bob were being picked up by Johnny and June to go to their house. I have all four of their autographs on a scrap of paper somewhere. The End
Are you impressed yet?
I missed Woodstock! Some of my friends went, and I was stuck in Indiana looking at it on the news, saying "I should be there! Crud!" I did go to the Atlanta Pop Festival. My daughter thought it was funny that I used the word "pop", but that is what we called them back then. We called one of my friends "Kathy California" because she used to live there. She had seen the famed "Monterey Pop" festival.
Back to Atlanta, a couple of car loads of us went. But, I for one, had given no thought to bringing much money or food or anything for that matter. Only one intrepid traveler had brought crackers and spam with him. It was 103+ degrees and our only shelter was a tarp pulled between two cars in the parking lot. We didn't qualify as hippies; they had built a fantastic community of huts, tents, lean-to's... in the woods, where you could get cool beads, pipes, hippie stuff, and any kind of mind bender you were looking for. I can't remember if it was a two or three day event, but I was really excited about seeing Jimi Hendrix play. He was a headliner, which meant it would be very late at night when he took the stage.
Everyone was so hot that a fence was pulled down on some land nearby, that had a pond. Pond, beautiful pond, pond good. I think the only thing I had to eat the whole time was a tiny bit of Jack's crackers and spam. I just remember being hungry most of the time. They didn't have much in the way of food & drink vendors back then, and I probably ran out of money before the first day was over.
Anyone who suffers from migraine headaches knows that: no food, dehydration, loud music, extreme heat and cheap marijuana are a sure fire combination to trigger a really bad one. I never saw Hendrix, but I got to hear him while lying in the parking lot under the tarp between the cars, while my head exploded with pain. Aspirin, had anyone brought any, has no power to calm a migraine, and they hadn't invented Imitrex yet.
Did I ever tell you I used to be an Idiot? The End
Saw Janice Joplin once. She hated everyone in the audience and cussed us out. Good concert. The End
Monday, October 31, 2005
Nudie Bar and Beer?
Savant will turn 21 tomorrow.
I suggested that he and his Dad celebrate it "Bundy Style", as in "Married With Children", with a trip to the nudie bar and Savant's first legal beer. My husband looked at me like I had sprouted another head; his mother would never say something like that! I was only joking, so I doubt they will do it. Besides, I think Savant's meds don't mix well with alcohol, and I don't want my husband to notice that I no longer have the Best Body On The Planet.
I suggested that he and his Dad celebrate it "Bundy Style", as in "Married With Children", with a trip to the nudie bar and Savant's first legal beer. My husband looked at me like I had sprouted another head; his mother would never say something like that! I was only joking, so I doubt they will do it. Besides, I think Savant's meds don't mix well with alcohol, and I don't want my husband to notice that I no longer have the Best Body On The Planet.
What Do Crayons, Tabasco, Poop and an Ear Have in Common?
What do crayons, Tabasco, poop and an ear have in common?
I took this first bit from the comments section of Midwest Rock Lobster(Chixulub). Lemme know if I should give it back.
.·:*¨¨*:·.
Fancy Dirt said...
For some reason your entries jog long buried memories to the surface. One is the multicolored-crayon-poop-log I found in my yard a few decades ago, when we had a dog who ate some of my son's crayons. The rain had washed away everything but the fused bits of crayon. I knew I should have saved it, but who could have forseen the creation of eBay?
Chixulub said...
Well, don't overestimate the eBay potential. Before "_ _" toilet trained, I changed many diapers containing turds that appeared to be entirely composed of 64 colors of wax.
The eBay market is not, in my experience, good for Crayola Turds. I did wonder if I mightn't get a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to display some of the better catches...
30 October, 2005
unaccountable said...
"I did wonder if I mightn't get a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to display some of the better catches..."
And or turn your home into a museum (charge admission, of course) and display the Miraculous Crayon-PooPoo that looks uncannily like [insert your favourite fictional "deity" here]!!
31 October, 2005
.·:*¨¨*:·.
My sister had a dog that would "sample" dog poop on their daily walks. She got the idea to take a bottle of Tabasco Sauce with her and pretreat the piles before her dog could get to them. Didn't slow him down a bit. I could picture him thinking, "Mmmmmm Mexican!"
OK, now the ear part. We were keeping the above dog at our house while my sister and her husband were visiting his family for Christmas. My first son, who was little at the time, tried petting the dog while he was eating, and the dog attacked him, badly ripping his ear before we could stop him. My mother was outraged and had the dog "put down" before my sister and her husband got back into town. I don't think they were too happy with my mother's decision, though they felt awful about the attack.
Our home is now a dog-free zone.
I took this first bit from the comments section of Midwest Rock Lobster(Chixulub). Lemme know if I should give it back.
.·:*¨¨*:·.
Fancy Dirt said...
For some reason your entries jog long buried memories to the surface. One is the multicolored-crayon-poop-log I found in my yard a few decades ago, when we had a dog who ate some of my son's crayons. The rain had washed away everything but the fused bits of crayon. I knew I should have saved it, but who could have forseen the creation of eBay?
Chixulub said...
Well, don't overestimate the eBay potential. Before "_ _" toilet trained, I changed many diapers containing turds that appeared to be entirely composed of 64 colors of wax.
The eBay market is not, in my experience, good for Crayola Turds. I did wonder if I mightn't get a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to display some of the better catches...
30 October, 2005
unaccountable said...
"I did wonder if I mightn't get a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to display some of the better catches..."
And or turn your home into a museum (charge admission, of course) and display the Miraculous Crayon-PooPoo that looks uncannily like [insert your favourite fictional "deity" here]!!
31 October, 2005
.·:*¨¨*:·.
My sister had a dog that would "sample" dog poop on their daily walks. She got the idea to take a bottle of Tabasco Sauce with her and pretreat the piles before her dog could get to them. Didn't slow him down a bit. I could picture him thinking, "Mmmmmm Mexican!"
OK, now the ear part. We were keeping the above dog at our house while my sister and her husband were visiting his family for Christmas. My first son, who was little at the time, tried petting the dog while he was eating, and the dog attacked him, badly ripping his ear before we could stop him. My mother was outraged and had the dog "put down" before my sister and her husband got back into town. I don't think they were too happy with my mother's decision, though they felt awful about the attack.
Our home is now a dog-free zone.
Sunday, October 30, 2005
Your Gash
The following is part of yesterday's email exchange with my youngest sister who lives in California.
.·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·.
From my sister to me:
This will make you laugh. This week I had an appointment at the jeweler to have my engagement ring and ring guards cut off so I can have some prongs fixed. The rings have been stuck on me for years but it didn't matter till now with the broken prongs....
OK - Wednesday morning I go in and the guy starts doing his thing with the little saw. 10 seconds later it feels like someone is cutting my hand off. The idiot has slipped or was drunk or staring at my tits or whatever and is sawing a gash into the palm of my hand right at the base of my finger. Blood goes everywhere. It's about 3/4 of an inch long and DEEP, blood blood blood. No one does shit. No eye contact. I have a McDonalds' napkin in my purse so I start applying pressure. I ask a salesman for ice. I sit there for 10 minutes trying to stop the bleeding and finally I tell the guy - "I'm going to have to go get this taken care of. I think I need stitches". He says he thinks I should also get a tetanus shot. No one apologizes, no one offers to drive me, no one even asks me for my name. I had made the appointment directly with the jeweler and he said just come in and never asked my name. They buzzed me out the security door and I went to the ER and got it fixed up. ??????????
I'm trading phone messages now with the store owner.
love, K.
.·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·.
From me to my sister:
OH JEEZUS! Law suit!!!!! You should have gone screaming through the show room flinging blood everywhere instead of going out the back way; but I never think of that kind of thing at the time either! Take pictures! Did you take your rings with you? I hope you did. They may have CZ's in them when you come to pick them up!
Hay! It just occurred to me that in 6 months you will have to be tested for HIV, and hepatitus before that. Who knows how many other people have been hit with that same blade? Yikes, and I thought a nail salon was crawling with potential danger!
Love, Me
[*I then decided to call her, because I had titled my return email, "Your Gash" and it occurred to me after I had hit the send button that it could be taken another way, and her smut-filter might kick it into Spamland. She was out so I talked with her husband for a while. She did get the email.]
.·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·.
From my sister to me:
Ha ha ha. Sorry I missed your call! What makes it worse is that he had just started the sawing, so the rings are still stuck on my hand and the prongs are still broken, so I have a bandaid over the diamond and the rings have saw marks in them. I have to go through the procedure again! The ER folks said I could come back and they would do it or I could go to my doctor. $$$$$$$
?????????
K.
.·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·.
From my sister to me:
This will make you laugh. This week I had an appointment at the jeweler to have my engagement ring and ring guards cut off so I can have some prongs fixed. The rings have been stuck on me for years but it didn't matter till now with the broken prongs....
OK - Wednesday morning I go in and the guy starts doing his thing with the little saw. 10 seconds later it feels like someone is cutting my hand off. The idiot has slipped or was drunk or staring at my tits or whatever and is sawing a gash into the palm of my hand right at the base of my finger. Blood goes everywhere. It's about 3/4 of an inch long and DEEP, blood blood blood. No one does shit. No eye contact. I have a McDonalds' napkin in my purse so I start applying pressure. I ask a salesman for ice. I sit there for 10 minutes trying to stop the bleeding and finally I tell the guy - "I'm going to have to go get this taken care of. I think I need stitches". He says he thinks I should also get a tetanus shot. No one apologizes, no one offers to drive me, no one even asks me for my name. I had made the appointment directly with the jeweler and he said just come in and never asked my name. They buzzed me out the security door and I went to the ER and got it fixed up. ??????????
I'm trading phone messages now with the store owner.
love, K.
.·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·.
From me to my sister:
OH JEEZUS! Law suit!!!!! You should have gone screaming through the show room flinging blood everywhere instead of going out the back way; but I never think of that kind of thing at the time either! Take pictures! Did you take your rings with you? I hope you did. They may have CZ's in them when you come to pick them up!
Hay! It just occurred to me that in 6 months you will have to be tested for HIV, and hepatitus before that. Who knows how many other people have been hit with that same blade? Yikes, and I thought a nail salon was crawling with potential danger!
Love, Me
[*I then decided to call her, because I had titled my return email, "Your Gash" and it occurred to me after I had hit the send button that it could be taken another way, and her smut-filter might kick it into Spamland. She was out so I talked with her husband for a while. She did get the email.]
.·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·..·:*¨¨*:·.
From my sister to me:
Ha ha ha. Sorry I missed your call! What makes it worse is that he had just started the sawing, so the rings are still stuck on my hand and the prongs are still broken, so I have a bandaid over the diamond and the rings have saw marks in them. I have to go through the procedure again! The ER folks said I could come back and they would do it or I could go to my doctor. $$$$$$$
?????????
K.
Saturday, October 29, 2005
A. Beauty is in Rome Now
A. Beauty is now in Rome. Her new family picked her up at the Villa in Macerata today. It was not a good fit there, as far as what she had been led to expect. So, in true A. Beauty fashion, she found a new family. The wife is Thai, the husband is Italian. They live in a gated community of new villas on the outskirts of Rome. She has her own furnished apartment with a kitchen and a separate entrance. They said she is not expected to cook her own meals, she will dine with the family. They lived in the U.S. for a while and speak English. They have 2 school aged children whom they hope she will teach to speak English, the kids speak Thai and Italian.
So for today things are looking much better for her. That is all we know so far, but it can't be as bad as twins under the age of 1 yr and a mother who spoke no English; and no way to get to town by herself, and no free time to go anyway. And a husband that treated them all as chattel and who chose to have no contact at all, with the babies. Hopefully, now she can get that student Visa she needs to stay in Italy for a while.
So for today things are looking much better for her. That is all we know so far, but it can't be as bad as twins under the age of 1 yr and a mother who spoke no English; and no way to get to town by herself, and no free time to go anyway. And a husband that treated them all as chattel and who chose to have no contact at all, with the babies. Hopefully, now she can get that student Visa she needs to stay in Italy for a while.
Friday, October 28, 2005
Still Stupid In The 1970's
One of my friends, who was a couple of years older than me, Bill, found a job managing a large farm. The job came with a little old house, on the side of a hill, where many of my friends would gather when they were in the area. It is in an area just west of Nashville that is very hilly, Kingston Springs, and it was a wonderful place to explore. On one wooded hill top there were stones set vertically in the ground, like headstones. Some looked like someone had tried and failed to chip some words or symbols on them sometime in the past. We called this farm Bill's Farm.
While I was decomposing in Indiana, the object of my obsession, came up to Bloomington to keep me company. Fuck school, I couldn't handle the stress. We decided, instead, to head for Bill's farm. Three other people and a baby had already moved in with him. Two were brothers; one was helping Bill with farm duties, the other one saw himself as an aspiring musician and song writer and let his wife wait tables to help pay bills. I assumed I would join her in waiting tables to help pay for my lodging there.
The guy I came with was to become husband #1, later. He was a vegetarian and informed me that, hands that served meat, and a mouth that ate it, would not be touching him. Without even a blip on my idiot screen, I dismissed the waitressing plan and became a vegetarian mooch like him. He was from a family that was wealthy, by local standards, and was spoiled rotten (his words) and proud of it. I soon learned that wealthy parents do not make a wealthy son. (Our son is finding that out in a most painful way, now that his father is reputed to be worth $mucho via inheritance. I have no way of, or desire to confirm or refute this information. But I've jumped ahead in the story.)
The house was not modern enough to have any source of heat other than a wood stove or plug-in heaters. I'll call hus#1 J.P.. He was a guitarist. He and the other male musician would not do manual labor because it might mess-up their "picking nails".
So, that left Bill and the other brother to chop the wood, etc. (I was just as useless and also deserve your scorn). Bill, I owe you some money and an apology!
Some time that winter J.P. and I ended up in M'boro at the college one night and I was using their intaglio printing press, to make prints from a copper plate engraving that I had done during semester #1 at a College in Memphis. This was an electric press. I had always used a hand run press. The batts, over the plate and paper, were wrinkling. I began to smooth them out, when the press roller grabbed onto the fingers on my left hand. In that split second, I didn't think of turning off the press or hitting reverse. All I could see in my imagination, was my hand, arm, and the rest of me being flattened as it all went under the rollers, like in a cartoon, so I yelped and yanked as hard as I could, leaving the tips of two of my fingers in the machine. I now know that you should take those to the hospital with you, but we didn't know that then. God, I feel sorry for the person that found them. It was flesh and finger nails, no bones were lost.
So I ended up in a bedroom at J.P.'s parent's house, in some of the worst pain of my life. What ever I had been given for pain killers were useless. A day or two later the doctor saw me again and gave me a prescription for new pain killers, and a shot of thorazine to give me a break from my suffering. We headed to the pharmacy and while they were filling the prescription, the Thorazine started to take affect. I remember trying to slide onto the bottom shelf on an aisle nearby, so I wouldn't be on the floor when I lost consciousness. I could hear an employee saying, "What's she on?" Then I was in the car. Then I was in bed sleeping. Thank God, no more pain! At least for a while.
I don't remember if I was there for a few days or a couple of weeks. I do remember that, after a while, the doctor wanted me to soak the bandaged fingers in hydrogen peroxide for a couple of days, to loosen the dried blood, so he could get the bandages off. When I got to his office, the bandages still refused to leave my wounds, so he just yanked them off! Then, without any anesthetic, he proceeded to cut off chunks of ragged flesh from around the stitches. I felt like I might pass out as the room began to swirl.
I was too young and polite to tell him he was a Sadistic Asshole.
My brother drove me to our parent's house in Indiana to recover and for the holidays.
While I was decomposing in Indiana, the object of my obsession, came up to Bloomington to keep me company. Fuck school, I couldn't handle the stress. We decided, instead, to head for Bill's farm. Three other people and a baby had already moved in with him. Two were brothers; one was helping Bill with farm duties, the other one saw himself as an aspiring musician and song writer and let his wife wait tables to help pay bills. I assumed I would join her in waiting tables to help pay for my lodging there.
The guy I came with was to become husband #1, later. He was a vegetarian and informed me that, hands that served meat, and a mouth that ate it, would not be touching him. Without even a blip on my idiot screen, I dismissed the waitressing plan and became a vegetarian mooch like him. He was from a family that was wealthy, by local standards, and was spoiled rotten (his words) and proud of it. I soon learned that wealthy parents do not make a wealthy son. (Our son is finding that out in a most painful way, now that his father is reputed to be worth $mucho via inheritance. I have no way of, or desire to confirm or refute this information. But I've jumped ahead in the story.)
The house was not modern enough to have any source of heat other than a wood stove or plug-in heaters. I'll call hus#1 J.P.. He was a guitarist. He and the other male musician would not do manual labor because it might mess-up their "picking nails".
So, that left Bill and the other brother to chop the wood, etc. (I was just as useless and also deserve your scorn). Bill, I owe you some money and an apology!
Some time that winter J.P. and I ended up in M'boro at the college one night and I was using their intaglio printing press, to make prints from a copper plate engraving that I had done during semester #1 at a College in Memphis. This was an electric press. I had always used a hand run press. The batts, over the plate and paper, were wrinkling. I began to smooth them out, when the press roller grabbed onto the fingers on my left hand. In that split second, I didn't think of turning off the press or hitting reverse. All I could see in my imagination, was my hand, arm, and the rest of me being flattened as it all went under the rollers, like in a cartoon, so I yelped and yanked as hard as I could, leaving the tips of two of my fingers in the machine. I now know that you should take those to the hospital with you, but we didn't know that then. God, I feel sorry for the person that found them. It was flesh and finger nails, no bones were lost.
So I ended up in a bedroom at J.P.'s parent's house, in some of the worst pain of my life. What ever I had been given for pain killers were useless. A day or two later the doctor saw me again and gave me a prescription for new pain killers, and a shot of thorazine to give me a break from my suffering. We headed to the pharmacy and while they were filling the prescription, the Thorazine started to take affect. I remember trying to slide onto the bottom shelf on an aisle nearby, so I wouldn't be on the floor when I lost consciousness. I could hear an employee saying, "What's she on?" Then I was in the car. Then I was in bed sleeping. Thank God, no more pain! At least for a while.
I don't remember if I was there for a few days or a couple of weeks. I do remember that, after a while, the doctor wanted me to soak the bandaged fingers in hydrogen peroxide for a couple of days, to loosen the dried blood, so he could get the bandages off. When I got to his office, the bandages still refused to leave my wounds, so he just yanked them off! Then, without any anesthetic, he proceeded to cut off chunks of ragged flesh from around the stitches. I felt like I might pass out as the room began to swirl.
I was too young and polite to tell him he was a Sadistic Asshole.
My brother drove me to our parent's house in Indiana to recover and for the holidays.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
There Is No Such Thing As Satan
Question from person #1: Does anyone hear Satan talking to them?
Me: There is no such thing as Satan. Ignore that voice and take your medicine on schedule.
Question from person #2: You wrote, "There is no such thing as Satan." How did you reach THAT conclusion?
Me: All that exists now, has always existed from the moment of the creation of the universe, the star-dust just keeps rearranging itself, and will continue to do so long after human kind is gone. Whatever that force is that creates, sustains, and rearranges all, and is the force within every cell of the universe, is what I call God.
Satan is a construct of the human mind. So is a god that would whisper in your ear and punish, blame and shame you, for believing in the wrong rule book or story book. That sounds more like a manipulative human than a God.
People will hate each other based on petty, superficial differences, such as the location of another person's place of birth, or the ancestral physical traits that comprise the various races, or which religious philosophy they were raised to believe. Sometimes that philosophy will be the one that resonates with your way of seeing life and death. Sometimes it won't. See it however you want.
You are only human, you deserve love. This life is hard work, and it is possible to cry and feel horrible emotionally, and at the same time, still be aware of that part of your mind observing that beauty and good still exist, and it will be waiting for you when your unbearable emotions have passed. Hanging in there until they have passed, as you know, can require the help of others.
If a person finds it difficult or impossible to see the soul that wants only to love and be loved, within all of us, this can cause great pain. I experience pain and joy, but I don't blame Satan for the pain and God for the joy. I don't claim to understand the mind of God, and anyone who says they do is a liar. I am just a little creature on a little planet, who knows that it doesn't matter whether I understand or not. Existence is such an awesome phenomenon, and this is a realm of suffering as well as joy.
Any voice that tells you to harm yourself or any other creature, to satisfy the voices' demands, is neither Satan or God, it is a brain malfunction. More evil has been done on this earth in the game of, "My God is better than your God." How stupid and unevolved that way of thinking is. All that exists is God covered with the veil of the Ordinary.
Every person who has ever lived has felt both pain and joy. This life is complex, but we all got here without knowing the way here. If there is a different form of existence after we die from this life, we will get there without having to orchestrate the trip. And if our time here is the only taste of life we get, that is just the way it is supposed to be. Life goes on within you and without you, not because of you.
See it differently if you like.
I'm not the bossy type.
Kanbihachi (Another of my noms-de-plume, it means, sweet: kanbi, bee: hachi, in Japanese)
-----
Comment from person #3: I just needed to say that I think this post was absolutely wonderful. I have never had someone explain things so well that I felt I actually understood. Thank you sooo very much.
Me: There is no such thing as Satan. Ignore that voice and take your medicine on schedule.
Question from person #2: You wrote, "There is no such thing as Satan." How did you reach THAT conclusion?
Me: All that exists now, has always existed from the moment of the creation of the universe, the star-dust just keeps rearranging itself, and will continue to do so long after human kind is gone. Whatever that force is that creates, sustains, and rearranges all, and is the force within every cell of the universe, is what I call God.
Satan is a construct of the human mind. So is a god that would whisper in your ear and punish, blame and shame you, for believing in the wrong rule book or story book. That sounds more like a manipulative human than a God.
People will hate each other based on petty, superficial differences, such as the location of another person's place of birth, or the ancestral physical traits that comprise the various races, or which religious philosophy they were raised to believe. Sometimes that philosophy will be the one that resonates with your way of seeing life and death. Sometimes it won't. See it however you want.
You are only human, you deserve love. This life is hard work, and it is possible to cry and feel horrible emotionally, and at the same time, still be aware of that part of your mind observing that beauty and good still exist, and it will be waiting for you when your unbearable emotions have passed. Hanging in there until they have passed, as you know, can require the help of others.
If a person finds it difficult or impossible to see the soul that wants only to love and be loved, within all of us, this can cause great pain. I experience pain and joy, but I don't blame Satan for the pain and God for the joy. I don't claim to understand the mind of God, and anyone who says they do is a liar. I am just a little creature on a little planet, who knows that it doesn't matter whether I understand or not. Existence is such an awesome phenomenon, and this is a realm of suffering as well as joy.
Any voice that tells you to harm yourself or any other creature, to satisfy the voices' demands, is neither Satan or God, it is a brain malfunction. More evil has been done on this earth in the game of, "My God is better than your God." How stupid and unevolved that way of thinking is. All that exists is God covered with the veil of the Ordinary.
Every person who has ever lived has felt both pain and joy. This life is complex, but we all got here without knowing the way here. If there is a different form of existence after we die from this life, we will get there without having to orchestrate the trip. And if our time here is the only taste of life we get, that is just the way it is supposed to be. Life goes on within you and without you, not because of you.
See it differently if you like.
I'm not the bossy type.
Kanbihachi (Another of my noms-de-plume, it means, sweet: kanbi, bee: hachi, in Japanese)
-----
Comment from person #3: I just needed to say that I think this post was absolutely wonderful. I have never had someone explain things so well that I felt I actually understood. Thank you sooo very much.
Saturday, October 22, 2005
My 1960's Continued and My Early 1970's
In the late 1960's the political scene was just so painful. The nightly news was also the nightly nightmare. My father had been in Vietnam in the early 1960's, and misunderstood the angry concern, that my brother and I felt about the war and what was happening to our country, and the Vietnamese country, person by person. We were, and are, proud of our father's commitment to defend this country we loved and the people of other countries, that are in need of our help. But the evening horror show of napalmed children and innocents, and the sight of perfectly wonderful young soldiers being killed and maimed, was too much for me.
I remember shouting matches erupting between my brother and my father. These were times when my brother's superior knowledge and eloquence made it rarely necessary for me to join in. I was just so sickened, disgusted and depressed by what I was seeing, and the war was going on and on, and for what? My father firmly believed in the domino theory of the spread of Communism and felt every disagreement was a personal attack on him and against our country. Calm discussions with him were (are) impossible. I realize his generation had been stunned by World War II, and he naturally had a strong dislike for Commies, Dictators, and little pups who thought they had a right to protest what they saw as a travesty, a tragedy, and an unwinable war.
My present husband's father was captured by the Nazis after they shot down the bomber he was on when he was 19 years old and spent the rest of the war in a P.O.W. Camp. It really doesn't matter which generation's war it is; it is that some wars seem so much more just than others.
Vietnam War protesters didn't hate the soldiers, we didn't want any more of them to die! There were no "outside agitators"! I was not known to join in public protests. I had no desire to get my head cracked open. When some of my friends went to the March On Washington D.C., I didn't go. After the Kent State murders, I stayed away from such rallies, and developed a temporary crowd phobia. (It's a good thing I didn't get it until after I had seen the Beatles three times. But that story is off topic for now.)
My trust in the truthfulness of our government was so damaged, that I was one of the ones that "tuned in, turned on, and dropped out". I've paid a dear price for some of the decisions I made back then. They were attempts to try to deal with my depression, and included dropping out of school and marrying husband #1. I finished my first dismal semester at one school, and did not go back due to severe depression. My parents had moved to Indiana, so I tried again there. If you just walk away mid-semester and don't formally drop out, you end up with some really pissed off parents and a transcript covered with F's. I knew I was never going back to school. But surprise, surprise, about six years later I did, as a single mother, waiting tables to support us and finished, at The University of Texas in Austin, with a major in Architecture.
I heard Richard Alpert (Baba Ram Dass) speak on the Indiana University campus, before I left. For those of you don't know who he is, he was a Harvard professor and close colleague of Timothy Leary. They were the ones conducting the LSD experiments, perfectly legal then, that ended with them both getting fired by Harvard. Alpert went to India and met a holy-man there, and realized that what he had learned about the inner universe, by going in through the LSD door, was very similar to what the holy-man knew by going in through the meditation door. I'm condensing that story. Anyway, Alpert came back to the US and was known as Ram Dass after that. Being a teacher and a brilliant man, he began advocating for entering through the meditation door.
He spoke on campus, out doors, all day and into the night, with a constant stream of students coming and going, to listen. That was probably 1970, I wrote off to the Lama Foundation he was involved with then and they sent me a box that had homemade books in it, and a Tibetan prayer cloth; at least that's where I think I got the prayer cloth, don't hold me to it. I still have them. The biggest book was the first publishing of the book "Be Here Now", but it was called "From Bindu To Ojas" at that time. It looked like it was block printed on brown paper bag stock. It was bound together by brown hemp string pulled through a couple of holes punched through the pages. The cover picture was a beautiful colored mandala that was pasted on the book. Years later I got Ram Dass to autograph it for me. I still treasure it. I like hand made books.
To be continued....
I remember shouting matches erupting between my brother and my father. These were times when my brother's superior knowledge and eloquence made it rarely necessary for me to join in. I was just so sickened, disgusted and depressed by what I was seeing, and the war was going on and on, and for what? My father firmly believed in the domino theory of the spread of Communism and felt every disagreement was a personal attack on him and against our country. Calm discussions with him were (are) impossible. I realize his generation had been stunned by World War II, and he naturally had a strong dislike for Commies, Dictators, and little pups who thought they had a right to protest what they saw as a travesty, a tragedy, and an unwinable war.
My present husband's father was captured by the Nazis after they shot down the bomber he was on when he was 19 years old and spent the rest of the war in a P.O.W. Camp. It really doesn't matter which generation's war it is; it is that some wars seem so much more just than others.
Vietnam War protesters didn't hate the soldiers, we didn't want any more of them to die! There were no "outside agitators"! I was not known to join in public protests. I had no desire to get my head cracked open. When some of my friends went to the March On Washington D.C., I didn't go. After the Kent State murders, I stayed away from such rallies, and developed a temporary crowd phobia. (It's a good thing I didn't get it until after I had seen the Beatles three times. But that story is off topic for now.)
My trust in the truthfulness of our government was so damaged, that I was one of the ones that "tuned in, turned on, and dropped out". I've paid a dear price for some of the decisions I made back then. They were attempts to try to deal with my depression, and included dropping out of school and marrying husband #1. I finished my first dismal semester at one school, and did not go back due to severe depression. My parents had moved to Indiana, so I tried again there. If you just walk away mid-semester and don't formally drop out, you end up with some really pissed off parents and a transcript covered with F's. I knew I was never going back to school. But surprise, surprise, about six years later I did, as a single mother, waiting tables to support us and finished, at The University of Texas in Austin, with a major in Architecture.
I heard Richard Alpert (Baba Ram Dass) speak on the Indiana University campus, before I left. For those of you don't know who he is, he was a Harvard professor and close colleague of Timothy Leary. They were the ones conducting the LSD experiments, perfectly legal then, that ended with them both getting fired by Harvard. Alpert went to India and met a holy-man there, and realized that what he had learned about the inner universe, by going in through the LSD door, was very similar to what the holy-man knew by going in through the meditation door. I'm condensing that story. Anyway, Alpert came back to the US and was known as Ram Dass after that. Being a teacher and a brilliant man, he began advocating for entering through the meditation door.
He spoke on campus, out doors, all day and into the night, with a constant stream of students coming and going, to listen. That was probably 1970, I wrote off to the Lama Foundation he was involved with then and they sent me a box that had homemade books in it, and a Tibetan prayer cloth; at least that's where I think I got the prayer cloth, don't hold me to it. I still have them. The biggest book was the first publishing of the book "Be Here Now", but it was called "From Bindu To Ojas" at that time. It looked like it was block printed on brown paper bag stock. It was bound together by brown hemp string pulled through a couple of holes punched through the pages. The cover picture was a beautiful colored mandala that was pasted on the book. Years later I got Ram Dass to autograph it for me. I still treasure it. I like hand made books.
To be continued....
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Wild Strawberries and Drooling Snouts
from Friday, April 15, 2005
When I was little we lived in Japan, at Chitose AFB, on the island of Hokkaido. We lived in one half of a quonset hut, a prefabricated dwelling of corrugated iron having a semicircular cross section. It was next door to the Motor Pool, so it took a while to learn to sleep with the sounds of trucks and whatnot going by all night.
Beside the Motor Pool was a patch of strawberries on the edge of some woods. Whenever I hear about Manna from Heaven, I'm sure it is really wild strawberries, all you want, for free.
If you walked through the woods, you would come to a concrete canal on the edge of our school yard. I was little, between 4 and 6 years old, so the canal may really have just been a drainage ditch. In our school yard were underground bomb shelters, where we would be taken if there was an air raid drill. Sorry, no real air raids to spice up this story. In the woods was a water tower that I was afraid of, it just looked like it could walk around and do a Godzilla thing, if it wanted. Luckily, it stayed put.
The first movies I remember seeing were in the Base theater. We had "Mickey Mouse" money on base. No coins, just paper 5 & 10 cent bills. I think it was 10 cents to get into the movie. We, my older brother by 2 1/2 years (who's birthday happens to be 9-11) and my little sister, a bit more than one year younger than me, would walk across a dumping ground for klinkers, some still hot, to get to the movie.
We didn't have television in Japan, but I remembered Gene Autry, the Little Rascals, Betty Boop, Howdy Doody, etc. from before we went. Howdy Doody gave me the creeps! I still have puppet phobia. I remember asking my brother if the people in the TV could see us, because they kept talking to us like they could see us, he said No. Thank God! But I wanted to be Betty Boop, or at least dress like her. And I wanted a horse like all the cowboys.
The fakey fifties dinosaur movies scared the hell out of me. My big brother assured me that they were not behind the curtain; but I just knew, that they knew where I lived and I was just the tasty snack they were looking for. I was always sure I would see a drooling snout pressed up against the windows of our hut. They gave me nightmares. When I compare those hokey special effects of the fifties with today's amazingly real ones, my heart goes out to all the little children of today, looking for drooling snouts at the windows. What got me through it? This sage statement, "Trust me, you're not that important."
When I was little we lived in Japan, at Chitose AFB, on the island of Hokkaido. We lived in one half of a quonset hut, a prefabricated dwelling of corrugated iron having a semicircular cross section. It was next door to the Motor Pool, so it took a while to learn to sleep with the sounds of trucks and whatnot going by all night.
Beside the Motor Pool was a patch of strawberries on the edge of some woods. Whenever I hear about Manna from Heaven, I'm sure it is really wild strawberries, all you want, for free.
If you walked through the woods, you would come to a concrete canal on the edge of our school yard. I was little, between 4 and 6 years old, so the canal may really have just been a drainage ditch. In our school yard were underground bomb shelters, where we would be taken if there was an air raid drill. Sorry, no real air raids to spice up this story. In the woods was a water tower that I was afraid of, it just looked like it could walk around and do a Godzilla thing, if it wanted. Luckily, it stayed put.
The first movies I remember seeing were in the Base theater. We had "Mickey Mouse" money on base. No coins, just paper 5 & 10 cent bills. I think it was 10 cents to get into the movie. We, my older brother by 2 1/2 years (who's birthday happens to be 9-11) and my little sister, a bit more than one year younger than me, would walk across a dumping ground for klinkers, some still hot, to get to the movie.
We didn't have television in Japan, but I remembered Gene Autry, the Little Rascals, Betty Boop, Howdy Doody, etc. from before we went. Howdy Doody gave me the creeps! I still have puppet phobia. I remember asking my brother if the people in the TV could see us, because they kept talking to us like they could see us, he said No. Thank God! But I wanted to be Betty Boop, or at least dress like her. And I wanted a horse like all the cowboys.
The fakey fifties dinosaur movies scared the hell out of me. My big brother assured me that they were not behind the curtain; but I just knew, that they knew where I lived and I was just the tasty snack they were looking for. I was always sure I would see a drooling snout pressed up against the windows of our hut. They gave me nightmares. When I compare those hokey special effects of the fifties with today's amazingly real ones, my heart goes out to all the little children of today, looking for drooling snouts at the windows. What got me through it? This sage statement, "Trust me, you're not that important."
Think Happy Thoughts and You Will Be All Better
I started participating in a web-group geared to Schizophrenics and their care givers. Usually it is very interesting and touching. But I just read a post by some Little Mary Sunshine type who recommended happy thoughts or meditation to the schizophrenics in the group, because she thinks pills are a bit extreme, and if we would stop stigmatizing them they could get all better.
I think she meant well, but it pushed my Mother Lion Button and since you're not supposed to rip someone a new one in a support group, I controlled myself and posted this reply:
*Perhaps you have never witnessed a person in the midst of a SEVERE psychotic break.
None of us, who deal with some one who gets that way, if they go off their medicine, get off on making this person feel stigmatized. Life is traumaticly difficult at these times for all involved.
We're talking about a whole 'nother level. My son has no idea he is insane when he is insane, and is not in touch with reality enough to know or care what stigma is. More than once, he has broken bones when he is like this and not known what the cast is for and why he can't get this thing off his hand. He has torn bloody holes in his skin to let creatures out. He has been x-rayed to help reduce his panic when he thinks there is "something" inside his body that should not be there. The list is so long, I'll stop here.
He does come back to reality, but not clearly, like before the illness. Would you want him driving on the highway next to you when he is psychotic? It is not stigmatizing to keep him from driving for three years to protect the innocent public, and him, from death by car. A mentally ill friend of his killed herself by walking into traffic. My sister's boy friend killed himself and he almost took one of my sisters with him! Sometimes a positive attitude and force of will are not enough.
Of course I know you have the best of intentions, and truly care about the mentally ill. Thank God we do not have to drop our loved ones off at mad-houses for the rest of their lives or cull them from the tribe anymore. Families and care givers are not trying to inflict anything stigmatizing on their loved ones, unless you are very unlucky and have an ignorant family.
I'd like nothing better than to "let go", but I don't want him starving under a bridge or getting raped again, because we are "letting him take responsibility for his life". He is still a magnet for predatory freaks; they can pick him out of a crowd with chilling ease.
I think she meant well, but it pushed my Mother Lion Button and since you're not supposed to rip someone a new one in a support group, I controlled myself and posted this reply:
*Perhaps you have never witnessed a person in the midst of a SEVERE psychotic break.
None of us, who deal with some one who gets that way, if they go off their medicine, get off on making this person feel stigmatized. Life is traumaticly difficult at these times for all involved.
We're talking about a whole 'nother level. My son has no idea he is insane when he is insane, and is not in touch with reality enough to know or care what stigma is. More than once, he has broken bones when he is like this and not known what the cast is for and why he can't get this thing off his hand. He has torn bloody holes in his skin to let creatures out. He has been x-rayed to help reduce his panic when he thinks there is "something" inside his body that should not be there. The list is so long, I'll stop here.
He does come back to reality, but not clearly, like before the illness. Would you want him driving on the highway next to you when he is psychotic? It is not stigmatizing to keep him from driving for three years to protect the innocent public, and him, from death by car. A mentally ill friend of his killed herself by walking into traffic. My sister's boy friend killed himself and he almost took one of my sisters with him! Sometimes a positive attitude and force of will are not enough.
Of course I know you have the best of intentions, and truly care about the mentally ill. Thank God we do not have to drop our loved ones off at mad-houses for the rest of their lives or cull them from the tribe anymore. Families and care givers are not trying to inflict anything stigmatizing on their loved ones, unless you are very unlucky and have an ignorant family.
I'd like nothing better than to "let go", but I don't want him starving under a bridge or getting raped again, because we are "letting him take responsibility for his life". He is still a magnet for predatory freaks; they can pick him out of a crowd with chilling ease.
Sunday, October 16, 2005
From Dildos to Dillionaire
Savant got his first pay check and did what workers have done for forever, he rewarded himself by ingesting a "recreational" substance. He is Schizophrenic and this knocks him into a delusional state.
He became convinced that his old girlfriend ( who really did, at 16, begin to sell dildos and body modification jewelry on eBay. We still don't get her.) is well on her way to becoming the next Google, and a mogul, because she has a "server" in her apartment. He said she has websites on the internet that are made to look like they are someone else's, but they are all her, making up alter-egos. Before I realized that he was messed up, he drove to the bookstore and bought her first published book.
No amount of reasoning, or a visit to Barnes & Noble's web site, the authors biography, photo, etc., would convince him that he was just making schizo connections with unrelated things. He said there were just too many hidden clues she had left for him and besides, she had shown him part of the book while she was writing it.
Granted, Myla Goldberg does look like she could be his old girlfriend's sister, except Myla is missing X-gf's White-Girl-Funkadelic-Hair Goth Pierce or Stretch Every Possible Body Part Dominatrix Boot Fetish fashion sense. But, Idiot Like A Savant is convinced that Myla is just a stand in for pictures and the whole biography is made up. I showed him that Ms Goldberg has written other books, lives in New York with her family, and that his x-girlfriend could not be a puppet master that toyed with publishers, etc.. I asked him why she would go to all the trouble to create such a web of subterfuge, when, if she was such a gifted author, she could be getting her due recognition with her own name? He said writers use pseudonyms all the time. I pointed out that women writers of the past, used to use male pseudonyms because women were shut out when it came to getting their work published, and that it is no longer necessary to do that.
It is as real to him as my reality is to me. Reasoning with him when he is like that is futile and can lead him to suffer severe distress, so other than taking the car keys away from him, there was not much we could do but remain calm and be kind to him. Poor guy, he looked so confused that anyone would question his conclusions, because he knows they are fitting into place so perfectly in his mind. It breaks my heart to see him like that.
I hope he is back together when he wakes up today and takes his medicine.
*Nope. Sunday was just as bad. We were up 'till about 3:30 or 4:00 AM with our beloved crazy man, it was ugly. Monday morning, after only a few hours of sleep, I wake up with a raging migraine. His Father scraped him out of bed, made sure he took his medicine and made him go to work. (He's on the day shift now.)
I hope I don't get a call that will require me to go to the jail or the hospital to hear how his day went.
He became convinced that his old girlfriend ( who really did, at 16, begin to sell dildos and body modification jewelry on eBay. We still don't get her.) is well on her way to becoming the next Google, and a mogul, because she has a "server" in her apartment. He said she has websites on the internet that are made to look like they are someone else's, but they are all her, making up alter-egos. Before I realized that he was messed up, he drove to the bookstore and bought her first published book.
No amount of reasoning, or a visit to Barnes & Noble's web site, the authors biography, photo, etc., would convince him that he was just making schizo connections with unrelated things. He said there were just too many hidden clues she had left for him and besides, she had shown him part of the book while she was writing it.
Granted, Myla Goldberg does look like she could be his old girlfriend's sister, except Myla is missing X-gf's White-Girl-Funkadelic-Hair Goth Pierce or Stretch Every Possible Body Part Dominatrix Boot Fetish fashion sense. But, Idiot Like A Savant is convinced that Myla is just a stand in for pictures and the whole biography is made up. I showed him that Ms Goldberg has written other books, lives in New York with her family, and that his x-girlfriend could not be a puppet master that toyed with publishers, etc.. I asked him why she would go to all the trouble to create such a web of subterfuge, when, if she was such a gifted author, she could be getting her due recognition with her own name? He said writers use pseudonyms all the time. I pointed out that women writers of the past, used to use male pseudonyms because women were shut out when it came to getting their work published, and that it is no longer necessary to do that.
It is as real to him as my reality is to me. Reasoning with him when he is like that is futile and can lead him to suffer severe distress, so other than taking the car keys away from him, there was not much we could do but remain calm and be kind to him. Poor guy, he looked so confused that anyone would question his conclusions, because he knows they are fitting into place so perfectly in his mind. It breaks my heart to see him like that.
I hope he is back together when he wakes up today and takes his medicine.
*Nope. Sunday was just as bad. We were up 'till about 3:30 or 4:00 AM with our beloved crazy man, it was ugly. Monday morning, after only a few hours of sleep, I wake up with a raging migraine. His Father scraped him out of bed, made sure he took his medicine and made him go to work. (He's on the day shift now.)
I hope I don't get a call that will require me to go to the jail or the hospital to hear how his day went.
My 1960's
My first born. So wonderful to have this little person to love with all my heart. I had him for only thirteen years. He was born to me and my first husband. My first husband is also a chimera. Handsome, funny, troubled. I had done the thing that so many girls do; I dressed him up in a personality that was not his. I idealized this personality to fit my one true love. Why did I pick this person? He had no temper, he was carefree, mellow, witty, always up for an adventure and fun. I was looking for someone who's temperment was the opposite of my father's.
The reality of my mistake was draped in red flags, but I waved them aside, because I had made him into the drug that took all my pain away.
It was the 1960's. I had a boyfriend all through high school whom I still consider a good friend to this day, even though we have no contact anymore, except for the occasional funeral. He was and probably still is a good friend of my first husband. I regret that I left him in such a heartless way to be with husband #1. After a while the three of us were all best friends again. I'm such a sucker for a laugh, and the two of them were so funny. I've always found it easier to be close to men than women for some unknown reason. (I was even one of the three girls, that each of the two Frats chose to be their Sweethearts, each year, in High School. I think that may have been more of a Southern thing to have Fraternities and Sororities in High School, back then.)
My high school boyfriend's family lived in a log cabin in the woods that was a magnet for interesting people. It has a beautiful Craftsman style interior. There was always a Pauley's Island Hammock, and a table and chairs on the huge front porch. His brothers and sisters were all wonderfully unique people, southern, charming and seductive; but the gem was his mother. She was so wonderful and I loved her old-fashioned southern accent. She took everything in stride. For instance, she knew that her sons and son-in-law had a marijuana crop that they tended in the fields somewhere on the property, but really didn't care. If one of their kids' friends got picked up for DUI or whatever, they would bail them out and let them sleep it off at their house. Her son-in-law had converted part of a milking barn into a sauna and our huge group of friends piled in naked and laughing at being such little kids for a while. Later my boyfriend used it as his pottery studio. His younger brother told me that it was my brother who inspired him to become a musician, after he heard him play the piano out at "Cabinwood".
They had a close relative who had gained fame as one of the Agrarian Writers. Artists, musicians, and writers were drawn there, were born there, and rented out the little house out back when it was not occupied by a family member. We all loved his mother. She always made her own mayonnaise, and it was spectacular. Her meals were not to be missed. She always had tiny biscuits with dinner that melted in your mouth. She grew her own vegetables with the help of the boys when she could get it. She inspired us to learn to bake our own bread, sew, plant gardens, and be open minded. When I first met them they even had a huge Polar Bear rug, complete with head and claws, that some grandfather or uncle had brought them. I told someone years later that she was doing Ralph Lauren before he was. Her home was so cozy and worn in the way a child's favorite soft toy is. I thought I might become part of this family at one time.
It was the end of the 60's, the War in Vietnam, Dope (marijuana), Bill's Farm, LSD, hippies: the peace and love kind, Yoga, Acharya Yatishvarananda Avadhuta, clothes from India, India Print bed spreads on walls as well as beds, Michael Shoemaker the kundalini guy in Bloomington who goes by the name Swami Chetanananda now, vegetarian food, the "simple life", swimming and walking naked in mountain streams across the country - our bodies were beautiful - no shame in what nature made us. Meditation, Stephen Gaskin and The Farm in Summertown, TN, loving the gentle people I met in those days, and always Janeese, always Janeese.
Contrary to what the media in the twenty first century may lead you to believe, most people our age were very straight laced. My friends were only a small group that was experimenting with the feast those times were offering. My boyfriend and one of his friends opened the first "Head Shop" in Murfreesboro, TN, "The Stone Groove". Laugh, we thought it was funny too! No one in town knew what a head shop was. There were psychedelic posters, pipes, rolling papers, black lights, cool hippie stuff before anyone mass produced it. I made little leather purses and wine bottles covered in collage to be used for dried flowers or a candle.
Luckily, none of my friends had to go to Vietnam. Either they got lucky in the draft lottery and ended up with a number that was so high there was no chance they would be called up, or they stayed in school, or they got 4F designations. Which I think means you are unfit for duty, ie: suffered from depression, or had flat feet or something like that. Only one friend went through the Conscientious Objector system.
My brother might have ended up in Nam; he had been gifted a military scholarship to attend Vanderbilt, and it came with strings. He did end up in the military long enough to buy a hot little TR something and develop blood pressure high enough for him to exit the military gracefully and in one piece. Then went on to get two Masters Degrees and a PHD; spent more or less a decade living in Hong Kong with his family. Now he's "Back in the US, back in the US, back in the USSA".
Damn, I was glad I was a girl!
Even so, it was a very frightening time for the young people of the U.S..
"Country Joe and the Fish" said it best: "Well it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for? Don't tell me, I don't give a damn. Next stop is Vietnam......"
To be Continued...
I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag:
Yeah, come on all of you, big strong men,
Uncle Sam needs your help again.
He's got himself in a terrible jam
Way down yonder in Vietnam
So put down your books and pick up a gun,
We're gonna have a whole lotta fun.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Well, come on generals, let's move fast;
Your big chance has come at last.
Gotta go out and get those reds —
The only good commie is the one who's dead
And you know that peace can only be won
When we've blown 'em all to kingdom come.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Huh!
Well, come on Wall Street, don't move slow,
Why man, this is war au-go-go.
There's plenty good money to be made
By supplying the Army with the tools of the trade,
Just hope and pray that if they drop the bomb,
They drop it on the Viet Cong.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam.And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Well, come on mothers throughout the land,
Pack your boys off to Vietnam.
Come on fathers, don't hesitate,
Send 'em off before it's too late.
Be the first one on your block
To have your boy come home in a box.
And it's one, two, three
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
The reality of my mistake was draped in red flags, but I waved them aside, because I had made him into the drug that took all my pain away.
It was the 1960's. I had a boyfriend all through high school whom I still consider a good friend to this day, even though we have no contact anymore, except for the occasional funeral. He was and probably still is a good friend of my first husband. I regret that I left him in such a heartless way to be with husband #1. After a while the three of us were all best friends again. I'm such a sucker for a laugh, and the two of them were so funny. I've always found it easier to be close to men than women for some unknown reason. (I was even one of the three girls, that each of the two Frats chose to be their Sweethearts, each year, in High School. I think that may have been more of a Southern thing to have Fraternities and Sororities in High School, back then.)
My high school boyfriend's family lived in a log cabin in the woods that was a magnet for interesting people. It has a beautiful Craftsman style interior. There was always a Pauley's Island Hammock, and a table and chairs on the huge front porch. His brothers and sisters were all wonderfully unique people, southern, charming and seductive; but the gem was his mother. She was so wonderful and I loved her old-fashioned southern accent. She took everything in stride. For instance, she knew that her sons and son-in-law had a marijuana crop that they tended in the fields somewhere on the property, but really didn't care. If one of their kids' friends got picked up for DUI or whatever, they would bail them out and let them sleep it off at their house. Her son-in-law had converted part of a milking barn into a sauna and our huge group of friends piled in naked and laughing at being such little kids for a while. Later my boyfriend used it as his pottery studio. His younger brother told me that it was my brother who inspired him to become a musician, after he heard him play the piano out at "Cabinwood".
They had a close relative who had gained fame as one of the Agrarian Writers. Artists, musicians, and writers were drawn there, were born there, and rented out the little house out back when it was not occupied by a family member. We all loved his mother. She always made her own mayonnaise, and it was spectacular. Her meals were not to be missed. She always had tiny biscuits with dinner that melted in your mouth. She grew her own vegetables with the help of the boys when she could get it. She inspired us to learn to bake our own bread, sew, plant gardens, and be open minded. When I first met them they even had a huge Polar Bear rug, complete with head and claws, that some grandfather or uncle had brought them. I told someone years later that she was doing Ralph Lauren before he was. Her home was so cozy and worn in the way a child's favorite soft toy is. I thought I might become part of this family at one time.
It was the end of the 60's, the War in Vietnam, Dope (marijuana), Bill's Farm, LSD, hippies: the peace and love kind, Yoga, Acharya Yatishvarananda Avadhuta, clothes from India, India Print bed spreads on walls as well as beds, Michael Shoemaker the kundalini guy in Bloomington who goes by the name Swami Chetanananda now, vegetarian food, the "simple life", swimming and walking naked in mountain streams across the country - our bodies were beautiful - no shame in what nature made us. Meditation, Stephen Gaskin and The Farm in Summertown, TN, loving the gentle people I met in those days, and always Janeese, always Janeese.
Contrary to what the media in the twenty first century may lead you to believe, most people our age were very straight laced. My friends were only a small group that was experimenting with the feast those times were offering. My boyfriend and one of his friends opened the first "Head Shop" in Murfreesboro, TN, "The Stone Groove". Laugh, we thought it was funny too! No one in town knew what a head shop was. There were psychedelic posters, pipes, rolling papers, black lights, cool hippie stuff before anyone mass produced it. I made little leather purses and wine bottles covered in collage to be used for dried flowers or a candle.
Luckily, none of my friends had to go to Vietnam. Either they got lucky in the draft lottery and ended up with a number that was so high there was no chance they would be called up, or they stayed in school, or they got 4F designations. Which I think means you are unfit for duty, ie: suffered from depression, or had flat feet or something like that. Only one friend went through the Conscientious Objector system.
My brother might have ended up in Nam; he had been gifted a military scholarship to attend Vanderbilt, and it came with strings. He did end up in the military long enough to buy a hot little TR something and develop blood pressure high enough for him to exit the military gracefully and in one piece. Then went on to get two Masters Degrees and a PHD; spent more or less a decade living in Hong Kong with his family. Now he's "Back in the US, back in the US, back in the USSA".
Damn, I was glad I was a girl!
Even so, it was a very frightening time for the young people of the U.S..
"Country Joe and the Fish" said it best: "Well it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for? Don't tell me, I don't give a damn. Next stop is Vietnam......"
To be Continued...
I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag:
Yeah, come on all of you, big strong men,
Uncle Sam needs your help again.
He's got himself in a terrible jam
Way down yonder in Vietnam
So put down your books and pick up a gun,
We're gonna have a whole lotta fun.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Well, come on generals, let's move fast;
Your big chance has come at last.
Gotta go out and get those reds —
The only good commie is the one who's dead
And you know that peace can only be won
When we've blown 'em all to kingdom come.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Huh!
Well, come on Wall Street, don't move slow,
Why man, this is war au-go-go.
There's plenty good money to be made
By supplying the Army with the tools of the trade,
Just hope and pray that if they drop the bomb,
They drop it on the Viet Cong.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam.And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Well, come on mothers throughout the land,
Pack your boys off to Vietnam.
Come on fathers, don't hesitate,
Send 'em off before it's too late.
Be the first one on your block
To have your boy come home in a box.
And it's one, two, three
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Monday, October 10, 2005
Check Granny's Blog Archives For That Story
from Saturday, April 16, 2005
I never can remembered who I've inflicted my stories on. Now I don't have to, that is what my blog is for. (I know that is not proper English, it should be "upon whom I have inflicted", but that is not how I speak.) This is one of those disclaimers I'm trying to stop using. So I frequently preface a story with "If you've heard this already, just say, "Heard it." I won't be at all offended."
Someone recently pointed out that hearing the disclaimer so many times is worse than hearing a story more than once.
I'm picturing a future where, as we become older, we say things like, "Check Granny's blog archives for that story, it may have "drooling snouts" in the title." I picture myself at the old folks home, with my own drooling snout, wearing a t-shirt with my blog address on it. They better have computers in old folks homes by then. Famous last words may become replaced by famous last entries.
I never can remembered who I've inflicted my stories on. Now I don't have to, that is what my blog is for. (I know that is not proper English, it should be "upon whom I have inflicted", but that is not how I speak.) This is one of those disclaimers I'm trying to stop using. So I frequently preface a story with "If you've heard this already, just say, "Heard it." I won't be at all offended."
Someone recently pointed out that hearing the disclaimer so many times is worse than hearing a story more than once.
I'm picturing a future where, as we become older, we say things like, "Check Granny's blog archives for that story, it may have "drooling snouts" in the title." I picture myself at the old folks home, with my own drooling snout, wearing a t-shirt with my blog address on it. They better have computers in old folks homes by then. Famous last words may become replaced by famous last entries.
Friday, October 07, 2005
Where's A Genius When You Need One?
Savant got hired by a cleaning company yesterday. Job requirements were: two hands and still breathing! His ability to fulfill the requirements, lands him the cherry job of cleaning out bio-hazard boxes on the grave-yard shift at a couple of local medical centers. He's so happy to be part of the American work force, even if he is doing the dirty work. He has been so sick of being bored and moneyless. He has been driving for a few weeks now. So we're really happy for him and the progress he is making.
Last night was his first night and he forgot to take his P.M. meds with him. I was up at midnight when he got home and he was slipping into the mental danger zone. He took his meds then, but he was just going to have to ride it out until they kicked in.
God, please stop chewing the fat with Bush, and end all suffering.
Please?
Last night was his first night and he forgot to take his P.M. meds with him. I was up at midnight when he got home and he was slipping into the mental danger zone. He took his meds then, but he was just going to have to ride it out until they kicked in.
God, please stop chewing the fat with Bush, and end all suffering.
Please?
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