About Me

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I am mundane and magical, Silly and serious. I am an underachiever who suspects that someday in the eternities I may yet blossom and even fruit. I am a collector of spirits and essences, a studier of mood and nuance.I have many many faults and yet I've always been loved. I am a good friend, but I will let you go if you so desire. I believe in Somewhen. I laugh easily and cannot often cry, which I know is a Flaw. Like You, I am a work in progess.

Monday, September 29, 2014

second night in a row down my particular rabbit hole. What do I want there?

Sunday, September 28, 2014

Yesterday was a doozy. The morning started strangely with rain, a yellow sky that looked like it was not of this earth, a blazing sun and a clap of thunder that shook the earth and felt like it might have damaged my ears. Then I went to work. The freeway was closed down again for a time because of rain. Our 7:30 driver didn't get to Vegas till about 11:15 Vegas time. He talked of cars swept off the road by flash flooding, waterfalls off the cliffs over his head and a lake of water between the two sides of the freeway a mile long. and other stuff. The owner cancelled 3 runs yesterday and so i was fielding calls so thickly that I did not have time to so much as pee before 4 o'clock. I was supposed to work until three, but they fired the girl who was to come in at 3 minutes before she was due and all the other office workers were out of town. I was facing the prospect of being there till 9 in the midst of the exact kind of drama in human interactions I HATE. Police were there. Twice. This wasn't about the girl they fired, though related in a way. I am thinking better to not get too specific, but omg!!! Anyway, my friend who hired me came early from Vegas and I left shortly before 7. I have to be back today and I am NOT looking forward to any more drama. I hope the drama is played out elsewhere. I am sure there will be more of it. I got home and Bruce, who was worried about me and had planned, before I told him that my boss brought me Chinese food, to bring me food. This act is magnified in its generosity and lovingness  because Bruce has really bad anxiety any time he goes out.

When I got home he had gifts for me that he had ordered and they came in the mail. he knows I like Native American cultures and he thought I would like some art in my groomery. There are messages in each of them from him to me.



And, I thought I would include a picture of my extremely ugly colorwheel assignment. I will redo this. Tempera has changed a LOT since I last used it. This was like painting with watercolors dissolved in snot


Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Groomery 09/16/2014

The groomery this morning. It still has a way to go but i am loving it. And this is all thanks to Bruce











Saturday, September 13, 2014

Last night was not a good one for me, and I am exhausted now and have to be at work at 8. I work for a company that shuttles people mostly between Las Vegas and St George and as you may or may not know, a good section of I-15 was washed out in a recent monsoonal rain. I know that some shuttles were cancelled and i know that there's now a work around, but what the time frames are on the work around I do not know. Then, I got a text from a co-worker saying one of the drivers quit yesterday and that I should keep the door locked. OMG...I can just imagine the circumstances. And,  being me, I DID imagine the circumstances (at least as I think they are) And then I imagined what might have been going through Ben's mind as he donned a bullet proof vest and a blonde wig and went and robbed a bank and took those hostages and shot at police cars and was finally gunned down. I wondered how long it took him to die and how many times he was hit and if those were head shots and I imagined his body cooling and stiffening as the people who genuinely love him learned all this terrible stuff. I imagined his sons, especially Hunter.

I didn't have to imagine my friend Rebecca, her pain over this screams out. Sometimes I feel something akin to bereft being as swaddled as I am, I experience emotions but not as raw and immediately as she does. I cannot tell you when the last time I cried like Rebecca did for Ben or as she has for other reasons was. i know i have but I shut that down. That's my damage. Rebecca also told me a young relative committed suicide last Tuesday. I really don't know how, being as deeply affected as she is, I don't know how she gets up and faces each day. And has such a cheerful nature. When I think of her life i am pretty sure I would not survive it. I am grateful, mostly for her but also in general that I haven't seen a lot of really nasty, judgmental and hateful feedback about Ben. It is hard to believe what he did, but overall people commenting on threads i have read have remembered he was a human. That does not discount the terror he probably engendered in those hostages or anything that he did, but it does remember that this was a person who had a lot of love in and for him.

After that, I slipped for a time into my own private cycle of insanity, but I was grateful that that mostly affects only me (unless by mood I lash out at others) And that cycle does not seek harm to anyone and it HAS taught me deeply the wrongness and futility of trying to control anyone but myself.

In short, I am tired and not looking forward to the day.

Friday, September 12, 2014

Ben... So sad and your family is really hurting

http://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/archive/2014/09/12/mgk-tsr-zions-bank-robbery-suspect-fatally-shot-named-sister-gives-exclusive-interview#.VBNwpvldXTB


Not much sleep last night. Spent the night thinking about Ben, with a grief that surprised me and I was also really marveling at my friend Rebecca. I have helped her in little ways, with money, with transportation, with her studies, but she, just by being herself helps me with being truly human.

I am also very grateful for Bruce in my life. I know he doesn't feel appreciated and I wish I knew how to communicate that better.

And there were other people in my mind and heart. I was remembering Miles telling me how his father would say, "Life is what you make it" and how he finally came to believe just that. Life is an incredibly rich experience and there is so much love

Thursday, September 11, 2014

I am supposed to be doing a biology assignment. And some other stuff. And I will. I'm sure I will. But right now I am thinking about stuff. 

Today I noticed stories on Facebook about a local bank robbery. Schools were put into lockdown. There was a picture of a guy in what looked like a Santa beard. He apparently had a shot gun and took 2 girls or women hostage. Not long after there was a report that the suspect was arrested. Then a report that he was dead. I wasn't closely following the story. I was sorry for the situation but it didn't seem to really impact my life. 

Not long ago, a friend texted me asking me to call her. She said it was an emergency. I wondered what had happened. Her life seems so full of disasters just waiting to happen and she is so brave in dealing with things. I braced myself and called her. 

She was sobbing and the sound was broken-hearted. It sounded like someone had died. I was hoping with all my might it wasn't one of her kids. I was marveling at what was communicated in that crying. That little observer in me was saying "It is just not in you anymore to cry like that" That made me sad, but I think it's true. And in those split seconds  I envied the rawness and depth of her feeling. She asked, through her tears, if i had heard about the bank robbery. I said yes. She'd, after all been posting about it on her page. Well. She had just learned she knew the robber. She had a long term friendship with him. Her sister was once engaged to him. He had been to my house and did a lot of work in our yard. I was shaken, but nothing like my friend. She was howling in mourning. "They killed him" she kept saying. She said he had needed money for his 2 sons (one of whom has Down Syndrome and is about 20 now) She had told me before that he was at least once suicidal. Today she told me that he never would have hurt anyone, that he just wanted people to be happy. now, I don't know if he would or wouldn't have hurt anyone. He did take hostages but apparently he let them go. My friend said people reported hearing a lot of shots. I included an article in this post by someone who lives in the area where he was shot. I am wondering if the police just killed him (that seems to be a trend nowadays - no trial, just kill a suspect) or whether he committed suicide by police, or what. I just know and have a heavy feeling that someone I sort of knew, who had really good points and some dark ones too -is dead. And he was young. And people loved him. And he made some terrible choices. There's a little more that I have heard but it feels disrespectful to go there. I am thinking about my friend. Her sister and surely about his sons. I am thinking of the schoolkids who were in lockdown for a long time today and for the hostages and for the police. I do believe the root of this was money and not having enough. I didn't see this person as greedy, ah to say hw I did see him is not really based on enough to say it. So I won't. But this is SAD

http://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/archive/2014/09/11/ccj-news-live-robbery/#.VBJXDvldXTA



Today a desperate man died. You see just this morning I was being down on myself for some financial situations in my life where I was thinking I could have made some better choices. Don’t get me wrong; I am not doing badly but just wishing that things were better. Well suddenly we started hearing reports of a bank robbery in progress. The suspect took some hostages and dumped his car in the subdivision where my house is, leaving the hostages, and running on foot. He had guns and was firing shots at officers. My nephews who go to the schools nearby were put on a full lockdown. At the elementary school all the kids were under their desks while the teachers covered the windows with papers. They brought in helicopters and began searching for this guy. They ended up finding him at the end of my street a few houses down from where I live. There is a field where I walk my dog and he was hiding in the trees on the edge of the field. He began shooting at the police officers and so they had to protect themselves by shooting this man. I am sitting here looking down my road and seeing all the investigators standing around this man. I can’t help but wonder what he must have been going through. What he needed money so bad for that he died for it. I feel very sad for him. Was he the victim of addiction, unemployment, or what? I feel so terrible for him even though he tormented an entire community today. There are no winners here. I feel like we all have so much to be grateful for and I tend to forget that. If you are reading this post you are probably much better off than you give yourself credit for. As I type this on my computer, sitting in my house, eating my pizza, I am feeling a whole lot more grateful for the decisions that I have made in my life.

Sunday, September 7, 2014

Musings

I really should be getting ready for work. I didn't do any schoolwork this morning, but I did make a Facebook page for my business and I designed a business card and I ordered photo backdrops because I like to take pics of the dogs I do and the background is currently, well, ugly. Bruce and I spent some time talking about ideas. He really has a lot of good ones. He initially suggested a shower curtain as a backdrop and the idea just kept growing and changing. I am anxious to see what this will be like. I'd love a collection of backdrops but I will start with 2. He also suggested that I paint the garage, some walls. I am going to do that! It will look much fresher. He  thinks my collection of cords is untenable and looks unprofessional. Well, might could be but I need to be able to move things around. He is trying to figure out a better way. We talked about the shelving. He had some good ideas there too. And he suggested I clean out a cabinet to use for storage that I hadn't thought of. Again. good idea! He notices details I wouldn't have thought of. Because the first dog I did was older and she had weak hindquarters I needed a tub mat to prevent her from slipping. I ordered some small blue rubber ones but they would not not not be here in time. I had an old bath mat, not attractive, but serviceable, so I used that. And I left it in the tub (the blue ones are not here yet) it pads the sprayer hose, but Bruce saw it and said you need to cut that down, cut a hole for your drain and cut the excess. He was right again I did it and it's much better. I may even leave it there and use one of the blue ones over it. He looked around in dismay at all the STUFF we have in the garage, it will be a lot of work to clean and organize it. He is going to put some in the shed. He said he will move the gargoyles and skulls, realizing that those might freaks some people out. He went out in the garage and I heard the vacuum going. I very much appreciate his interest and his help and, yes, his excitement about the project even though we still have a hair problem for the studio he has on the other side of the garage for his wind catchers. I'd write more but if I do I might be late.

Two Photo Backdrops I Ordered for the Groomery



I Made Business Cards With a Pic of a Dog I Actually Groomed


Friday, September 5, 2014

Thursday, September 4, 2014

The poem I turned in for class. I still cannot get this right

Perception

He drove the fresh plowed road surely,
so surely that my distrustful body-
primed with
years of my mother’s frantic tailgating to stave off
my father’s jealous, controlling clasp of rage-
relaxed and turned off the alarms.

Anticipating destination,
sharp pitched cabin roof
with a song of hearth and home in fragrant wood smoke
curling from the chimney pipe.
We’d spoon, warm in winter snow silence.
Private and unsought.

In the lines of his stoic, Nebraska face I saw the hidden skills.
Snow skills for sure,
I’d watched him shovel crisp geometric divisions
Razor sharp.
I’d seen him plow, no wasted motion, clearing big, clean piles unobtrusively

My breaths made steamy circles on the window as I watched-
With my California snow- wondering eyes

“What are you looking at?” he glanced my way.
It was a snowfield,
fresh from horizon to horizon,
a mystery of pines set well back.
I said, “The sparkles in the snow”
 for there they danced,
miniscule rainbows
 scintillating like the happy, noiseless chuckling of God.

He drove another quarter mile
Then pulled the Sable to the roadside.
“I’ve never seen that before” he said.
I gawked in disbelief, but was quiet.

“Thank you for the ways you’ve let me see.”

I felt then, deep and blooming in my center
radiating out-
That whole worlds are layered
One over another
And sometimes we can watch the birth
Of a new perception.


First drawing I have done in YEARS



Tuesday, September 2, 2014

A writing exercise I did for English class. Doubtless we will flesh some of these out, this was just supposed to be a couple of phrases to answer each question. I still have a poem and a lab to go tonight with LOTS of other work due very soon and a lot of the stuff for my groomery comes tomorrow as does the plumber to look at the tub. He's installing the tub Thursday. I am very tired right NOW, don't know how I am going to make it!

A Process for Recovering Memories
1.     Recall a pleasant time in the past.  Road trip with Miles, he was driving. I was looking out raptly onto a snowfield. He asked what I was looking at; I replied, “the sparkles in the snow”. He drove on about a quarter mile then stopped the car. He looked, and then said he’d never seen that before, which was hard for me to believe. Then he thanked me and a friend of mine for giving him perspectives he’d never had before.
2.     Recall a building in which you once lived. Butter yellow house with white trim, edged in front with a low white brick fence with black wrought iron gates and rose bushes all around. Dichondra lawn and tropical plants. Prettiest house on the block. Pool in back. One storey, three bedroom, smallish house with a brick L-shaped fireplace with orange padded mats.  There was a pool in the back. I shared a bedroom with my brother.
3.     Recall a secret you once had. My father sexually molested me.
4.     Recall a magical person from your childhood. George the gardener, he took us to Japanese art shows, brought us watercolors and a Buddha. Quiet, masterful worker. Everything thrived. He wore khaki and a round hat.
5.     Recall an incident that filled you with dread. Laying alone on a gurney outside of an operating room, sure I had cancer, hoping to die in surgery.
6.     Recall something dangerous you did when you were young. Got in a car with a stranger hoping to catch up to my bus which I had just missed. I was wearing a long, lace trimmed light blue dress and was going to meet a friend at the movies. The car was brown and the guy in the car was wearing plaid pants which were unzipped and he was fully revealed. He had crazy blue eyes.
7.     Recall something sinful or bad you did as a child. For awhile, I enjoyed the sexual pleasure and the feeling of intimacy I got from the sexual relationship with my father.
8.     Recall something that happened during a school vacation.  Weeks at a time in a small cabin in the mountains of Crestline, CA.  I loved the mismatched dishes. There was no phone or tv. There were stellar jays and gray squirrels. My dad would wake me up early to walk a mile into town and we would get bear claws. We spent days at Lake Gregory where tan women lolled about and the scent of baby oil perfumed the air. Music played from the snack bar where you could get frozen bananas or buckets and shovels for making sand castles. We played games around a big table and listened to records on our blue hi-fi record player. Once, after telling us stories of a murderer who was loose in the area, my parents went for a walk leaving my brother and I alone in the cabin. There were only 2 doors to the outside a rough hewn wooden front door with a bar and larch and a more conventional door in the back, opening directly onto the woods. My brother and I started hearing noises and remembering the stories we were terrified that the killer had gotten our parents and now were coming for us. Though he was three years younger than me and I think he was about 6 at that time, he told me to hide and he went and got a big knife from the kitchen. All we could hear was our own terrified breathing and the sounds of the doors as someone tried to open them. Of course it was our parents but we really believed it was “the killer” I have always remembered my brother’s bravery. We were at that cabin when Neil Armstrong took the first steps on the moon. We listened on a transistor radio, except my dad who went to The Crash Inn Stagger Out bar to see it on television.
9.     Recall something that happened in a classroom or schoolyard. I was on the playground at school when a migration of monarch butterflies swarmed in huge numbers across the playground. There were so many it was both beautiful and terrifying. Sometimes they looked like stained glass, fragile and fluttering,  other times I was overwhelmed by being amidst so many INSECTS. And children were reacting in different ways, some charmed by the beauty, some seeing this as an opportunity to kill en masse. It was confusing and surreal.
10.                        Recall something that happened many years ago near a body of water.  After more than 15 years of no partnered sex, I packed a bedspread for a drive up with My Favorite Person to see the stars at East Canyon.  The sky was very dark and there were so many stars twinkling in the night. Miles and I laid next to one another on the bedspread close enough to the water to hear the murmur of the little waves. We had hoped to hear coyotes but there were none. And somehow, though I was very scared for many reasons, I broke that long sexless fast.  I bled again like a virgin.
11.                        Recall your first romantic infatuation.  There were infatuations before, but this was not one. This was the fairy tale true- love- at- first- sight- forever dream cherished by hopeless romantics the world over. It was a permanent, visceral change on all levels of my being and while it wasn’t reciprocal (though it had what some may call a good run) it persists for me and I fear it will “forever” whatever “forever” means. It was relatively short, but was the deepest, most influential relationship of my life. I never dreamed love could have so much agony in the mix.

12.                        Recall something funny that made you laugh happily.  Something like that happens nearly every day with my current companion Bruce, who loves me just the way I am and who studies me like the speciwoman he says I am. It is a very good thing to love and be loved by a good man whose friendship and knowing has only deepened over the years we have been together. He can make me laugh till I cannot breathe and I make him laugh too.