I feel like a number

I think that I know at least the chorus of around ten thousand songs. There is disagreement in the ranks as to that being an exaggerated number. I think not. Like many pop music lovers, I've been listening to the radio since I was a child. Along with the reel to reel my parents had and other vehicles for the music, It's been a good forty years of songs, well maybe not good, but a lot of music has been heard and at times, burdensomely remembered. It's a quirky thing that innocuous songs remain yet I can't do long division. I also, learned the order of the planets from Steve on Blue's Clues, and the days of the week in Spanish from Jump Start Spanish.

The middle mass

"Why does Gandhi wear that white cape?" "Cause he's dumb like that." Jack's question, Gus and his earnest response. I'm done. There really is nothing to say when it's boiled down and brought on home with such assuredness.

What is noble

That feeling that people talk about; when they describe how they know that they are being looked over, watched from above, that they're actions are being judged by a higher power; perhaps that is just the echo of an overbearing mother or way too strict father.
I know as a child I often felt like I had to behave or perform even when I was alone, I also happened to have the most controlling mother of all time.
Jack asked today about the Mayan culture and why they sacrificed people. We explained about what it must have been like not to know why there were storms or what happened if there was a drought or illness. People are always looking for an explanation, and they are looking for any fairy-tale that will provide a quick and easy answer for complicated and dimensional shit.

Shine a light on me

Gus was born 14 years ago at 9:21 in the am. It was twenty-four hours of harsh and life challenging back labor. He has a rather large head and that added to the experience by a few centimeters.
When I realized I was pregnant, I decided that I wanted to find an alternative to the regular hospital experience because Jake's birth did not resemble anything I had remotely hoped for. Eamon and I had been delivering a free newspaper that was failing miserably. The last issue had a classified ad for an organization that promoted home birth and the rest as they say is historical.
I had a midwife who kind of relaxed the entire process and that tone made for yes, a beautiful experience that changed how I felt about my self and my strength to bring life forth. Raising up that life, that is a whole nother nation.

I was driving the truck

Today I'm wearing something that is my new "outfit". I have to assume others have designated pieces and parts that they put together and consider their favorite for awhile. Usually in the library setting this would be a jumper and turtleneck combo.
Each of us and our individual needs and wants makes for a enormous population looking for comfort and pleasure which ends up with a lot of needs not being met. The result of that is the old search, the search and buy, or the drink, eat, smoke, shoot. I don't think I'm simplifying a complicated issue, however the basis for our suppression is how easy it is to do. To mask the real thing at hand with all sorts of distractions and drama. Lately, I'm happy to wake up in the morning. Not a huge thing to shoot for, but it's scratching the itch for now.

My heart is on that ship

My mother leaves a wake when she is gone. It's a wake or wave of confusion, disillusionment and frustration regarding her sheer inability to leave anyone alone in any task they are performing. It's funny for the first few years, but a lifetime of it makes for mental illness at best.
We, or most of us have mother stories, but I do have the mother of all mothers. I've spent a long time trying to ascertain how and why she is what she is, but I don't think there is an easy answer. I know that we are products of our environment and genetics and whatever else goes into the jumble of issues and neurosis that makes up a mind. All I can say is that as far as my son Jake is concerned, I'm worse than she. That would be unsettling until you realize that it's Jake I'm talking about; the reason this blog exists is that I needed an outlet, or a way to express how difficult it was to have a child who behaved just like my mom.

Before he can see the sky

Developers and contractors determine the way our world looks and it sucks. When we went to Wildwood, I saw a landscape that is consistent with many east coast communities, low houses all along the shore that allow for a vista for all. Except, that newly added condo-complexes are being built with four or five stories, successfully blocking the surrounding low houses from seeing the ocean or getting a breeze, which had been a huge part of the way in which beach towns existed until the bottom line became millions. It's unsettling that money is the determining factor in how our lives feel.
We went out to breakfast today and then walked over to a store to get something. That walk was in a place where there are no pedestrians and obviously it's because they all were hit by cars when they attempted to cross the eight lanes of traffic after the walk sign reared it's timid pale light for two seconds.

Unsafe at any speed

I don't like famous people to come near me, they make me feel uncomfortable. Unfortunately, there will always be someone, (Gus in this case), around who wants that famous person to come on up and say hello or shake a hand, or sign some piece of shit thing. I have met people who are in the public eye, and as I've mentioned have learned my lesson and try never to get to know anyone I admire because it's usually really messed up.
A few I've met are; Bob Hope when I was seven in an airport in Switzerland, my mom chased his ass down and then he said he was too grumpy to talk to us because he had a cold, and also there was Ralph Nader who started dozing in the car that my dad had borrowed to pick him up with because he owned one Ralph was condemning for lack of safety. It's a sizzlin life I know, and perhaps it's just been too exciting for there to be room for more of these encounters.

With the top back

When one returns from a "vacation" and I use that term loosely , in fact let's not call it a vacation, it was a change of venue. Anyway, when you return, and go back to the workplace, does it seem that there are certain requirements that the returnee must adhere to? Such as the funny antidote about getting lost, or finding out something about the place you went that you didn't know beforehand, like your room was going to be the size of an airplane bathroom, or that you did actually know how to get dressed while holding a washcloth sized towel in front of your body. It's an exercise in self awareness and how the limitations of your life are flexible when not in their usual context.
I remember when I was younger and I'd visit my sisters at college, I would make notes in my head about what I was going to do when I got home in terms of changing my life, or like what music I would tell my friends about.
That's why I insisted my parents join me on the journey to NJ. I knew that taking them out of their world which had become somewhat little, would enable them to remember that there is more than the everyday. Plus, my dad helped carry the bags.

Buried deep beneath the stone

On 28 August 1963 I was a busy little lady. I was not yet 2 months old. My parents pulled out a drawer from their dresser, put me in it, loaded up a station wagon with my sisters and three other friends and drove to Washington DC for the march that pretty much helped to shape and change the world for a huge portion of our population. Yes, there were 249,999 other people there, but my parents told Jack and Gus the story of our trip to that, and various other civil rights and anti-war extravaganzas and they sat and listened without once mentioning Halo or Perfect Dark Zero. This gives me some credibility in their eyes me thinks, but most of all it reminds me that though I felt and was neglected as a kid, they were thinking about good and doing the right thing in the world, it just didn't lend itself to the parenting portion of our program.

With a mighty crash

There is a good deal of disagreement in my family regarding many issues, personal, political, social and Crest vs. Colgate. What happens when someone comes to visit, is that you realize
that you all have a shorthand way of dealing with these differences, either by ignoring or negating them.
My parents are here with us for the next few days, and they are getting a glimpse of Gus and is radical conservatism. He made some offhanded comment about the homeless which Eamon and I basically spoke over while we were passing the string beans, but my usually somewhat hard of hearing mom, caught it like a Griffin wishes he could do with any living thing.
I deflected the ensuing debate by asking if she wanted some more rice which saved us from a two week workshop on the class struggle from 1810 to the present. I took one for the Gusser. Now for infinitude he will march with the band, and like it.

My lady is the sea

When you go on a long trip, sometimes, at least if you're me, you forget you have another life somewhere else, that you've lived this long established thing. It gets completely obscured or eclipsed by your new experiences. For example, we ate at a place called "The Ugly Mug" fancy double entendre! Anyway, this was in Cape May, which is at the end of the state of New Jersey, and there really is an end with a aluminum guard rail and everything. So, we drove up there from Wildwood and my parents sat rigidly in the car as I drove us out of our one week comfort zone into new territory, and I'm tan wearing something other than a damp bathing suit, hello yeast, or a sarong my old boyfriend gave me for a discount. We had to wait a few minutes so, because I've been trying to keep up with Jack and be an active parent the bench in front of the restaurant was quite inviting, and I sat down in my new black parachute pants, right on some bird shit and then was laughed at by the seagull whom had shat it. Jack wiped my butt for me and thusly the circle of life is complete.

Roy Orbison sings for the lonely

We're staying in our own version of Rear Window. It's a town of small efficiency apartments or courtyard motels from the 50's that have families that all seem to know each other and are extremely loud. My Mom is trying to speak to anyone around us who will talk to her and initiates conversations with "you have an accent, where are you from?"
I've always felt that people around me in many settings all seem to know each other. I missed the class that was taught on networking, instead I was buying myself yet another carvel coffee cone with chocolate sprinkles.
I also saw a huge gaggle of dolphins, and this is when Jack had just taken his glasses off to go boogie boarding, and then we found an enormous jellyfish which we are having on toast for breakfast. Aloha.

The continental

I'm at a Best western. It's about 10 minutes from Atlantic city, and the gamblers are up early here in the lobby, eating the complimentary continental breakfast while I utilize the lone internet cafe terminal. Yes, that's what it says on the big sign outside. "Internet Cafe". More like an internet mcnugget. Soon, like a rubber band we will snap back into the car for another hour up the coast to our final destination as Jack ominously laughed late last night in the car as we were giddy with coastal exits and fast big hair suv drivers leaving us in their sandy dust.

Check your head

I'm a mom who swears, I'm a lady with a mouth that turns out it's own shorthand. That does not always fly when you have youngins with expectations of motherly self control in place at all times, even during those phases that bring out the worst. I know and remember the betrayal of harsh words, yet even with all that ammunition to be the best or at least better, I have failed, maybe not forever, but enough to know that things I've said have made the permanent mark that we wear on the interior's suit; colored with rips, tears, blood and memories of home that isn't always as safe and sound as I'd like to portend.
Maybe there's a chance when it's all explained and rationalized that I can't always be vigilant if everyone and everything needs something at once and Griffin is barking for the ball that he shoved out of his own reach for the cazillionbillionth time, even with all that I better hold my fucking tongue.

Fly by night

My wake up dream this morning was Selma Blair chasing me as I was driving and old Mustang and she was at first on foot but then on a bike. She was about to smash the driver window with a hammer when I told myself it was time to not be asleep anymore because it was a bummer.
Again, I say, who knows where the hell these things come from, but they sure do spice up the night time.

Me and a boy are leaving tomorrow, so my dispatches will be from the road, and perhaps, they will be expansive as a trip can do that to you. I will start the trip with the Best of the Band and move on to Thievery Corporation. There will be lots of time for many a cd and radio button pushing session because mapquest told me the trip was going to take 7 hours and 23 minutes so thanks to that I have an extremely concrete idea about my journey. I think, that the idea of knowing so much about a trip is helpful and fulfilling, but it does take away an element of the abstract that kind of enhances an adventure. Coming back is a vastly different thing, that's when even I am itching to get there and not see another Dunkin donuts/baskin- robbins combo store again, ever, for all time.

We've got a bigger problem now

For some reason, I always try to talk myself out of being excited about something, and I find reasons to be anxious instead. I have to determine that this is inherited, otherwise it's because I've got a split personality and have done some things when I'm the other person that cause me to be hyper vigilant and on top of the many items I would need to keep track of, because my real life is not that complicated.
I'm going to a "closed" state, it's the first time in 38 years that the casinos have been shuttered. Any minute this issue will undoubtedly be resolved, but it's a fascinating experience that the first vacation my family has had in years, is going to be in a non-functioning environment. Perhaps my disquiet is not so unfounded after all.

The harder they come

Gus threw caution to the wind yesterday and it almost blew his hand off. I looked up just in time to scream his name as he had gotten distracted and forgot he had lit a firecracker in his hand and as he let it go, it went off, giving him sort of a concussion blow to his hand and an hour of hearing loss. I told him he was lucky, and that he was apparently not listening to the 17 hour lecture his father and I had given our captive audience in the back of the van as we were heading to our friend's party.
It takes a second for life to change, and in that I see possibility or tragedy all wrapped up in a package. Every once in awhile, it's importunate to have a reminder that we are up against a lot in our little corner of the world.

Archie's double digest

Yesterday we made an attempt, to walk two dogs at once, there was sporadic shitting, tangling of leashes and knee thumps by Stella. That all changed this morning as I got up early and started to read Cesar Millan's book; Cesar's way. well it's the dawning of a new day around here. I took each of the three, Griffin was the worst, not that he couldn't stop pulling, but when he realized I was taking charge he decided he didn't want to take a walk after all. He came around. Then it was Stella who stepped on both Dachshunds as we were trying to get out. She took the longest because she's not bright. But about a minute in she was walking next to, or a little behind me. Then Echo, the IthinkImincharge tiny dog. She knew as soon as we walked out the door and healed on the leash as if she was a trained monkey. It was nothing less than extraordinary.
And, because of what happened this morning, I understand How easy it is to keep us all in line, it just takes a tug on the leash and we get the message right quick.

Only our rivers run free

We were talking this morning about rules and breaking them, we being Eamon and myself. He was trying to figure out why there are rules if people are just automatically going to try and break them, and I shared that it's a patriarchal thing, about needing authority to have something to work against being an acceptable part of our nature. Unfortunately there are extremes in each case. People who will be more than authoritarian leaning towards the tyrannical, and others who will break the rules to the degree of criminal behavior.
Neither Eamon or I are cheaters, and I mean this in terms of our education or games. Nothing has ever been important enough to cheat in order to win but rules, are a whole nother thing.

Who do you

I realized at work the other day that the theories I have and the tangents that Eamon and I go on about politics, psychology individual personality issues, everything that we are frequently yammering on about, well, not everyone subscribes to talking about things that don't effect their lives beyond the everyday. This was bought home when I started to talk about humor and my long thought out ideas on the topic. The expressions of my colleagues told me everything I needed to know about what not to say and where not to say it. I got that oh isn't abby so interesting when she goes on about bullshit stuff that doesn't make any sense, just smile and she'll stop look.