In inches

The bombast that was the Black Angels is just wearing off, so I again have the energy to write a bit about what is.

There was a celebration here today. Jack turned thirteen in January and has been asking for a few years about the possibility of a rite of passage type ceremony. We did indeed pull it off and boy are my arms tired, yet again.

There were the usual glitches, neighbors having their manic episodes at my front door, my mom drinking so much she could no longer walk, and just a huge amount of generosity and love from my sisters and friends. It was in essence a reminder of how nice things can be however briefly as, when I went out to talk to Jake about not coming home until midway through the ceremony as he appeared coming out of the woods behind my house, and as I was letting him know in a non confrontational way that I was disappointed, he told me to shut the fuck up.

Now I'm down in it

As if there was anything I could do about it; almost half a century and perhaps I could learn something, nope.
I can go back to the root if I really try over the next week. As we are all going to be here and it's a harmonic or the opposite thereof convergence; everything is aligned and I must garner something from this experience or I am truly fucked.
My parents arrived last night, and because of my lack of diligence, my 79 year old mom downed half a bottle of wine in 15 minutes.
I usually have Eamon take a box of liqueur and hide it somewhere, but because we are having a huge hoedown here on Saturday, I left it out and she, with her sonar like skills found it, even though moments before she was feeling "sort of out of it". How quickly we change and brighten when the thing that alienates and has ruined lives is right at our fingertips.
So, what I can do is watch and learn, not react which is my nature and try to stay above it, or below depending on one's perspective.

I tried to scale it

My entire family is getting together this week, we have not all been in the same place for twenty years. It's not a huge family or anything like that, so it was more of a choice to not all be in one place , as opposed to the world making it a difficult possibility. Eamon is wary, he has warned me; Gus predicts a big throwdown, Jack is just excited, and I have hope, but on some level, know better.
The tension with my family is unbearable. It has always been, there is always someone trying to be in control, attempting to diffuse it, like I've done for years, just escalates any given situation. So, I'll just endure, and try to get everyone to be appropriate just like I've always done. It won't work, but I have no other choice but to be delusional yet again.

Easy to trace

What haunts us underneath, the secret we never share, or actually admit we are sharing during a candid or light conversation. It appears always as a possibility, a what if, or I know someone.
I can't be wrong on this, the subject of hiding things has surfaced again and again in autobiographies, articles, interviews with public personas, so statistically it must be true for almost anyone who has the time or money to have problems. And, I say that with no tongue in cheek. How neurotic can you be if you have to really struggle to eat or are a refugee; those issues become mental illness and nothing less.
what manifests itself as a behavior or tic, is almost impossible to counteract without diligence and an enormous amount of energy and planning.
I've been thinner for two years. That is a feat. Not only with my history but because it's just not common to be able to maintain weight loss. Now I fear a jinx, I've written it down, admitted it out loud that I have overcome a lifetime of physical issues dealing with being overweight, and I will freely admit, that the other part, the emotional component, that, I will never be free of, it's just as much a part of me as my wordy nature, or need to be funny in the face of tragedy. Sad, but something I need to come to terms with regardless of the scrutiny and doubt, either internal or from the rest of the world.

Say what you say

My neighbor of four years spoke to me for the first time last night. And, it was to complain about another neighbor. How lucky am I. Apparently, she had the same trouble that we have in that they like to come over and yell at our children if the dogs are left out for more than one minute.
I am an extremely conscientious and empathetic individual. These people have removed the mufflers from every one of their five cars, and they get up early and work on them or drive them. So, I'm not sure that they really have any justification in being annoyed by what is a very limited amount of time barking. Regardless, there is a feud brewing, and my house is literally in the thick of it.
I've lived in places where dogs where left out for days and days, where people shoot off their guns in either celebratory revelry or to attempt to injure or kill someone. These squabbles are nothing in the realm of real world problems, but apparently, there is enough of an issue for me to be considered worthy of a conversation.
The thing for me, is that I don't care about noise, there are planes flying over head every fifteen or so minutes, then the trains intercede. The world is a noisy place and trying to pin point what bothers you the most, is probably about bigger things then people are willing to admit. Never the less, I'm keeping my head low and getting the paper dave gahan style.

That says it all

Regardless of the notion that one can be too candid, I tend to volunteer a lot of information about myself in an instant of talking to someone. Well, not just strangers and such, but people whom I've been introduced to, or am having dinner with or meet at a party.
So, when Eamon and I went out to dinner with an old friend of his and his wife, I went full steam ahead into my time tested bigmouthathon. And, this is what I do every time, I lament my candid and overwhelming behavior. Even with that knowledge, I'll do it again. But the thing is, that I really wasn't letting them know it all, by any means; because brewing underneath that; I'll tell you the world facade, is the actual reality of Eamon and I having a big row earlier not long before we had to shower up and go out. The fight included insulting behavior towards Gus on my old man's part, and of me deciding that where I draw the line is when people start treating my children the way I used to be. That's when I know I've crossed into the land of the lost and there is absolutely no going back.

Run to the hills

Gus discussing seeing Iron Maiden last night;

"There were a lot of firsts, Mom"

"Oh yeah, like what?"

"Well, my first time smelling weeed, first concert and first White Castle experience."

Dude, nuf said.

I am the wheel

I generally know when I am being used, and I'm sure it's not hard to tell for most people. It's the transactional relationship or episode.
In my younger days, I felt like it was a necessary evil in order to maintain relationships. In other words I did things for people knowing that they were having me do things for them because they know I would. Not the best plan when it comes to being regarded for more than my car, or having the opportunity to introduce them to other people, places or things.
Jake came home last night, or actually it was this morning and he asked if his Girlfriend could sleep on the couch because she was having trouble at home.
My question is, was she not having trouble at a more appropriate hour, could they have not come here earlier? No, because then I would have had the option to say no, and thus the being used part of our show is revealed. I understand that she needed a place to stay for the night, I merely would like to have actually had a say in if she got to sleep at my house or not.

Science Killer

A long time ago, when I started thinking about how difficult it is for me to communicate what I actually mean, I regarded this blog and the "art group" I belonged to prior to starting it, as a sort of proving ground for developing that ability and honing it down to enable me to make myself clear and share in a more concise fashion. I think that I have improved in terms of getting the point across, and in doing so in a way that stays true to my verbal skills; and that's when I realized, that I wanted to just be able to do other things as well as I could talk.
In retrospect that's not a whole lot to strive for.

Miles above

The attributes of my new phone are, sleeker, slimmer, sexier. What the fuck, women are so fucked in this culture that trying to even discuss the problems with these words being associated with the phone in your pocket is useless, but, I'll try anyway.


I had a few moments this morning until my ton of mulch gets delivered and all hell breaks loose with me trying to shovel it all into place before Eamon comes home and yells at me for getting it, but that's another story. Anyway, I opened the sadly lacking Plain Dealer and the Verizon advertisement described what basically a women would be if she possessed this phone. The problem I have with that, above all, is that we can't be all of those things and shovel a ton of dirt too.

Nothing left here

I'm horrified when I have to work in the Children's department. Now, I should mention that we have a huge Genealogy area with indexes, microfilm and fiche, all sorts of directories, that are meant to confuse and frustrate, but none of those phase me, it's the differentiation between picture and board books, books on tape and or the books that come with a tape to read along with, that's where the freak out begins.
I dreamt that Eamon left me, he told me that after twenty years, it was finally Griffin that got to him, he was done with the dogs and the kids and he was leaving it all with me.
You know, we surround ourselves with tons of shit we don't need or really want, and we go shop some more. We have kids that overwhelm and confound us, too many pets that pee on our lives leaving just a stinky mess.
Yet, it's all around us, no one seems to be able to stop the train. But as Eamon said to me a few years ago, "If you leave I'll hunt you down." The same holds true for me, except I'll take that one more step and that would be to drop off the dogs and run.

What's right and what's wrong

On my drive to and fro before we moved back to the city, I ran over a squirrel twice. The second time, I'm sad to say, was deliberate to kind of negate the first incident. Is this just Abby logic, I would hope not because in the moments between the events, it was very clear to me what needed to be done, and then I just did it.
My drive took me down 83 every day, and this is one of those fast and free country roads and there is a lot of road kill. I blame bad driving for most of it, but in my case there was nothing I could have done because before I knew it, I'd hit the little fellow. I pulled off the road and turned around to see if there was anything that could be done, but by the looks of it, not that I'm a animal doctor or anything, things looked pretty out of whack. So, when I saw that the animal was suffering, I got back in the car and came back to finish the job. All the while, I was pep talking myself into doing the deed, out loud and with the volume turned up pretty high if I remember correctly.

It's just like living in the past

Perspective is a gnarly little needling aspect of life that can be wormy too, yes, it's one of those things that changes with the wind. Why that is an issue today is because yesterday with much protest on my part, Eamon bought a Flipper DVD, and I'm not talking about the dolphin here. It's some live stuff from around 1981-83.
I loved this band, they were very funny and loud. But, watching them made me reflect in a sad way. Will Shatter died in 1988, and even before that came to be, you can see that they're all pretty fucked up.
I remember when they played here and it was a great show, however, because I always in my old boring way, see things from the outsiders view, knowing these guys were such a mess in terms of substances, was hard to watch.
So, last night as we watched the raw ridiculousness of a great band, I remembered how lost and committed you are when you're young, and how I'm glad I don't feel that exact way anymore, but I'm also missing that irreverence of it all.