And it's strange to her

I realized after a long discussion last night with my parents, about their illustrious careers, that I was a glorified trivia specialist.
Both of my parents have worked in social work for more than fifty years, they still publish and travel to conferences to present papers about narrative therapy, or their time in South Africa working with people on the reconciliation act. Their work has a lot of substance and is meaningful in the long term.
I on the other hand, in my ADD world, never know from minute to minute or what each person is going to need, or require of me. There is no lasting or tangible experience, and I feel that right now, in a big way.
The hope is, to find a balance, as they leaned way to far in the social justice direction rather than the parenting and nurturing realm, and I probably spent too much time attempting to have an impact on some kids lives who happened to have been born to me.
Yesterday at work, one of the regulars asked for help, and as I and my manager approached he asked us both to witness his living will as he had no one else to do so.
How's that for something to add to the pile of work experience, sadness at his need to ask someone who he's been grumpy with for ten years, to do something a known person normally would, or perhaps he gets his grump on so regularly because we feel like family.

It just goes to show

We picked up my parents at the airport last night, I fell asleep in the car while we were waiting because apparently I was under enough pressure that my mind decided to shut down, at least on the conscious level. I dreamt I was pregnant and everyone was mad at me. Then the airport police shined or shone, whatever, his flashlight in my face so instead I ended up in a concentration camp running with cabbages in my hands. I think they must have meant the same thing, whatever that may be.
It's not so much that I'm not ready for how this is going to go, it's more about realizing that every day together kind of is like ten; and then there's the knowledge that the drama should have been part of the past, but it's what makes my Mom feel vital and connected.
I am grateful for a few things this year; one is my nephew coming for dinner, which will at least distract her from watching Gus eat. Another is that there is the equivalent of a Billy Jack movie playing, so I can be assured that I will have a few hours to go away, maybe not in the physical, but just enough to have a little piece.

I'll shine up

I'm tired of wanting, and I'm sick of being part of a culture that just wants and can't and will never get enough.
I in my old age, am able to discern that a good part of the reason for my lack of success, or satisfaction, is the yearn. Yes, yes we all have it, but some of us are walking around with holes way to big to fill, and there we go to the store, bar, restaurant, doctor, whatever exterior venue we can find to make yet another attempt to stop up that leak.
It's not going to happen, or it will lessen, but never dissipate enough for me to just be where and what I am.
My folks are coming next week, speaking of chasms. If it goes the way that I suspect it will, and I have reason to be prepared for the worst, Eamon will end up spending and massive amount of time inventorying his DVD collection, or show a real interest in connecting with his parents and spend a lot of time at their house.
That's okay with me, because I'm used to foregoing what I think I may possibly want and settling for something I don't.

How to be thick

Please don't let it be that Celebrity Rehab gave me some insight. I was doing my pilates and it was on, Dr. Drew and the kids were going on, and on and then it occurred to me that some of what I still deal with is addictive behavior, the fear of challenging my mom, of saying no to her and just being scared of her wrath. Because she gave me so little I feel like I have a lot to lose if I really investigate it.
Saturday night Gus and I went to see Guy Fieri at the Fabulous Food show, in the exposition center which used to be a defense factory, so that makes sense. We rushed the stage and got to sit in the front row, albeit on the side, which I prefer because during these type of evangelical events you never know what's going to happen next, and just as I had suspected, he threw things into the audience and as I have always been a magnet head, being in the center had no appeal to me.
Gus had been to a dentist to see about braces a few weeks ago. After the appointment to discuss the previous appointment, he said to me in the car that he didn't want braces from a spray on tan salesman.
Let's just say, the similarly gastronomic sales event experience was not lost on him. The selling of your soul for a dollar or a million, always diminishes the fun just enough to cheapen any happening , but not enough not to run up and get some of the food when it was all over.

We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness

Jason and the Scorchers are coming to Cleveland for New Years Eve. I may have to actually leave the house and go out for more than a Chuck E. Cheese extravaganza, and use that as proof that I know how to party.
One of my favorite essays by Orwell is called "Politics and the English Language"; where he kind of eviscerates advertising, and pretty much writing for writing sake, with this lovely; " modern writing at it's worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug."
In simpler terms for the likes of me, rehash much.
It seems that so many news outlets and even blogs have been and are getting most of their primary information from a few sources and then go from there providing a clearinghouse and subsequently marginalizing and gate keeping for old times sake. It's not something criminal or suspect, but what it does reinforce is the limitation of popular culture on the front burner if you will; all the while the stuff on the back is far more vital and fragile .

Just what you're worth

It's been a long time since there was a good looking Jew in the white house. Is that wrong to say? It's true and it has.
Otherwise, the honeymoon here is over, well there haven't been any behavioral problems, we are all still getting along, however, the Police Department called about ten minutes after I had decided things might work out after all and wrote about it. They only wanted to talk to Jake about his whereabouts on an evening a few weeks ago. Indeed he had an alibi, but that was not the call I've been waiting for. I guess Jake's lack of luck when it comes to getting away with anything, might help him from getting too involved in bad stuff, but he's been out of the house for quite awhile, and to be on the radar like that is something I've avoided my entire life and now I realize part of what makes it hard to parent a kid like Jake is that he is drawn to people who are, and he participates in this dramatic, every experience is a huge crisis/event universe which for the rest of us here, is something we would rather not watch or in my case, listen to.

I didn't get to

Jake and I met for lunch on Friday, and he asked if he could move back in, promising to live within the conditions that we had set and that he would be here as a member of the family not so much like the lodger he had been the last few times.
I told him he would have to come over and talk to his Dad, and that would be the final word whether it was going to happen or not.
I expected that he would come late, but he didn't; he came after dinner and probably because Eamon was well fed and happy with the prospect of the coming weekend, he agreed to it, stipulating that there would be expectations and they were going to need to be lived up to, and not just for the first few days.
So, we are intact and with the entire 45 minutes we've seen Jake over the last three days, things seem to be going well.

Tell me one thing

I picked my friend David out of a crowd of hundreds; I knew he was one of us, whatever the us may be defined as, whether it be chemistry, familiarity, there is some key; a Tell if you're Mamet, that separates an individual and brings them to the forefront of a crowd of faces.
David was taking a freshman placement test the summer I was an advisor and had met another like minded friend. I turned to this friend and said, I like that guy, meaning David. He ended up being one of my closest friends until he died in 1996 and I still think about him all the time.
My best friend from high school, my old boyfriends, husband, they each had a defining moment of which they became who they are to me. These events stand out in my flawed memory bank and I could recreate them with some accuracy if so compelled. It's been awhile since that phenom has occurred, perhaps like with taste buds, those sensual experiences are tempered with age, I know that with every day, with every person that walks into the library whose odor does not precede them, I expect that they might be someone who in turn will become more than this.
With Eamon, whom I'd known for a couple of years, the bookmark took place at the California border crossing with Mexico. I had a station wagon full of men to prove my language skills to who were visiting me. So, we stopped at the border before I could do that and I had to go to the bathroom which was a eight lane walk. He volunteered to go with me; and the impression was made, though I didn't even know it until later, which in itself is part of that process of something completely out of our conscious evaluation. It's just stored away until the right time or even until your old and have an idle moment and apparently have little better to think about then the olden days.

Outside it's america

Over the last few months, I've helped hundreds of people with information about registering to vote, finding their polling place and have found the answers to various sundries of inquiries regarding the process, many of us are familiar with, or at least thought we were.
Yesterday, I found out that my name had been stricken from the voting list. Who me paranoid? One whose name was there in 2006, but somehow got cancelled. And all of the names ahead of mine on the signature pad for provisional ballots were democrats; hmmm, something smells rotten in Olmsted Township. The best part, is how Bradbloggy this is, how it played out just like a good meaty conspiracy should. Transferred back and forth at the BOE, given answers that differ from each person on the phone plus they didn't make sense. I've been voting for sixty years, the only reason I wasn't on the roster is because someone or some people decided to take me off. I'm proud of that, damn proud. But the real question, the most pertinent concern here for all of us is, what kind of puppy?

Could it be, stop and see

During a distracted moment this morning, hope leaked in, but just for a second. Then I got my wits about me and realized that there may be a possibility that the regime would change, but the odds are piled high against it.
With Bush, I felt we were at our worst ever, that picking up the pieces from the mardi gras of destruction would be the end of it, that there could be no possible way the distance between how we should be acting and how we are could get any farther; oh, but it will and it can.
Eamon and I have been through a veritable imbroglio of challenges and often we come out the other end a little bruised, wary and sometimes smarter. Moreover, we manage to stick it out together, however that could easily change, and I know that based on the time we spent apart . So, if people like he and I can't find a peaceful solution, or a way to see past the obstacles, and if you add a few billion to that equation, it's no wonder, shambles-R-us.

неодобрителен nesouhlasný

Dressing up as someone else is transformative in so very many ways; I'll begin with the rational mind. When I was talking to my friends at work while wearing my Bawdy Book Mistress get up, there would be this sort of skipping recognition, as in part of their brain knew who they were talking to, but the part that's perhaps more primal or emotional had to keep being reminded.
Then there are the disapproving looks from some customers who just think it's frivolous and it makes them so uncomfortable, that there has to be a mountain of shit bringing them to make that face that has absolutely nothing to do with the individual they are focusing on.
The other element that my friend and I were discussing is the amount of work that can go into one's appearance and how that takes up and enormous amount of time and energy which is why perhaps people who do spend inordinate amounts might have to neglect intellectual development because they just don't have the opportunity.