New beginnings

Moving on...
find me here, starting fresh again.

FIVE MONTHS?!?!

Well, it's been a long winter--and it's not over yet by any means.

I've spent the last hour prepping for Poetry Month, so be assured there will be stuff popping up regularly here in April.

Otherwise, the worldwide news is dire. Trump's doing his best to kill us all one way or another. Local elections are coming up and we've got some Dark Ages people running for mayor, council, and school board.

Good news is that Beast is home, and a little over 2 weeks into his carpal tunnel/ulnar nerve surgery recovery. He's still having massive pain in his left shoulder--which we now know is due to a torn labrum AND a torn rotator cuff. His lower back is fubar too, and he can't feel his feet. He uses a cane all the time now. The upside of all of this is that he hasn't really been drinking. He "found" a place to walk to not far from the library, but his tolerance is so low that he only got a couple of swigs in before he passed out with the bottle in his lap (uncapped). This was before surgery, and he's been too zonked from surgical stuff to be out and about much till later this week. So he's dry. And intent on getting to meetings when he can.

I'm ok. Tired all the time. In fact, yesterday I overslept, waking up at 8:45. So I called in and pled illness, read for awhile, and went back to sleep till 11:30. Then I was up for awhile and went back to bed at 2 for a 2-hour nap. Beast stayed in bed till 12:15 and then woke me up for dinner. Then we were both back to sleep probably by 9 or so.

I do feel better today. Not sure what that whole mess was yesterday: sore, achy muscles and what felt like a massive allergy attack.

On that note, however, I think it behooves me to head upstairs and go to bed. I have laundry and house-cleaning to deal with tomorrow.

Reboot

So that last post....and then silence.

I need to journal. I need to unplug from Facebook and all the happy synapse-firing immediate-gratification stuff like it and get back to reality. I miss this space. I hate that the last two or three years have been so barren in my writing life (here and elsewhere).

Also, I have increasingly less attention-span for things. Right now I feel like I have all the time in the world, because I'm on day six of enforced boredom due to parathyroid surgery, but I know once real life kicks back in, I'm unlikely to stick with any of the grand plans I've been tossing around.

So I've got a list of prompts saved. I've got some ideas. I've got some plans. And I'm kind of considering this to be, in effect, the first day of 2015. I've learned a great deal over the past 15 months, so I think it's time to start using what I've learned to re-energize myself mentally. And even, maybe, physically. I just need to rehabituate myself to coming here and saying or showing things.

Thankfulness

I found this at Kwizgiver's blog who in turn found it at Live, Love, Work. Since I tend to try to use November for this purpose most years, this is just a more codified and organized format. So, maybe I'll actually be posting here for a change.

November

I haven't had much to say that's printable over the past month. Lots of internal work. Lots of tongue- and lip-biting. And nail-biting. Certainly not a great deal of fun. Plus, I turned 50 this week.

Today we're going to the zoo. It's a fundraiser for a project in a city near and dear to Beast's and my hearts, which is run by the son of our current pastor. We had planned to go but hadn't purchased tickets, and then T. emailed Beast earlier in the week to see if we wanted to use the tickets he'd gotten for his parents (our pastor and his wife). Since we'll be within shouting distance of Sparky, we'll have a little time to see him today too. It's a sort of low-impact thing that will do good things in the community and maybe not be too overwhelming in a social sense. I hope. Plus, Beast needs to book two Saturday nights at Holiday Inns before the end of the year to achieve...something...so we're spending the night. And then rushing back so I can help teach Sunday School tomorrow.

Right now, Beast is off to a meeting, and I'm supposed to be headed to Weight Watchers. Neither of us is excited about our respective 'dates'--he's annoyed/frustrated/angry with His Guy at the meeting, and I know I've packed on some pounds. This was, after all, the week that, for the first time ever, I left the house specifically to go to the mini-mart and buy junk food to eat because I was stressed. Anyway, because I don't eat before I weigh in, Beast and I plan to hit the local yummy pancake place for breakfast afterwards. I'm getting a flu shot as well because his meeting is longer than mine.

Nothing much to say in the wide world except that I really hate November in spite of it being Beast's and my birthday month. Next week is the 19th anniversary of my dad's death (his birthday was earlier in the month), and I've been thinking about and missing him like mad. Beast's discussions of how he's dealing with the deaths of his parents have stirred the pot for me, but even without that, it's still just a shitty period of the year. And Thanksgiving follows up, which I love as a holiday but has a lot of potential for emotional landmines.

Someone this week reminded me that November is the cloudiest month of the year around here (tied with February). It's been pretty lousy this year, and suddenly cold. I'm kind of dreading winter and my SAD kicking back in, and all the extra drama of the holidays and so forth. But, there's nothing to be done about time passing, so I'll just face each day the best I can. Thank GOD for my friends!! No, seriously, I'm pretty sure I'd be in a locked ward if not for them! That goes for blog-friends as well as in-the-flesh friends.

So, I'm skating the surface in this post. I have some ideas of how to get back to writing more consistently here, but getting into the habit is a difficulty. I need to banish Facebook from my life, and do this instead.

That's all. Off to hear bad news about my weight. Whee.

Blogger discovery

I've just found out that Blogger only gives you access to the most recent 5,000 posts on your blog. Granted, that sounds like a lot, but on my memes blog, I'm up to nearly 6,500 and I can no longer edit the the first two years' worth of posts. Which, ironically, are the ones I'd like to edit and/or delete.

This is annoying. I maybe have to port over the last posts somewhere else. Or maybe block access to to the early years? I dunno....

It's gonna be like that, is it?

So, I've failed to follow through on Poetry Month in April and the Blog Challenge last month. We are all now perfectly clear on one of my biggest character flaws: I have a tendency to start projects with a big ol' bang and then fizzle out in the middle.

I assure you, there are exceptions. This year, though, seems to be the year of no-follow-through. I'm feeling it in my interpersonal relationships, outside the family. I'm feeling it a little at work--I bailed on that class I was taking in April, as well as the Poetry Month--and I'm definitely feeling it in blogland. Even Facebook and Goodreads, and other online locales, are getting short shrift.

And of course, my house. My poor, not-very-clean house, and projects that have been lying around since Christmas. I can hear the piper's tune getting angrier. I know that at some point I'll have to pay him. I'm guessing along about September 15 the shit's going to hit the fan and I'm going to commence Full Panic Stations at Red Alert (because that's not redundant, oh no).

I should probably be feeling great big gobs of guilt over all of this failing-to-live-up-to-standards, but I don't. I'm getting through the days. There have been few crises in the past few weeks. Sparky's class seems to be going better this time around. Beast is still mostly on the up-tick from last year's drama. The only place I'm feeling agita is in the friendship department.

And, believe it or not, even with all this lackadaisicality (lackadaisicalness?), I have managed to lose about 10 pounds since April. I'm not breaking any speed records, but I really took my doctor's words to heart: just lose it, 5-10 pounds a year is fine, since that's about the rate I've been putting it on. I don't feel like I'm starving, I still eat the occasional (or frequent, this week) ice cream or donut, I'm just eating less. Now that I can't be outside because the allergy thing has kicked in hard, the walking exercise will have to be replaced by ... something. We'll see.

In the short term, Beast and I will be celebrating our anniversary in The Big City for the next couple of days; once again, they'll be shooting off fireworks for us (ha ha), though I'm not sure where or whether we're going to see them. Sparky's home from school for the weekend, but he's headed back before we return home on Saturday. At least he's here long enough to feed the guinea pigs and take the trash out for pickup while we're gone.

Yeah. Basically, I'm waiting. Waiting for what? The other shoe to drop? Katherine & Alan's baby to be born (that's about a month out now)? I don't know. But I do know I have a strong sense of waiting, patiently or not. I'm generally not a "good" wait-er. I get anxious. And bored. But I'm hearing "They also serve who only stand and wait" (Milton) rabbiting through my brain a lot. And I'm trying to be patient in hope that I'll get a clue at some point. I just hope I'm not zoned out or asleep when it zooms past.

[redacted]

Y'know what's annoying? When you have a great post title...and you get pipped (definition #2 in the second one down) by someone you don't really like on their blog.

So, instead of writing the post that went with that title, I'll just give you updates:

• The kid who was bleeding in the street furthest from us had a massive bicycle wreck, with himself only it seems. He's in the hospital but recovering ok.


• The older kid who was bleeding in the street nearer was a drug dealer who got shafted on a sale and went after the buyer by jumping on the hood of the car as he and his girlfriend drove away. She sped up, then stopped, effectively flipping him off the hood, and then left. He's in a coma on a vent. The buyers have both spent some time in jail this week--she's still there, he's bonded out. Average age of the three of them? 20.5

Sparky's 19.

He's spent most of the daylight hours the past three days weeding all our gardens and trimming shrubs and bushes back into some kind of shape, so we can now see the house behind them all. He's also taken some time to look around for some actual jobs, and is trying to decide whether he wants to become an "independent financial services marketer." [My answer for the latter is: "Dude, seriously? You'll totally SUCK at this!" but it's his decision, really.]

So. That's the news. Time to eat dinner.

Erk

Aside from poetry, I haven't been around much. There are several reasons, but the Big Two are Work and Beast's (lack of) Health. I'm slowly getting my head around working 40 hours a week and being a Responsible Adult, but next week is going to be pretty horrible: I'm involved in putting a coworker on official probation, and I'm fairly certain she won't be able to maintain the baseline work changes required. There will be angst, and not just from her. Another coworker essentially has begged me to do whatever I can to keep the other woman from losing her job. Well, that's just fine but she has to carry her part of the load. And she's not. Hasn't, really, ever. Sigh.

Beast's back has been fubar since last August when he was hospitalized, and I have quite literally lost count of how many times we've been to the ER since then. The ambulance has picked him up three (four??) times in the last two months or so. Long story short, he is scheduled for a laminectomy on Monday. Tomorrow is pre-op testing day for him (I work), Saturday we drive up for load #1 from Sparky's dorm room, Sunday is...Sunday (i.e. busy in the morning, not-so in the afternoon). This is slightly faster than we had expected, but OMG-Thank-God for that!

The difficulty is that I need to go pick up Sparky and the rest of his stuff from school at some point--Wednesday or Thursday--and bring him home for the summer. And work. And bring Beast home from the hospital. And...yeah, see? Life, she is destroying next week completely. I really do hope this surgery goes smoothly for Beast, resolves the majority of the pain issues, and that Sparky can find a summer job.

Two days...

...till Poetry Month starts. I'm getting organized and I have a couple of things ready to post. Got some good ones this year!

Stay tuned...

Offline

Not that it matters all that much, really, since I don't post here that often, but I'll be Away From the Blog until next Tuesday, Jan. 24. I'll be at the ALA Midwinter conference. Maybe when I get back, I'll have some good stuff to blog.

Or not. ;-)

Embedded Comments!!

O.M.G. It's about time!

Thanks, Shelly, for pointing this out!

Books

I spent some time updating my reading blog last night...and this morning, because I couldn't remember the names of the not-public-library books I was reading (they're upstairs). Anyway, now that it's totally updated, you can see that I'm totally insane. Here's what I've currently got going:

* Don't Shoot : One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America, by David M. Kennedy
criminology

* From the Kingdom of Memory, by Elie Wiesel
essays/memoir

* Down These Strange Streets (ed. by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois)
short stories/fantasy

* An Echo in the Bone, by Diana Gabaldon (on CD)
historical fiction

* The Secret Life of Cowboys, by Tom Groneberg
memoir

* The Evolution of Faith : How God is Creating a Better Christianity, by Philip Gulley
theology

* Amos Walker : The Complete Story Collection, by Loren Estleman (on Nook)
short stories/mystery

Could I possibly be more spread out on the map of potential reading options? I guess I could throw some science or poetry in there...but then again, I do a lot of reading online--blogs, etc.--that falls into some of the subjects I'm not (currently) covering in books.

Ugh. I need to finish some of these!!

What? Where? Oh, yeah....

So the whole month of October passed with nothing to say here. Sigh. I even stopped meming for a couple of weeks. Thing is nothing much really did happen, although I'm sure I could've found something to say about some of the 'nothing' that happened.

Like, for instance, my boss double-dealing me on hours and holding out a promise of going full-time and then acting like it was a bit of a misunderstanding when I came back with a yes answer after doing some due diligence. Or perhaps the trip to the E.R. with Beast a couple of Saturday nights ago during which the cops babysitting the drunk next door came over to tell us to settle down and stop yelling (at the doctor). Then there was the phone call at work from Sparky about the fact that we hadn't paid the bill for his first semester of college.

There were some good things too: Amy visiting, a nice Homecoming with Sparky, a wicked-funny reunion event for reasons having more to do with cattiness than anything else, getting lost with Jen in our former college town while trying to get into Walgreen's leading to an extended giggle-fit, the fact that Beast only spent that one night in the hospital, and Fall Break with Sparky spending 80% of his waking hours in the basement ignoring us.

Beast's back, overall, is improving. Allergy season may (MAY!) actually be over, finally, for me. Sparky is doing well academically, and still enjoying the fun of dorm life. We have a new guinea pig, as yet unnamed; he seems to be getting along fine with Ruka who has taken on a bit of a protective role suddenly and surprisingly.

I really must try to get back in the habit of stopping by here to update things. It's become fairly obvious that I do use the archives to figure out when stuff happened in the past 8 years. So I need to do myself a favor and write about NOW for the future.

Blog vacation

Apparently, I took most of the month of May off this year. I have to get a grip on writing again. There are just too many things going on, many of which I don't want to (or can't) discuss here because they are too close to the bone at this point.

One of the events of the last several weeks is that Beast's aunt died, the sister of his mom. This leaves his dad as the last of the Old Guard. Aunt M (yeah, just did the requisite Wizard of Oz thing in my head) was a terrific woman, and I feel fortunate to have gotten to know her just a little bit. The funeral was good. A bit weird for me, but good as funerals go. But it's hit Beast hard.

Sparky graduated. We got his grades last week, which got us grounded in reality after weeks of believing all the nice things people have been saying about him since school let out for him. ...sigh At least his grades weren't so bad that his college scholarship will be affected. At this point. I'm worried, but I'm trying to let him fly on his own--if he crashes, it may be the only way he learns. Just like most of the rest of the men on my side of the family. Genetic flaw? Goofy nurturing techniques? I don't know.

We've been attending graduation parties almost every weekend. We also helped Amy move. Twice. Long story. If you know her, go read her blog for more about that. The place she's in now (as of yeserday) is lovely. I'd live there in a heartbeat! The intermediary place...let's just say it needed lots of TLC. Or dynamite.

I am finally starting to catch up on the huge backlog that accrued in April, at the end of our budget year. Have learned that I can blow through 80 items a day on a regular basis and still manage to keep my insanity and general assholish behavior under control.

Katherine is still a complete wreck. One of her coworkers committed suicide last month, so she's justifiably upset about that. But she's already so close to the edge for me that I don't have a lot of extra rope to throw her. We're supposed to go to a party at her and Alan's house over the weekend of the 4th, but she's completely pissing me off about it. The only thing that's keeping me from bailing is that Elizabeth, Ken and Baby J will be there (and Marie and Jan). It may be the only chance I get to see the little guy!

And amidst all of this I'm trying to keep a grip on all the things that need doing/buying/organizing before Sparky heads off to college in August. We are slowly buying things, but I think I'm going to wait till the back-to-school sales start before I really go to town on shopping. And we need to find out about his roommate and negotiate the big stuff with him and his family.

Oh, and there's the mission trip next week. And Sparky's outrageously bad allergies. And my weight. And, and, and....

So yeah, having listed this--and, as I said, this is not even close to all of the stuff in the air--I'm now wondering just exactly why I'm not panicking every second of the day. And night. Hopefully I won't start now!

Been another long wait

And yeah, what a month March has been.  Short version:

• spent a lot of time in hospitals with Beast and FIL on visits planned and unplanned
• worked, a lot, at work and at home, on work-related stuff
• played mini-golf in the library
• got even fatter
• wrecked the truck

Now, it looks like my page layout is fucked. Shoot. I should try to figure out why. I seems to only be weird on Chrome. IE looks fine. Sigh.

The main reason I started this post is to warn people that poetry month is coming up, so there will be more regular posts next months. Like, daily.

EDIT: but now the layout is fine. Maybe it's my computer....

Searches on the old blog

I haven't had a tracker installed on this blog for long enough for these sorts of weird-o-rama searches to happen much. But I got a hankering to do this kind of post since I haven't for ages and ages:

• meander--that's the title of a very meandering post. Probably didn't help in the definition of the word, if that's what the Googler was doing.
• wedding passages--These are good ones, IMHO, if you are searching.
• all getting haircuts--Yep, all of us got our hair cut on the same day in 2008. Pretty exciting stuff. Why would anyone search those words? I can't come up with a scenario.
• furniture projectblogspot--Part ? of the Summer of Refinishing.
• link:http://bradshawofthefuture.blogspot.com/--lol I hope this made the blog's author as happy as it made me to write about it.
• beth orton stolen car radio edit--The radio edit was a different song in the list. I liked that one, as well as Beth's, but I bet that didn't really help in answering whatever question was at hand.
• perfect stage crew--We still own it. It has nothing whatever to do with my regular life, so it was probably a useless hit for the person who clicked over here. Sorry.
• jenn!fer g!ltrop--This refers to a very embarrassing moment in library lore, which unfortunately a person with this name was tangentially involved. I occluded the name here; I should have done so on the old blog as well. {shrug}

First and Last Lines

I've done this for a couple of years now, on my previous blog. It's always sort of fun to see what I've been up to in blogland over the course of the year.

align

So, the first and last sentences posted for each month of 2009, excluding anything I copied from elsewhere:

January

This is the annual post that proves I am a geek about numbers as well as books.

They are approximately the same age as my mom, who has spun into yet another dramatic health moment.

February

Yeah, I'm still alive, though feeling terribly frazzled.

see post title [which is "Rolling with the punches"]

March

Remember when I used to post here everyday, sometimes even more than once a day?

Yuck. Snow over ice. My fave.

April

Hey, it's poetry month! Hence the poems that have posted the past two days (oh, how I love post-dating!).

I can't help but poke fun, y'know.

May

I have this album (as in record) somewhere:

Consider me officially freaked out.

June

That would be me. Screaming W.T.F.??

So, I'll see you all Wednesday or Thursday.

July

Mom found her escape from pain at about 9:15 p.m. last night.

Then again, it may not. We'll see.

August

Hi ho hi ho–it’s off to work I go.

I need a f'ing vacation.

September

The calmest, most rational, loveliest person at my workplace is leaving due to family issues.

I'm beat, so I'm off to bath and bed ASAP so I can be awake again when I leave for Bible Study in 8 hours.

October

I can do a full day's work after barely three hours of sleep, including 6 full hours standing and working with the public.

Can't believe I never thought of that!! Duh.

November

When the Body of Christ gets stuck partway down and stays put for an uncomfortably long time, is this a metaphor?

By the way, Little Anthony and the Imperials caused him to say, "WOW!" which is quite the reaction, the first stunned comment from him of the evening, though he did like the bass solo in "You Can Call Me Al" as well.

December

Today was all about Sparky.

So, there you have it, straight from the guinea pig's paws.

Some of these combinations seem eerily connected this year, even though they aren't particularly.

"A patron in my library"

Originally posted 10/20/05

Wednesday afternoon, I sat in the library at a table with my son's backpack as he did his math homework on the Internet 20 yards away. I was doing my Bible Study prep.

It was busy, but not noisy, and I was enjoying being "just a patron" in the library. It doesn't happen very often. One of the times I looked up to check on Sparky I noticed someone I thought I knew. Then she turned and I knew she wasn't who I thought she was.

The person I mistook this woman for comes to my church now, but my first interaction with her was probably 5 years ago at the library. She was one of our more desperate patrons,. She mumbled, she stared, she made little sense, she asked nonsense questions, she never smiled. She wanted videos, but couldn't produce a coherent thought about what videos she wanted. Not just any tape would do. She was hunched over, holding herself together physically, if not mentally. She was difficult. Crazy. Weird. All those oh-so-attractive words. On one of her visits, she told me that she wasn't allowed to see her grand-daughter, and it was killing her. Then she told me that same fragment-story every time she saw me for the next several weeks.

This same woman--call her "Lisa"--now comes to church regularly--because it's a block from her apartment. She fits in well with the 'normal' segment of society that peoples our library, still has some slightly deviant behaviors (now more in the realm of eccentricity than scary-weird), and lives with her daughter and her grand-daughter. She doesn't drive, and she can't hold a job, but she is a lovely person. I think of Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies whenever I see her.

All this went through my mind yesterday as I looked at the woman walking between Sparky and me. In an instant, two pictures flashed in my head. "Lisa" as she was 5 years ago, and Hedda Nussbaum (whom "Lisa" also vaguely resembles). This woman was doing the Eggshell Walk. The if-I'm-very-careful-where-I-step-I-won't-fall-into-the-chasm huddled clutch of a pacing walk, back and forth about 15 feet either direction. She was walking to Jerusalem between me and my kid in the public library.

Other people noticed her. They left a wide space around her, and they didn't acknowledge her, but they watched her like you'd watch a frothy-mouthed squirrel. "Walk slowly and ignore it, but shoot it if it comes toward you."

Meanwhile, Pacing Woman was oblivious, or at least inured. Her current pain was so much greater than anything outsiders could inflict. Five hundred years ago, she'd have been called a witch. Or a holy woman.

What do I remember mostly, though? The pockets in the seat of her jeans. Her pale blue T-shirt. Her bent shoulders and tense neck. Her electrical-socket hairstyle. Her blank face surrounding those eyes, which were staring past the walls and carpet of the library.

I looked back down at my "homework" where I found myself reading the following from our study guide:

Holy. The word means "separate" or "set apart." ...Holy things and beings were utterly different from, utterly alien to, common things and ordinary creatures.

By the time we left, she was gone. Maybe she was a holy woman after all.

New thing

I've been struggling with what to do with my old blog and the posts for some time. I have come up with an idea: I think, semi-regularly, I'm going to bring over an old post on the anniversary of the date I originally wrote it. That will give me a break from coming up with new, non-violent things to write here too. hah

We'll see how that works.