short one on my tagents

I have been writer-less lately.  Busy as a bee in July or whatever month bees are busy in.  I am guessing they are busy all months because then the saying " Busy as a bee during their busy season."  And the saying is really 'Busy as a Bee' which kind of implies bees are busy all the time.  Bees make honey and I like honey a lot and to have a honey shortage because bees only make it certain months of the year would totally suck for me.  I sometimes wonder what honey really is.  Like bee poo or bee sex or something and then I am all like 'Don't go there because would you really eat honey if you know what it is??'  and then I am like 'Whatever you eat chicken period so bee poo probably isn't that big a deal in the grand scheme of things.'

Tangents they are called and my mind works in them.

That's it for now.

shell

On the occasion that we can go to my grandmother's house I take the kids down to the lake.  A short walk and we step into another world.  The wind whips our hair and stirs the water into a fury; you can hardly hear yourself speak.  It's good to be silent once in a great while.  To let something besides the noise of your life take over. 
More amazing than the wind and the waves is the what is under our feet.  A small area of land covered in shells.  Not sand.  Some rocks.  But mostly discarded shells.
The light catches the pearl, a beauty only some sort of god can create.
The kids and I stand on broken pieces and take as much as our hands and pockets can manage.  We work in a silent tandem, only talking to show some amazing work of nature.
 The whites and darks.
The smooth and the jagged.
The straight and the spirals.
 The contrasts are never ending.
This feeling is never ending
Shells crush beneath our feet.
The wind catches our hair.
And suddenly you feel like you are more.
This body is just a shell.
And the mind and heart go beyond what is outside.

I took the moment and bottled it.

Out of Sorts Meatloaf and Such As

I have been feeling a bit out of sorts lately.  That kind of sort where one thing goes wrong it ruins my whole day/week/month/year.  Get myself together and such as and for and to be continued when the stars align with Jupiter and Mother Earth is in third sign.

Milk! I forgot milk at the grocery store again! 

You can see the sort that I am out of.  It's just focus.  It's not there.  I never realized how much I need order.  You never realize how much you need something until it's gone or broken or you finally get it and suddenly it's taken away.  You know what I mean?

I have been working in the Special Education departments at many schools in our district lately.  It's funny how different teacher subscribe to different philosophies.  Even funnier to have two teacher subscribe to the same philosophy and perceive it in two different ways.  Everyone has their own ideas.  The thing is to never be stuck in your one idea.  Change is always good.  

The weather changes and the moods change and all the plans are out the window and down the drain.  Start new.  

It's almost summer and the natives are restless.  It scares me that the kids will soon discover that there is more of them than there is of 'US' and they will claim anarchy and enslave us to their restless needs.  

'PUDDING CUPS FOR ALL!!!!!'

'CAFETERIA MEATLOAF FOR THE PRISONER!!!!!'

A fate worse than death.

six

I am sitting here trying to remember what it was like to be a six year old girl.  It was a long time ago.  I don't remember much at all.  Nothing really.  Do most people remember themselves that young?  There are some little moments that strike me.  I can close my eyes and picture my first grade room, but really it could be any class room at any time in my young life.  I think I remember what my bed looked like, my favorite toy.  But these could be moments mixed up in time, memories from other spaces and place.  Dreams.

My daughter is six.  I am guessing it's not easy being six.  This overwhelming desire to be independent with a desperate need for love and attention.  It's a confusing thing.  Times when she want to ride her bike around the block only to get half way there and have a need to turn around.  To make sure someone is there to protect her.  I see that in her eyes.  She pedals slowly enjoying her freedom.  On the other side she moves faster to get home.  There was a second when I wasn't there and she desperately needed me.  Or so I long to believe.

The Streak

There is this certain pop song out that plays ALL the time on the radio.  The kids and I made a game out of it.  We were on like a four week streak of us being in the car and the song would  start playing.  By the second note you could see us cheer, hit the ceiling of the car and shout "THE STREAK CONTINUES!!!"  We had gone on a long car trip, one where you have to change the radio station multiple times, and each time we changed the station THAT song would come on.  EVERY SINGLE TIME.  It was equally annoying and fun all at the same time.  We played a guessing game to see how long we'd have to wait to hear the song again.  Since I spend more time in car some days my kids would ask if I heard the song at all, and when I said 'yes!" they'd laugh then I told them how many times I heard the song they'd laugh some more.  It became our inside joke.
Yesterday ended the streak.  I was sad.  The kids forgot to ask about the song.  I was even sadder.  I don't particularly like this song, it's okay.  I don't like the meaning of the song, I just like what it meant to us.  A point of connect.  No matter what we are feeling at a moment in time towards life or each other that song comes on and it was all out the car window.  The morning argument forgotten, we cheer and slap the ceiling and shout and laugh together.
We'll have to find a new inside joke now.  This streak is over,  we have to find a new thing to keep together.  To keep us together.

Son

You know those super awesome quotes superimposed onto stock photos people post on Facebook everyday?  I love them.  And I am not saying that in a super sarcastic way.  Because they are super.  Uplifting spiritual guidance in jpeg form. Rocking.  This one was 'shared' 1255 times, it so prophetic and speaks to me right here in this exact moment when I am idly wasting time on this interweb.

I saw this one superimposed picture/quote today about how you are 'his first love and his first kiss and his first friend and he calls you 'mom.' That's really nice in a creepy kind of Oedipus-complex kind of way.
I have a son and as much as I love him I will never think that I am owed his first kiss or his first love.

Weirdly now we are in that stage where we have to find this new way to love each other.  Because kissing and cuddling are not the ways of the world.  Hugging is okay in a private-in the-house-don't-let-my-friends-see-you-do-it-kind of way.  Saying 'I love you' happens long before we enter the school drop-off zone.  Because mushy mommy love is "EMBARRASSING."

I do other things now.  I still hug and kiss, a lot less, but I make it work. We play baseball and yell insulting comments to each other.  He tells me I throw like a girl and I tell him he throws like a diarrhea grandpa.  Because diarrhea is always funny.  And isn't cool to have a mom that lets you say diarrhea in a completely non-medical kind of way?  And he tells me I'm funny.  And so bad I want to tell him 'I love you too.' But that's too mushy you know.  So I just tell him he's funnier than dada's fart on a vinyl seat. 

I am trusting him more.  I let him stay home while I run to the store to get that one thing.  Because what says love more than allowing your kid to stay home while you have many anxiety attacks in the less than a mile trip to the store??
I keep reminding myself that I was home by myself at that age.  South side of Chicago.  Rule: No one in, no one out.  Don't answer the phone unless it's mom calling, leaving a message on our brand new cassette activated answering machine.  And there wasn't cell phones.  Or there was cell phones but you had to carry them in a pack and they weighed more than a small baby.
I was home alone without the nifty technological advances we are blessed with today and I lived!

 I let him stay home.  I run as quick as I can to the store.  Moving hell and high water.  Tripping babies in my way to get that one thing so I can quickly make it home to the son I love.
Sometimes, every once in awhile,  he will call me on the cellphone and asks when I will be back from my quick run.  And I so bad want to say 'I love you too son.'
And sometimes I do.

room

We redid the floors in our living room.  The room sits bear except for the flat screen on the wall, the cable box propped on a folding chair and a twin mattress on the floor. It's a beer poster short of a college dorm room.  I kind of like it this way.  Free from the trappings on a real life.  The echo the vaulted ceiling provides is quite lovely.  Everyone in the house but me seems to avoid it.  I am guided to it, a beacon that draws me to lay on the mattress and do nothing but make conversation with the wall.

'Hello?"

'hello?'

'How are you?'

'how are you?'

'Great, thanks for asking.'

'great, thanks......'

I am only slightly pathetic.

Mostly I like it because no one else does.  What a joy to have a room all to oneself.  I am going to say everyone should have one.   A place to just be. 

Soon enough I will lose this room.  Soon enough the trim will go on and the couch and end tables will be carried in.  They will want to sit and live and I will be left with people.  I might stake my claim elsewhere.  Find another small corner, make it as unappealing to the fellow residents of this home.  Have more conversations with the wall.   Find a moment of self.

No quite slightly pathetic.

The Willy Bar

I found myself in that place the other day.  You know that place where you compare something from your childhood to how it is today.  Radio.  T.V.  The news.  Life in general.  Somehow you become the very thing  you said you'd never be....
An old person.
I could see the youth of today collectively rolling their eyes at me.
My kids rolling their eyes at me.
But it wasn't over something as serious as the news or the state of the economy.
No, it was an ice cream bar.
Laugh if you must.
I lost it over a sweet confectionery treat.
The Willy Bar from Lactose King.
I went off....
Because when I was a kid the Willy Bar came in a paper sack.
And was so big I could barely fit my lips around it.
And it had the trademark swirl.
And what is this world coming to if 'The Man' is too lazy to put a swirl on a ice cream bar.
Because I know things get smaller.
And plastic over paper.
But if there is no swirl it just becomes over priced ice cream, wrapped in chocolate on a stick.
What is this world coming to??
I lost it all over ice cream.

Because as much as you try to hold onto something true, it too shall pass.  And your left with memories.
Childhood is fleeting.  You suddenly look back at how truer life was.  And your memories are somehow grander then maybe they actually were.
Well and now I'm not really talking about Willy Bars now am I.

gray.

Hello blog.  The only time I have seen you lately is to spam comments:

"You too I love your blog it so good to hear music and what is this thing you have here Me and you might  like to talk things about us and this website...."

I love it.  Who pays these people and how much?  I want in on this game.
Sign me up!

I have been spending my day reading and reading and avoiding all normal life things.  Tis' good.  I call it this the end of winter slump.  Where everything is gray.  Even my passion to do things.  Anything.

So I enjoy this desire to do nothing and stay in the gray.  Because soon color will come I will want to move and stay moving and this moment of rest is needed.

Blessed rest.

music

I like to listen to music really loud.  Bass pumping.  Ringing in my ears.  Loud.  Music.  I like to feel it all over my body.  Entering my ears.  Filling my brain.  My tongue clicks against the roof of my mouth. Pumping my heart.  Rocking my hips.  Moving my legs.  Shooting out my fucking toes.  Loud. 

all at sea

It is fun for five minutes.
Or seconds.
To pretend you are the only one in your world.
That everything and everyone is somehow outside your existence.
You float on an endless sea of quietness.
The ripples stirred by a slight breeze
That warms your skin and your soul. 
Your fingers trace the water.
You stand on a ground that feel, for once, solid.