2006: May It Rest In Peace

Here it is, Folks. The official last week of 2006. Can you believe it?

I can.

So many big, life changing events have happened this year that it feels like 10 years have been shoved into 1.
I don't wish to repeat it. But I've learned from it.

What have I learned?

I am stronger then I imagined.
I am more vulnerable then I imagined.
I have learned that while I can make it through life independently...
it's much nicer and easier to share my independence with close friends.
I used to cling to my past, marking my years with journals and
photos.
I have discovered that all it has done is weigh me down and prevent
me from living my life as I wish, baggage free.

What have I done?

I have begun to teach myself the art of speaking kindly to myself.
I have begun to teach myself to share burdens.
I have weeded through old journals and old photo's and burned the
one's that have been weighing me down.
I have begun to teach myself how to enjoy life just for today's
happiness and close my mind to future events. Good or bad.

This is my New Years list I have begun several months ago to work upon.

I feel stronger.
I feel more content.
I feel...optimistic.

Here's to the year 2007, Folks.

May it bring you all you need.
All the things you didn't know you wanted.
And the strength and good friends to work through and share
whatever life brings you.

MiniWarrior Christmas Goodness

Nothing says Christmas like Darth Vader kid in Footie Pajamas.



hehehehe

And lest we forget Christmas past...



Mwahahahahaaaa...my Mother's job is complete.

Meowy Christmas!

It's been a Hell-Of-A Year, Folks.

Here's wishing you and yours a very wonderful, fun filled Christmas!

See ya next year!

**** CLICK HERE (click on the word HERE--not the picture, silly people. Must I tell you everything? *snort*) ***




Now Click HERE!

ha ha ha!

MEOWY Christmas!!

Christmas Ship Goodness

Every year, boat owners bedeck their vessels in Christmas finery and parade them up and down the Columbia River for land lubbers to "oooh" and "ahhhh" at.



I, my son and friends, stood on the shore and "Ooh'd" and "Ahh'd".



The kat wagging it's backside was my favorite. *grin*



Grand times. Grand times.

Taking Time Off

I'm taking a bit of a break from blogging.
I'm sure I will return.
After a year and a half of blogging I feel the need to read and play and...step away from the computer for a bit.
I'll be checking in on all my favorite blog people.

Happy Holidays!

Mysterious Shoes

Yesterday, during lunchtime at work, I walked to the red brick MAX platform to await the train. As I approached the platform, I noticed something lying on the ground. Upon closer observation I realized it was an abandoned pair of men's shoes in black loafer style.
They lay on the wet brick in the haphazard way of someone who carelessly tosses off their shoes to relax on a sofa. They resided in front of a bench. On the bench a newspaper lay splayed out; its rain sodden pages pressed against the wood slat seat. Strangers, who awaited the next train beside me, glanced casually down at the scene then turned and ignored it like it was nothing out of the normal one would see in the middle of a rainy day in the City.
I however, could not look away. My mind sifted through the puzzle. Why would the shoes be left behind?
The winter wind whipped around me and tugged at the edges of the newspaper pinned to the bench. Pools of rain water beaded on the wood of the bench giving no hint of anyone having momentarily abandoned their reading.
A bum approached the shoes and bench. I watched him closely. Surely, here was the owner of the shoes! I felt a piece of puzzle slide into place then bump up against an obstruction as the bum leaned down, picked up a cigarette butt, then moved on past the shoes as if they were invisible.
Were they invisible? I blinked the rain from my eyes and peered again.
The shoes remained. The newspaper fluttered in the wind.
The Train rumbled up to the platform and I stepped inside the open doors. The door closed and I watched the shoes until a turn on the tracks removed them from my sight.
I leaned my head back against the train wall and closed my eyes. Imagination drifting, I saw a business man harried from a hard day at the office. He sat reading his paper, during his lunch hour, in an attempt to temporarily close out the world around him. His eyes fixed on something in the paper. His spine stiffened. With a nod and a jerk he sprang from bench. He tipped back his head and a rusty laugh spilled from his throat.
"Screw this!" He shouted to the worker lemmings huddled miserably beside him.
Kicking the shoes from his feet, he strode barefoot and free down the sidewalk to begin the life he always dreamed he would live.
I smiled as my imaginations eye watched him stride away; then sobered as I felt the weight of my shoes pressing down on my feet.
Perhaps I should...

MiniWarrior~ism

MiniWarrior Gems from Thanksgiving weekend:

Traveling in my truck on the way to Friends house. A huge rainbow arched over our path. I pointed it out to MiniWarrior...

MiniWarrior: WOW! Rainbows are my favorite weather!

On the same trip, MiniWarrior called out to "NoName"...

MiniWarrior: "NoName", my Mom's as pretty as an Emerald!

I'm currently working on increasing his allowance...

And...Last but not least. Pausing in the middle of play last night...

MiniWarrior: Excuse me, I have to use the Men's room.

*pause*

MiniWarrior: ...I mean the hairy leg room!

Happy Thanksgiving!

May this day bring you happiness. Whomever you spend it with and wherever you are.

Badness

Shame on you, "Kramer"

http://us.video.aol.com/video.index.adp?mode=1&pmmsid=1772645

Shame. On. You.

Goman-Go. Go Like Us!

I had a strange dream last night about Kay Goman, my Freshman roommate in college.
She was getting married on November 30th and was expecting me to be her Maid of Honor.
I panicked in my dream as I had no clue what dress she wished me to wear and had one week to find it.
Turns out it was to be Orange (pumpkin orange) and to have the Sleeping Beauty Disney sleeves. You know, the little poofy capped ones?
Gads.

I haven't heard from Kay in years. She was my Maid of Honor long long ago. She wore a beautiful tea length white dress with a satin pink ribbon sash and carried a single pink long stemmed rose. Why she would torture me in my dream by expecting me to wear an ORANGE Disney sleeved dress--I dunno.

Strangeness.

Why after all these years would I dream of her? And the specific date of November 30th?

I am a bit haunted this morning. I've found her name in People Search online. I might just pay the 9 dollars and get her phone number. If this was just a crazy dream with no reason behind it, at least I will have caught up with an old and dear friend from my past.

It's A Mad Mad World: And I Haven't Had My Coffee Yet!

Tidbits of internet news I read this morning while waiting for my coffee to finish brewing.

1. David Gest, (Liza Minelli's ex)is going to be on a reality show in Australia and refused to bungee-jump into the jungle camp for the show’s opening episode like everyone else did because he worried that the sudden change in altitude might ruin the anti-aging injections in his face.

*snort*

And...

2. Michael Jackson is being stalked by an Australian drag queen...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15516582/

Oh yeah. That's some good stuff, folks!

It's gonna be a Mad Mad kind of day.

Can you feel it?

MiniWarrior Happiness

MiniWarrior got to investigate the inside of a Fire Engine Truck this weekend.



He got to grill the hapless FireFighter with 3 billion questions.



"How hot is fire?"
"How hot are coals?"
"How hot is a candle?"
"Is it hotter than Mars?"
"What's your favorite color?"
"Are you a soldier?"
"Do you want to be a soldier?"
"Killing Fire is pretty cool. Do you like killing fires?"
"Where do you like to sit (in the fire truck)?"
"In the back or the front?"
"Why do you like to sit in the front?"
"Do you like the front or the back better?"
"How tall are you?"
"Are you as tall as a soldier?"
"Do you like fire drills?"
"Do you like lock down drills?"
"How much do you like fire drills?"
"Did you have fire drills when you were a kid?"



After the billionth question, I took pity on the Fireman (who's eyes had glazed over and mouth had the brain stroke slack look that occurs when one has just been grilled by MiniWarrior) and dragged a still interrogating MiniWarrior away to my truck.

"But Mommmmmm! I still have questions!"

The fireman, who has no doubt run into the full force of a roaring fire without a drip of fear, flinched and ducked behind the fire truck out of MiniWarrior's sight.

Hehehehe. He is MiniWarrior.



Fear him!

Hot Boots

As requested by Jade...

Stop The Press!

Manilow is comin' to town.



God help us all...

Hot Boots And Chance Encounters

It started with an advertisement in my email box.
One innocent click later and I spied them.
There they were in luscious bone colored suede.
The boots of my dreams!
It was love at first click. It was now my life's quest to obtain them. A quest that only a woman could truly understand.
I zoomed over and picked up No Name and we swooped over to the Mall.
We trotted over to the shoe store and YES! There they were, in my size!
I think I might have squealed a high pitch girlie squeal.
I'm pleading the 5th and blaming the noise on rabid Mall squirrels.

Several purchases and multiple stores later, No Name and I wrapped up our shopping spree at the land of book goodness, Barnes & Noble.
Nora Roberts 3rd book of the Circle Trilogy was in and Robert B. Parker's new book was in. Could this day be any better?!

Exhausted, I slumped into an easy chair in a corner while No Name continued his pursuit of a book. I shared my corner with a spry looking white haired lady who was quietly sipping on a Starbucks coffee.

She pointed out to me that I must be a "true" Northwestener as it was pouring rain outside and I was in shorts and a sweatshirt. I laughed and told her I was in shorts because I had a knee doctor's appointment earlier and wore the shorts in a vain attempt to avoid wearing one of those horrid patient paper gowns.

She nodded approvingly at my wisdom. I didn't divulge to her that while my plan was a most excellent one, I ended up having to wear the &$#! paper gown because in my attempt to compromise wearing shorts in the pouring rain with a warm sweatshirt...I forgot about the injury to my arm that I needed the doctor to look at.

To divert my thoughts from the paper gown humiliating memory still too &%#! fresh in my mind, I politely asked her where she was from.

"Southern California." She said with a smile. Then she hunched over her coffee and muttered bitterly, "But I've lived here for the past 41 years and I hate...HATE the rain!"

She chattered on how she had plans to move back to Southern California when she retired but then her son of 41 years decided he wanted a child so his wife got pregnant and now she had a grandson. Her face warmed when she spoke of her grandson.

"I have him most weekends and would take him more if his parents let me. I just love him and could never think of leaving him to move back to California." The glow slipped from her face and she once again hunkered over her coffee sliding a baleful look out the window at the cursed Northwest rain.

"Well, maybe you can move to California when your grandson is grown." I offered in a small attempt to cheer her.

"If I live that long." She said with a sigh. "I'm 71 now."

I spoke to her of my adopted Mom who is now 80 and spry as ever. How she biked and swam every day. How she had raised me to believe that the number game of age is mostly a mental thing.

She brightened a bit at that. Apparently she came from a genetic line of long lifers. But, then her face clouded again as she explained how her husband was currently laid up with a hip injury.

"He had a fall, you see. He was mowing our son's lawn. Something he loves to do. When he slipped and fell 10 feet down a hill and hurt his hip. He used to be so active but now except to attend physical therapy, he just wants to lay in bed."

We sat quietly for a few minutes looking down and avoiding eye contact from the truth that she most likely would never move back to her home town in Southern California.

"He comes from a family that are active until they get hurt, then once they are down, they stay down." She added quietly. "Nothing I say to him will get him up. He cries that he's hurting and refuses to get up and live life again."

I saw the pain flicker across her face as she slid her eyes from mine and looked down into her cup of coffee. It wasn't the rain she was railing at. It was the helplessness of watching the man she had been married to for 50+ years lay down and quit on life.

I thought about it that evening when I lay in bed, staring into the grey of the night while Guido purred softly beside me. I thought about it in the morning while my mind was busy trying to shake the dark shadows of a dream that has been haunting me.

I thought about it yesterday as I walked the trail at the local park in the misting rain. And I thought about it again this morning while once again trying to shrug off another depressing dream.

Then, sitting at work, halfway through my first cup of coffee, it hit me.

When wounded in this life, you can choose to lay down and cease living because to continue to live, hurts.

Or you can work through that hurt and keep moving. Keep living, no matter the pain, because eventually the pain will fade with continual movement. The key to recovery is movement.

You have to keep moving.

I'm trudging on, folks. And I've got a hot pair of boots to do it in.

Blog Worthy

Happy Halloween!

Put down the mini Kitkat bar and nobody gets hurt.

MiniWarrior~ism

MiniWarrior snuggled into my bed the other night and promptly hogged 3/4'ths of my pillow.
When I complained and told him to go sleep on the pillow on his side of the bed he said...

But Mommmm I can't! I have a neck infection.
I can only sleep on your pillow!

Neck infection.
I sniff the scent of a future politician here cuz' that boy can shovel bull**** with the best of them!

The Weight Of Miraculous Debt

41 and some odd months ago, there was a discussion between medical staff on whether or not I should live.
Apparently I was stuck inside my mother and her life was at risk.
She intervened and demanded that I be saved. A pair of prying forceps later and I was dragged out to breath my first breath in this world.

A few years later I was licking an ice cream and riding my bike along Main street. My wheel hit the curb and I was thrown into the street. In the few stunned seconds as I lay there I watched the wheel of a car slide towards my face and abruptly stop as it touched the tip of my nose.
An old lady staggered from inside the car and screamed over and over how "She shouldn't be driving. She had just come back from a Doctor's visit and he had said her reflexes were so impaired she must give up driving." Strangers plucked me from the street and brushed me off while the old lady continued her rant.
After concluding that I was unhurt, the crowd dispersed and I clambered back onto my bike and shakily headed home.

Fast forward to my 20th year. Swimming in the Ocean in St. Croix with a friend. We scoured the ocean floor for Conch shells. I swam out to a grassy line in the sand thinking this would be a good hiding place for shells. I tried to swim past the line in the sand to search the sea grass. Try as I might, I could not break past the line of grass in the sand to move further out. It was like hitting a glass wall. I turned my head to see my friends eyes showing wide and scared through her goggles as she watched me swim frantically in place. She motioned for us to swim back to shore.
As we lay gasping on the beach she told me how she watched me swim furiously but how my body didn't move one inch forward. I panted and told her that it had felt like I was hitting against a glass wall. We lay there for awhile and pondered this puzzling phenomenon then headed back to the house of the people we were staying with.
Later that night over spaghetti, I told my tale of the line in the sand and watched Ivan's (the Man of the house) face grow pale.
He explained to me of the many natives that had died swimming innocently past that line in the sand. Apparently, this was the division of passive ocean and the beginning of a deadly riptide. If I had crossed that line, I would have been dead.

A few years later, back in my home town, I was driving my car down a hill in the moody light of dusk. I accelerated as at the end of the hill the light was green. Just as my car was crossing into the intersection a car came barrelling from my left, blowing through his red light. There was no time for evasive maneuvering, I could see the shadowed shape of the driver as he plunged towards me. I closed my eyes and braced for impact.
I opened them a few seconds later to see the car now miraculously on the other side of the intersection continuing on in his wild ride.

To this day I cannot explain how he missed me. There was no screech of tires. There was no sound. He was moving too quickly to have swerved around me. He was heading directly for my drivers side door.

It's a mystery. But the real mystery to me is the question of "Why" that has followed all the near misses in my life. These few that I've listed are the bigger, obvious misses of Deaths knock on my door. There are many other simpler times that can be easily explained with a shrug of the shoulder and the wink of "Phew! I was sure lucky!"

I haven't done any remarkable action that would explain the reason for my being saved. If there is indeed a reason and not just blind luck. If I were to fade away there wouldn't be great mourning and an obvious rift in the Universe.

I've been thinking of late, perhaps I should change that. It seems ungrateful of me to continue on without paying back somehow the gift of life that's been handed back to me so many miraculous times.

The Chatter Of Solitude

It was a beautiful Fall evening when I pulled up to my house.
Guido, the cat, greeted me at the door with a hungry meow.

Tossing my work bag down, I gave him a friendly scritch then lumbered to the kitchen to fill his bowl with his nightly scoop of soft food. He hunkered down over his dinner with a pleased purr. The house was quiet with the empty feel it gets when it's just Guido and I and MiniWarrior is at his Dad's house. The air had a slight Northwest damp feel to it. I shivered lightly in the shadows of the kitchen then wandered into the living room to set the trappings for a fire in the fireplace.

A couple of trips back and forth to the garage wood bin later, I crouched by the fireplace and watched the flames of the new fire begin to envelop the logs. The crackling sounds filled the emptiness of the house and Guido butted up against me in approval. Feline belly full, he stretched and lay down on the fireplace rug beside me.

I stood after a bit and stared out the tall living room window watching the Swan and his faithful duck companion swim along the banks of my backyard creek; the Swans long white neck stretching out from time to time to nibble at the young ferns that grow along the creek bed.

The blue of the sky was turning a sleepy evening grey. The hot tub beckoned me. I nodded to myself, checked the stability of the crackling fire, and headed out for an evening soak.

Lifting the cover off, the heat from the hot tub fought with the crisp fall air and created an other worldly steam battle. I stepped into the cloud and slid into the hot bubbling water with a contented sigh.

I let my mind float free for awhile. Letting the days build up of tiny stresses drift away. I smiled to myself. This was a nice time in my life. The brief period of calm that restores your insides and prepares you for future events. I felt a trickle of worry slide down my mental spine at the thought of future events to come. The unknown hovered around inside me like the cloud that followed the Pigpen character from Charley Brown.

"This happiness comes with a future cost." My battered soul whispered to me. I closed my eyes and tried to shake the thought away.

"Don't borrow trouble from tomorrow." I muttered back at the pessimistic finger shaking inside me.

The wounds from this past year were still too fresh to quell the fear snaking inside me. I peeled myself from the warmth of the hot tub and headed back inside to drown the voices warring inside me with the crackling sound of the fire.