It's a parade!

Having my own large collection of canvas and recycled-content shopping bags amassed over the years I like to bag my own things to pack to the top and avoid any wee plastic baggies for keeping the meat to itself. I pack them full and heavy and one of these days I will break myself carrying them (see: stubborn girl stumbling down the parking lot weaving under four max-packed carry-alls and a 10-lb satchel of corn cob kitty litter)but for now it's alright.

I need time at the conveyer belt to prepare and try to get behind someone; perhaps an older woman with a full cart or an older man with six items and a wallet full of grandchildren.

Last night, after leaving work at 4 and running errands, and seeing an apartment, and landing at the food store at 7, I got in line behind a couple with 15 things and a cart- it was the longest line going. Not enough time and not enough room on the belt. I tried to be patient and not breathe like a ball-strung bull at the starting gate. The man wandered off and the woman coughed into her tissue.

Then the woman turned and smiled and said, "My God! How much room does he have to take?Single file???"

And I laughed and let my impatience flow away as she condensed the 15 items her husband had indeed arranged single file, one after the other looking very well behaved, all the way down the belt before wandering off to the car.

and then

soft as dust falling it breaks my heart
a whisper in song
only a word and it all goes black
just whisper the name and i go back

And i know without peeking there's snow on the mountain tips and the air 1000 feet above the sea smells like the back of a freezer. I walked one night in the so so cold the snow flakes intact one atop another edges frost fuzzy ice pictures on my jacket in the lamp light.

laughing at funerals

Here I sit in my computer chair, laughing.

It is amazing how paralyzing it is when you slide one socked foot along the carpet to turn and stand...

and a sewing needle sinks itself 3/4 of an inch into the meaty part of your heel.

Now the throbbing.

And a little more laughter.

God dang that smarts.


Yes I pulled it out. Put down my bowl and sat in that slow motion way of "What the living hell is stuck in my foot?"

Incidentally, it took some serious pulling to yank it out.

Good thing I got that Tetanus update in September :)

once upon a stove top

I changed purses rapidly before leaving for class Wednesday night. Up on my toes I stretched my arms to lift down my busted at the seams firebox, willing the papers and newly replaced passport squeezed between the detached lid and nestled boxes of jewelry and old cat tags and Sylvia's very first collar not to slip free; balanced it teetering on the top of the floor bound TV and pre-accident reprimanded myself not to bump it over; needed the hook of a white plastic hanger to latch the strap and pull the bag down, catching it mid-air.

In spare time at a red light during my morning commute I fiddled into the front pockets of the purse I was sure I'd stripped bare last spring and dug out an old grocery list and a ticket- UMF (University of Maine-Farmington); Iolanthe (a Scottish troupe); Sat 09/25/2004.

I remember it was very cold that night and we crossed High Street from our apartment to the auditorium/business building with our breath in the air holding hands I bet unless my arms were folded for warth, and at intermission I walked fast back home and ran up the stairs on a cough drop mission because I was halfway into coming down with something nasty and trying hard to not cough on my row mates.

Two weeks ago I destroyed our collander. It's common sense is it not? If a burner has just been turned off, putting a plastic collander on top is going to melt that collander right to the stove.

I didn't tell Boyfriend about it because I'd have to explain why it happened. I'd have to tell him that I just got lost in the past for a little while; that one of those cozy little waves of yesteryear overtook me and I was back in our kitchen in Maine, making supper while my (ex-fiance) ran out to the store for blueberries or milk ; how I was at my future in-laws for Sunday dinner or maybe Christmas and wondering what my life would be like now had I gone through with the marriage; and how it doesn't truly matter because I love Boyfriend and he's my best friend but sometimes I just get caught up in a visit with the happies of yesterday.

Okay, so here is an idea- rather than government keep cigarette smokers in its palm like a money making pet why doesn't it make a move that would not simply line the its own pocket?

It's certainly well known how detrimental cigarette smoking is to the cardiovascular system but cigarettes are supposedly more addictive than heroin. Government knows this. Government also makes a lot of money off smokers. Does Government really want smokers to quit? I don't think so.

Illegalizing cigarettes would be ridiculous. Raising tobacco taxes sky high is awfully hypocritical don't you think? Get the people hooked on something quite addictive and harmful, keep producing it at the same toxin level even though you know its killing the people, then make the candy more and more difficult to get, but more and more lucrative for the suppliers.

Why can't the nicotine level in cigarettes by incrementally lowered all across the board? Is that chemically possible? Is this a completely unsound idea?

going about it

the dreams i dreamed in the days of olden
and time keeps passing
never come to be
and time keeps passing and the places i dreamed
changed without me
and i visit the places expecting the me
i left behind
expecting to find the me i used to be
and the you that dreamed too
the you that made the wind and tasted the salt and whistled my skin
the you that dreamed for me

and time keeps passing and the places they stay
while the dreams come and go
and the me passes by
with my baskets of people and harmonies
that used to be

reignition

For a long time I lost my fire and my passion. I forgot how to dive into life and lick it.

But it's coming back now. It's all coming back.


For a very long time I've done my best at being someone I wasn't ever supposed to be, and now might have the chance to practice being just who I've really been all along.

Remember the paper cuts

I was just typing to Boyfriend on the merits of Microsoft Word.

I have a paper to write today. Well, I've had it for two weeks but writing it took reading up until a certain point in my text; and it took procrastination for days and days hoping to be inspired by an opening sentence.

The days of my college papers were not that long ago, but well before computers in dorm rooms were common place. No one I knew had a personal computer at college in the very early 90's and my computer class that first Freshman semester focused upon the IBM pc.
(don't ask me the model, if that's even the term. oh, poor boyfriend- computer whiz extraordinaire and I had to ask recently what you call the blinking hookup box my cat likes to lie upon for warmth :)

Today I can type my paper into the Word program, save it, pull it up later and add my quotes, even send it to Boyfriend's to finish and print there if this printer decides to be pissy again.

In 1992, I had my electric typewriter and White-Out, and two or three drafts to hand write on note book paper before even thinking about typing on my quality white typing paper. In 1992, if I screwed up badly I had to start the whole page over, even if I was on the very last line and if I ran out of paper too soon and after the stores closed, I was usually SOL.

In 1992, I had to wait for the library to open enabling me to haul home piles of text books covering in crinkling, aged plastic slip covers with cracked egdes and yellowed encyclopedic copies with notes of former loanees falling out from between the smelly pages.

I could grow nostalgic for the hows of writing a paper in the 80's and 90's, but Lordee is this was simpler!

work in progress

when i am deep in the noodles
of duodenum doodles
and school is rotting my head

mounting textbooks of muscles,
fungi, and pustules-
study? i'd rather eat lead

with coffee and soda,
IM's written in Yoda
a fleece covered flannely bed


Give me a hand- I need a final stanza!

My newest endeavor

Massage therapy classes have been keeping me busy after work! We do often get out of class a little early though and it's nice sometimes to get home from a thirteen hour day, versus a fourteen hour day :) I am actually enjoying both the material and getting to know my fourteen classmates better. It is surprisng how much I do remember from previous anatomy and physiology classes- both the RN level college courses taken and passed 11 years ago, and the LPN level vocational courses completed 10 years ago.

One night a week we have Anatomy and Physiology, and Pahtology for the Massage Therapist. One nights is Ethics. One night is Body Mechanics. The fourth is Massage Technique.

Though this is an entirely new healthcare modality for me I feel my partial leg up (and each of my classmates has his/her own) is being already familiar with one form of professional client/caregiver relationship, and generally comfortable with confidentiality laws, medical terminology, and medical charting.

There are so many MT specializations! Going into it, I am most excited about a possible future in massage for the cancer patient, or sports massage for athletes and dancers, or chair massage at office's. Does Boyfriend know how serious I am about campaigning to become his office's personal Chair Massage Therapist?
Therapists can specialize and work in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit)!

This is going to be fun :-)

P.S. Boyfriend is being incredibly, outstandingly acitvely supportive. He is amazing! He is amazing every day, but some times outshine the norm.

No. 2 pencils

This is my second week back in school, this time to become a Massage Therapist.

Oh no, not the dirty kind. Only one person is getting that kind, and he gets his for free;-) Well, unless you count the price of putting up with me.

It's the fifteen month, 750-hour, four nights a week course and I feel like I'm getting in on the beginning of something that is only going to grow. But more on that another day.

I am stalling on getting ready for work- isn't blogging in pajamas and eating stove-popped popcorn with coffee much more fun?

Teeny Testicles of Might

A short mouse story-

I once owned 23 (or was it 26) Fancy Mice.
I started with two, but was stupid that day (well, a lot but we'll just stick to this incidence for now) and forgot all about checking for balls, even though I had hamsters as a kid and as an adult. And rats. Pet rats.
So I bought the little black mouse who was hiding on the water bottle, and sibling.
Little black mouse was already pregnant when I got her, but not showing. Her sibling had a penis anyway and tried to help.
Black mouse was apparently a fertile Myrtle and had 13 babies, all of whom survived.
She was an excellent mother and she also became my best buddy. Who wouldn't need an outlet raising that kind of multiple birth?
At least twice a day during my many visits to the mouse-errarium she would climb up to hang on the mesh lid and crawl back and forth, or stand with her nose poking out until I took her out and let her crawl on me. Sometimes I tried to put her back too soon and she would race the other way back up my arm.

When the babies got to a certain age- the age when they started to practice nookie like a couple of awkward thirteen year olds in the basement. It was time to separate.
Did you know little boy mice can hide their balls? I mean really hide. Or maybe it's that some just descend later than others. After all, people have late bloomers.
I know about the differing distance between urethra and anus in male versus female, and differently shaped abdomens, but try to figure that out with bad eyes and a hellbent 1/3-inch worm shaped tube of squirm.
Picture a giant, furry Tylenol with big ears.
I learned to gently push on the lower abdomen and look for bulges and that helped loads, but inevitably down the road I'd see somemouse previously female humping or chasing somemouse else and darnit if those little boy nuggets didn't suck right back in as soon as I went after the pertpetrator. Not always soon enough.

Some litters didn't make it at all. Some mice were horrible mothers. One litter had been decimated down to two babies and I finally turned them over to the again newly delivered original Momma who adopted them and raised them with her own.

At final count I had 23 mice and possibly ten cages. All the females cohabitated, and each male had his own domicile.
My two favorites were Mommma, and Scruffy. Scruffy was missing patches of fur from the skin rash that broke out among the males while they were still young enough to share a cage- a skin rash I hand treated each day with peroxide and cortaid on q-tips. Scruffy's tail was bent at the distal end from the day he tried to climb back onto me and I accidentally dropped the lid. His ears were incomplete from sibling squabbles before the separation. Scruffy was gentle and also loved to come out and sit in my hand. He would often sleep (in his own, private cage) on top of his bullet shaped unclimbable water bottle with one hind foot wrapped around the wire hanger. Scruffy outlived almost every one.

Today

Last time we met we weren't much more than kids, and I wonder what you would think of the adult me, and I wonder what I'd think of the grown up you;
and maybe, just maybe, we'd be two half-grown kids with beautiful crow's feet and laugh lines and a couple of gray hairs and we'd stare and marvel for hours at how really no time elasped at all.

dreaming

In the wet of water's edge, at the fun place where water slides its coolness up my legs and pulls upon the ends of my rolled up pants only to tickle back down and slip away again sucking on my feet and challenging my balance, I understand the Mermaids and urge the ocean to take me safely too; tempt it by wishing with every step further out to sea. And isn't the moon trail of glitters and sparkles but a beckon, a path to follow all the way? As if in that one place it is safe to walk on water.

I stood under the New Jersey stars missing the Maine stars with tears crowding my eyes and wondering how a place left behind could break my heart so in the very being away from it. But then I also wondered once how it was I fell in love with a state.




Unrelated P.S.

Playing, Where's Katie??? with a small child who's head is lost mid-dress in a sweatshirt is fun and cute.
Playing Where's Karen??? with my self, when my own head is lost in a sweat-shirt mid-dress, is kind of sad.

to the sea, to the sea...

I need to go look at the fluffies in the sky and feel the Fall on my face and think for a little while about where I am now and where I'm coming from and where I want to go and how I'll get there. It's been an emotionally busy week.
The waves coming in and out always take me home.

So you think you can run

So last week the fear of my own body's rapidly creeping girth and fluidity escalated and I decided the time had come for some wickedly serious dieting. It was time for some purposeful calorie reduction and getting this body moving.

As far back as I can remember I've been captivated by the strength, speed, and agility of runners, the power of the human body. All my life I've secretly wished for the legs of a giraffe or a horse- dreamed of four legs whisking me gracefully across the landscape. In my sleep I sometimes dream I'm running effortlessly and wake wanting to go.

I've gone through periods of running, the most successful being last spring and summer when I trained myself on the local (to Farmington, ME) half mile college gym track. I've never been a graceful runner and my lungs often give out before my legs. And I often give up when the knee pain or the inclement weather kick in.

I blame it mostly on the waxing moon but last week my legs felt surprisingly powerful and telling myself how the other guy doesn't matter, it's only about my body and my satisfaction, I let myself go as far as I could again and again.

No great accomplishment there. Not to anyone but me.

I don't know who the hell I am thinking I can run when the practiced runners are gliding by my plodding self, but I know we all have to start somewhere and I know I feel best when my body is lean and strong, and I know I am going to get my skinny back!

I also know there's little better than flying down the boardwalk or the road with the full moon over head and the breath in my lungs and the wind on my sweaty face.

Does anyone have any beginner's running tips or thoughts to share? Is anyone else trying to start a running program?

A link for the animals

I found the home page to this link last night, on http://2carolinacats.blogspot.com/

It is a tear jerker.

Busy Weekend

Interior painting is one of my favorite learned skills. How easy it is to make a room or a home I don't enjoy very much into a place that makes me smile every time I see it; into a place I want to linger.

My back is letting me know it isn't completely happy with me right now; warning me I'd best watch my step- and there are still books to return to the book shelf (at least 100 of them) and knick-knacks to replace and arrange.

It is mostly done though, and I can't wait to wake up to it all in the morning :-)


P.S.
I'm pretty new at this uploading photos business and they are backwards, ending with the photo of the happy painter pre-work (sideways as I forgot to edit first) and beginning with the finished product ;)

P.P.S.
Actually, they are all screwed up. But you are smart! and I know you get the idea:)

Little wonderment

My cousin's baby, now four months old.

How do they do it?

How do they go so quickly from being warm sleepy bundles of cuddly lump, to being interactiving, animated people?

More than anything else, the hope of this is why I wanted to move back from Maine.

My link,

http://postsecret.blogspot.com/

... and share I will. I can't remember any more whose blog linked me to PostSecret, but I've grown addicted and check almost first thing every Sunday. Reading it makes me poignantly feel how very close and how much alike we all are, and yet how very alone and different too; how there is a place inside of all of us known only by ourselves, and the conjoined beauty and danger of that place.

sinking in

Have you ever eaten a mango? Sunk your face in deep til yours cheeks are wet and sticky and the threads of fruit are slicing between your teeth? Held it up to your face to tight you have to close your eyes and hang over the sink, syrup juice freckled with flesh dripping from the tips of your tightly flexed elbows?
Have you peeled off the skin to drag your teeth all the down sucking the meat off with your tongue and swallowing it in sweet gulps?

Who are the big cheeses around here?

Boyfriend gave me his previous digital camera with all the hardware for uploading to the computer and the television; with the battery recharger, the batteries, the bag- he really set me up! Of course, so far it's all nothin' but cats!!

The teeny silver tabby is Sylvia, one of my two kitties. She is 8 or 9. Honestly, I keep myself in denial that she is aging at all.

At 1 1/2 years old she became a rescue from behind a restaurant in Asbury Park, NJ. Two days after she was 'rescued', I impulsively walked into the pet store in Sea Girt, perused the cages, came to a little gray kitty who rubbed my hand and wanted to snuggle- brought my then-live in boyfriend (who is still a good friend) back to see her, and adopted her the very next day.

At first she did not know what to do with a full-time Human. If I got down to play with her, she took it as an attack and swatted my face. No holding, no snuggling, definitely no cuddling up to me in bed. We took it slow, and worked on the trust.

She became my best buddy and once you are accepted by her she'll cuddle on your lap, sleep up against you all night, stand on your shoulders. She barely weighs seven pounds. Never bites, never scratches, never hisses. Even if I am doing something she hates- like clipping her nails or cleaning a wound- she will lie in my lap and growl, but let me do what needs doing.

The little ball of black is Fuzz; or, as Boyfriend calls her, E.L. Fuzz, for everybody loves Fuzz- because they do :) She belongs to my sister, who does not know I'm pimping out her kitty as she sleeps. Fuzz is like a tube of fur covered cartilage. Fuzz is a nut. My sister tells her all the time- "Fuzz, you're crazy."

boring adult's Friday night

Two nights in a row, as the body unwilling to store rest and grow unweary dropped the window blinds on a shortening darkness, the moon struck my chest with its need to be noticed and I nearly hopped in my car and raced my barefooted self to the beach, Peanuts pajama set and all. (Yeah, this mama wants to be sexy, but cozy is my leader.)

The corn shall be mine, all mine!!!!
All five ears I have eaten- I have eaten all five. How can I not when the kernels glide off between my teeth to dissolve meaty and sweet on my tongue?

Random thoughts

These things catch my eye from the side and I turn, always turn, to see the toddler in a stroller smiling and grabbing at things, or the infant laid back half sleeping in a hand carried package.

In Barnes and Noble today, at my corner a metal edge that might have been a satchel of child somehow but proved only to be a hand-pulled cart;
Let the babies go, I told myself. They aren't going to be yours. You haven't led the kind of life that leads to babies.


Tonight I realized my there is such a thing as too much ice cream, two nights of little sleep with a concert in between knocks me flat on my ass, and I don't want the bed all to myself anymore.

Happy Vacuum Day to me

I wasn't sure what you get when you think you are thirty-four, but find out you are still thirty-two, and your birthday comes along. Apparently in this situation, you get thirty-three with the sensation of receiving the life-long gift of two retroactive years. So I am officially thirty-three years old as of 5:35PM today, but feel like I'm thirty-five and getting away with the mother of all youth-fountain tricks. Ponce de Leon, take that!!

What I firmly believe is that March 2006 through late December 2006 was so harrowingly stressful and full of depression and warped changes I emotionally aged two years. At some point during those nine roller coaster months, I began to mentally feel two years older.


I've never had as much fun in a doctor's office (umm, never had fun in a doctor's office ever) like I had this morning with Boyfriend. Needing someone to drive him, he let me be the one. Granted, up until we heard his doctor yell in reference to the facility that still hadn't sent over Boyfriend's MRI results, "I want to talk to their manager! They (meaning us) have been in there (the exam room) since eight o' clock this morning!" -
up until this point there were times we thought me might die forgotten in there and at one point I got slaphappy (neither of us slept well the night before) and started to laugh the kind of laughter that always leads Boyfriend to say, "Will you stop that? You're freaking me out!" (only today he let me go :)
...that kind of laughter that comes for no reason obvious to the non-laughing, but goes on and on and on... . the kind I love to laugh and will lead myself back into if it starts to go away, simply because it's free laughter and feels glue-sniffing good :)

-and at one point I said, "Why don't I take my pants off or give you a blow job because then someone will definitely come in - you never get away with those kinds of things!"

-and at one point we thought about playing darts with the used syringes from the Sharps container on the wall, but neither of us wanted to be the dartboard first.

Several times he apologized for making me sit in a doctor's office on my birthday, and thanked me more often for taking him; but frankly, I had a very good time.

All day I had a very good time.

Thank you Boyfriend; for all you do for me and with me every single day, for loving me so much and so well and wanting my love so much in return, for loving to get my massages because I truly love to give them, for wanting to talk to me and to hear from me each morning and night, for the hugs and the kisses and the snuggles and almost seven months of better life and fabulous days since the moment we met.

I love you ;)

joining the village

It struck me oddly to hear myself calling teenagers 'kids'.
It struck me very strangely when traditional college students became 'kids' to me.

Now when I look at children the residual trauma at the hands of my classmates is gone, and I see small people who will one day be adult men and women, people who need structure and great role models now so they can be their best and their strongest all life long.

And I find myself stepping out instinctually to guide and protect, to stop rolling balls, to keep them from traffic, to save them from waves or other strangers if need be.

We've all heard, "It takes a village to raise a child." Most of us have heard that doesn't happen any more. But I think it does. Maybe not as overtly with neighbor women calling mothers and hanging out the window, but I know I'm not the only non-parent watching out for the younger ones.

Born Again

Sometimes all I need to remember who I am and to get my head screwed back straight is to be beaten by the ocean for a while and watch my sweatpants float around my legs.

Today was one of those days when my head turned my world inside out and by 7PM I was certain Boyfriend and I were doomed to ruin one another's life, and I wanted the world and every stranger in it to go away. Not knowing what awaited me but certain the fix was lying in wait, I headed to the inlet- my old haven where down among the rocks and wave-bathing barnacles I could be a mermaid in paradise and solitude, just another piece of the sea.
I climbed out once last year but my 30-ish self was unsure and afraid of climbing. Tonight though, the fearless climber was back. So, however, was everyone else- and more graffiti than ever; and a teenaged couple making out in the daylight. The castle had been over-run.
Having climbed back to the surf line I stomped through the sand knowing I'll never return to Maine and leave my family behind again, but wishing and dreaming my self the Hell out of here all the same- houses on my left, people talking behind, and no where truly to run and hide.
Shortly I sunk my hind end into the sand and my back followed quickly, arms crossed beneath my head. If there's one thing I excel at, it's getting sand into every crevice even when fully clothed on a windless day. An ex, and later friend, of mine was convinced my body made sand. He'd find the stuff left behind in his sheets when I hadn't been near the beach for days.
This water has its way and the pools of gathering high tide collecting between rocks lured me out-I didn't mind my tushie getting wet if I sat to dangle my feet, but wouldn't it be more fun to stand in the water pits, and Remember when I used to jump in on a whim fully clothed?- Ah, now where might this be headed?
I grew up at the sea, and I know with my ears when to get away from an incoming wave, and I know how to turn my body to minimize the knock and the splash- and I know damn well how to get soaking wet only in up to my knees.
I could feel the smile on my face, and in my head, walking back to the car, sopping sweat pants sliding down my ass, sand gold and black stuck to my feet and calves.
And then the voicemail came from Boyfriend who hurt his knee playing softball and was in the ER, "Don't panic."-
and all that mattered was that he was okay, and I am so glad to be his Woman, and I can not wait to go spoil him on Thursday- the visit I almost canceled earlier, so blindly certain I was becoming his ball and chain.
Over my bed is a greeting card I bought myself, and framed and matted, of a young girl leaving her roof in flight, jacketed arms outstretched, to join the birds. I stuck a seagull feather under the nail in the wall, and every so often I look at her and quietly fly away myself.

So nice to go

Oh but you're right I am elsewhere daydreaming here only in body paying no attention....

Walking barelegged, August sun hot and dry on my head, feet kicking up grasshoppers with every shake of the dark green-sharp, brown-crunchy grass...
sawmill on my right closed for Sunday, or doors open, men yelling, pickups parked by the dozen...
and a quick run for balance and stability over the uphill roots on the 4-wheeler trail of Day Mountain, shade falling suddenly cold on my cheeks.

bedtime blathering

I'm not sure how I expect to start a blog just before midnight and have the energy to get up at 6AM tomorrow for my healthy breakfast over an educational magazine succeeded by weight lifting and calisthenics with steam left over to carry me through the work day.
It may be a morning of hitting the snooze button, not shaving to shorten shower time, and carrying my toast out the door to eat on the drive to work, where I will be out of steam by 1PM.
Which reminds me how I feel like karma gave me a freebie when my toast falls peanut butter side UP. Sweet:)

These days I feel like I could be something more. I see potential in myself and in my future. Flotsam and jetsam of hope and optimism, old friends; not sure who left whom by the roadside, but what a crazy reunion it could be.

from the mouths of idiots

Last night Boyfriend and I were filling out the calender through September. My birthday falls in July.
I thought about for a minute, and then for a minute more before turning to him and saying, "I am going to be... 33? I am going to be 33 right? Wait- 1974, 7 minus 4 is 3- Yep, 33!"

Sadly, I was quite serious.

and the life in between

Normally, society functions as a set of wheels and we are the cogs- but for a birth or a death we are allowed one at a time or in groups to step out of our places in line while those ahead and behind take over our burdens until we can take them up again.

The grandfather of a dear old friend died over the weekend. It was expected, just not this soon. He had a fall last month and as these things go the injuries took the rest of him down successively.

I have a photo on my dresser of him holding his great-granddaughter, the first child of my friend and his wife, the first child of this man's only grandson. He cradles her in his arms, smiling down face full of glee and pride- beaming, you know?

My dresser's surface is changing, with my values I suppose and with the map of my life. There is the photo of my grandfather holding four month old me, and on the back my mother has written how he loved this photo and carried it in his wallet (it is creased down the center, between him and me) and how she took it from his wallet after he died. I am lying upon his outstretched arm smiling at the face smiling back at me, likely in much the same way my friend's grandfather was smiling down. It is a 3x3 and I toted it precariously through move after move until I found a frame to fit. It's lived on my dresser ever since.

My grandparents took their turns slowly disappearing from my life. I lost them over a period of 17 years rather than all at once. I think of them each now and again, but doesn't an event in another's life also call up your own past experiences?

On my dresser is the photo of my 26 year old mother holding me to her chest. She kept it on her own dresser until she decided when I turned thirty the time had come to pass it down.

I have a picture of my cousin's new son staring wide eyed at his father, and a photo of my four year old self in 70's era piped shorts and bedroom slippers sprawled across my father on a lawn chair on my great grandmother's Florida yard. We must have been watching for peacocks.

Work is allowing me to slip away to attend the Thursday services in Pennsylvania and I am grateful for there are certain decisions I have made along the way and once upon a time I knew I would do whatever I could to be there for my friend when the time came to send his grandfather off peacefully.

Because don't we do that for each other, for our friends? We are there to celebrate the births, and commemorate the lives before the deaths, and for everything in between.

The price of fear

I am in a self imposed painful place just now and afraid of self destructing because of my self inflicted fear.
What a thorny circle.

My last relationship started out with me madly in love, albeit occasionally crying and feeling neglected- but I stayed, for almost four years, because I loved him and I knew that in his own way he loved me. Even if his way didn't fulfill my emotional and social needs, I loved him and he was my man so I stayed and nearly married him. It took three severe panic attacks and losing 15 pounds spontaneously to realize that just maybe that relationship wasn't truly the best thing for me.
Most of this you have all heard before.

In December I met a fabulous man, a man who was all my dreams and fantasies rolled into one and wonderfully real and exactly what I needed. After nearly one year's hiatus each from dating, we were ready and we quickly fell closely together. We couldn't believe our good fortune.

After a while I started to notice little things that reminded me faintly of my last relationship but I didn't want to speak my doubt. Boyfriend had been hurt a lot in the past and I didn't want to hurt his feelings. But these things, these things they festered in me fertilizing the doubts from sprouts into great trees with deep and gnarled roots and suddenly one day when I was scared of being hurt down the road and more scared that I might be unhappy one day and hurt Boyfriend, I decided the best thing for both of us would be to leave him now- even though every time I was with him there was nowhere else I wanted to be and even though every time I was not with him I missed him and looked forward to the next visit.

And so I broke up with him only to hear the one thing I so desperately needed to hear but was afraid to ask for- he was madly in love with me and thought I felt the same.
Well, I did.

And off I tore to his house pushing 80mph in a 60mph zone, and then in a 50mph zone. And had the wisdom at least to plead straight from the heart. And he loved and wanted me enough to let me stay, to give me another chance.

If I hadn't broken it off with him in my confusion we could have happily talked about wanting to marry each other without it being peppered with his fear that I will dump him again some day. I wouldn't now be riling with fear myself that maybe I scared him so much we won't recover from it. And now I am backpedaling furiously and starting to feel a little desperate to do all I can to reassure him my gigantic mistake sacked my own fear and showed me how much he does love me and how much I love him- how unless he breaks up with me or does something undeniably horrid I will not leave him again.

I can ask and tell him anything. I knew that before I flipped out. I know that now. I just don't want to bite my own nose off again out of fear of the fear I gave him and guilt for hurting him.

Oh, what a thorny circle.

Showing off again

Me holding my cousin's son on Mother's Day.

Everyone was concerned I wouldn't be able to eat if I had to hold him much longer.
Have to hold him?
Eat?
HA!!
What's food when you have an infant on your chest?
He is about six weeks old now, and so alert! How wonderful to see those big, gorgeous eyes wide open and looking about.
How wonderful to lean my face down to nuzzle, smell, and kiss his precious sleeping head :)

traveling back

(a post I began last week, figuring I'd 'finish' it later- silly me; muses can't often be reawakened; here it is as left)

While photographing the things I love in my days, montages of my homes are invariably recorded for posterity but often before I move away I'll purposely capture each room before the packing begins so that years later I can rewalk it by looking at 4x6.

Last night before bed and after hanging up with boyfriend I replaced the Mosby's medical encyclopedia directly beside a packet of stashed motley photos. Of course they were excavated and there lay pictures of my home with Harold, his jacket lying near the air compressor in his studio, the latex dust on the floor tiles; my Christmas garland and icicles strung upon the over hang.
There was my home with ex-fiance, his science fiction novel on the kitchen table beside my book of wedding plans; and later on, as I tucked one photo behind revealing another, his face popped out at me; my engagement ring proudly displayed in pictures to send home to my cousin, my kitty splayed in the sunspot windows she loved.

the life inside

I lied to a professor once. He asked me, regarding the way I moved when walking, if I was a dancer and I, answering from my heart before thinking, said, "Yes."
"I can tell," said he.*

My disclaimer before attending weddings is that I do not dance. Don't even take me to the floor. Stage fright sets in and I begin to swivel into the ground.

But I dance in the car, on the bar stool, in my seat at the reception. I sit here at the computer now jolly to have accidentally found a favorite song the name and artist of said song unknown- but here it is on my headphones and the butt is grooving, the hips are shimmying, the head, neck, and shoulders in groove.

Music moves me deeply inside and there I am such a dancer, but in public my legs lock up and I am afraid to let it show.

I love to watch the human form in motion. I study how others walk, envy the strength of those who run, marvel at the sculpted musculature in cyclist's legs, and diviningly hope to be a fluid dancer in my next life.

I am a dancer in my heart in this one.







(taken blindly this sounds like it could have been a pick-up: you'll simply have to trust me that it certainly was not :)

Stuff

Ah, the sleep of the emotionally winded. Yes, that was our Sunday nap.

I have met two people in my life who warn they may fall asleep in the middle of a terse discussion. Self preserving narcolepsy? Things get too distressing and they just pass out. Do you know anyone like this? Have you ever witnessed it?

My sister's boyfriend is looking for an adjective that rhymes with 'forty'. All I come up with is 'warty', and I doubt that's what he has in mind. Any suggestions?

After mentioning to a coworker that I slept only 2 1/2 hours last night due to insomnia and was a wee bit punchy today, I directly turned around and walked into the edge of the door I'd just opened. "Open door and walk through."
No, walk through the opening.
Well that changes everything.

Whilst occasionally straying to skinny or chubby, I usually stay in the center at thin. I also stopped growing at age 12, and only two years ago threw away a pair of Camp Beverly Hills comfy pants my mom bought for me in 1987. This all means I am a 1.5 beer queer, and I could use some rappelling gear for tackling the top shelf at the grocery store and the top cabinets in my kitchen. It is not unusual to find me crouched in my socks on the outer of edge of the stove, tossing ingredients from the cabinet onto the counter, or hanging off the freezer aisle at Shop Rite winging yogurts down into my cart.

Stop that train!

I know he never meant it, but in my last relationship with the man I almost married I was very lonely a good deal of the time for the final two years. Before we moved in together there had been instances of emotional neglect- except for the times when he got a rise out of teasing me with affection he didn't intend to give, I know it was just inexperience and ignorance. I was his first girlfriend, after all.
I spent two more years bending myself into pretzels, searching and pleading and changing my work schedule three times even to the tune of six months of insomnia with daytime hallucinations trying to get my emotional self satisfied. By the time he started to try, by the time he started to pay me some direct attention, I had cheated on him, dropped 10 pounds from stress, and had my packing and my escape strategy planned. Leaving meant I would hit rock bottom but the risk of losing my self sufficiency and all the tangibles I had worked for was worth getting away from the pajamas I barely got out of any more and the life I had dropped out of months little by little over the last year.
He had his side of it too, but mine is the one I know by heart.

A woman at work, a fellow nurse, gave an analogy that fits why I broke up with my boyfriend yesterday. She said if you don't discuss things when they come up they turn into something you don't recognize and take over and then (you) are like a runaway train.
I was that train yesterday for too long afraid to say I worried about not being all I thought I should be, afraid to ask for what I needed and hurt his feelings, so afraid of potentially being lonely in love again.
It was one of those very terrible afternoons and by the end of it we had reconciled; we were able to sort it out and he was going to let me stay. Thank god, because I was terrified he wouldn't.
Even though all the signs were there, I needed to hear and be sure that he was in love with me and that I was enough for him. I needed to know before I let myself be fully vulnerable. Now I know it's safe to let all my love fall on him.

If it hasn't previously been apparent, I can be a total idiot and my own worst enemy sometimes, but I think sometimes we all can be like that and I am learning from experience to forgive myself because we all accidentally hurt each other, and we forgive.

And after all the emotions we had been through yesterday, we curled up and napped together and slept very, very hard.

:-O

This afternoon, walking to my car, I heard a small voice yell out, "Hey lady!"
and turned to see a brunette pipsqueak looking up at me.
"Remember when we saw the ducks here?" she asked with an earnest grin. Startled as I was to have this childhood friendliness bestowed upon me- me!- I only ambled out the best smile I could muster and agreed.
"Have a great day!" she yelled as I got into the driver's seat, and again as I slowly- oh ever so slowly with a sundry of children rolling about the parking lot on all sorts of wheeled things- drove away feeling blessed to be given her attention and thinking,

When did I become a 'Hey lady'?



Sadly, later in the evening I caught myself saying out loud as I polished off a bowl of tuna I covered only yesterday,
'It would be a shame to waste such a lovely piece of foil.'
Apparently while I disparagingly shopped the matronly sole petites section of Kohl's tonight, I indeed became a senior citizen. Guess I'm good for the discount at Friendly's now.

9:55PM

Three cats in the living room ,all lying on their tummies facing West.
At least until I laughed musingly at them and one turned toward the South.

Joyfully rolling away

I took down the photo of my boyfriend and I taken by him on the beach that greeted me on our monitor every morning and afternoon and replaced it with a black and white (really mostly gray)picture of a wide open road I found on someone's Flicker site. I don't remember whose site it was, or even where the picture was taken. I do know it sheds a light on the freedom in me to be greeted by a road-to-anywhere.

The open road is a theme with me and in unplanned fashion I've gathered photos of them over the years casually finding ones that left me feeling I could roll away on them if I could just get onto the page. I've snipped and clipped, and taped greeting cards to the fridge. A favorite of mine was a wee little colorful van laden on top with bushels and suitcases heading away into the wonderful unknown. Somewhere in my storage unit it is packed away. How very many times I stood afore dreaming of where I would go inside that very van, fantasizing about the next time my bags would be packed and I could be on my way- away to somewhere I've never been.

I won't be rolling far away any time soon- but I am going camping Memorial Day weekend and can't wait to break out my tent, build a campfire or three and hike until I feel the hills in my bones and smell the trees and dirt in my sleep.

Baby sitter needed

There are moments in my life when I wonder how the hell I've gotten this far without accidentally killing myself, and whose brilliant idea it is to let me out on pass every day.


Like when I get the bow on the back of my scrub top hooked on the doorknob at work all day long.
Like when I get the entire office in a panic over something important gone missing- only to find it in the very first place I looked.
Like coming out of the grocery store to find I left my car trunk yawning open the whole hour I was shopping- or when I lock the car door but leave the window down.
Like when I've spent thirty minutes searching for the glasses that are perched on my head.
Like when I almost get my leg caught in the revolving door.


Do you have those moments? I have a lot of those.

Bingo , my cookie

Ah, for the love of Nissin: 8 packages of cellulite- I mean, curly noodles- for $1.00!
Though mixed in the pasta of the package I just boiled is something soft and light brown. Looks like soggy bread, feels like cheap meat. It doesn't have antenna or look human so I am pretending it must have been something stuck in the pot I pulled from the cabinet. Mind over suspicious looking matter. Goes well with my five second rule.
(There is no time limitation however on sweets- I will eat cake icing out of the garbage if it was just put on top cake side down. Very sad, but sadly true.)

Over the last two days I've initiated one and stumbled upon another conversation about personal 'oopsy' snack rules (all solely involving women):
1) Before putting away a new pack of cookies, all broken ones must be eaten.(my momma taught me that :)

2) Before putting away a new carton of ice cream, all melted contents must be devoured. (far be it from me to tell you not to 'forget' it on the kitchen counter until all the contents are melty!)

3)Man cannot live on bread alone?
I am not a man but neither could I; now make it Ring Dings and coffee and we're in business!

What is the strangest or most disgusting "mystery item in my food" experience you ever had or heard? My grandfather's story of the human tooth in his scramble eggs was legendary.

Bless the cleavage

Have you seen the ad for the new Victoria's Secret bra?

One bra, three straps- One hundred ways to wear it? Are they kidding? I have a hard enough time figuring out how to turn mine into criss-cross or strapless. With one hundred options they'd be sending a search party out when I didn't show up for work by Wednesday only to find my naked self tangled and half choked in bra straps on the bathroom floor.
And if you wear it all at once, where the hell does the third strap go?
Ah, I know; Around the throat of the man who is telling you to hurry up in the bathroom.

beginning a Saturday

On the phone with you I hear you laugh and dig knowing how your lips are curled and parted heart shaped and your cheeks balled up.


My bedroom windows are draped in powder blue and misty white sheers, my bed in a white quilt dotted with tiny cottage blue flowers over new, white cotton T-shirt sheets and a white cotton blanket striped at the top with blue, and the springtime morning sun flowing in when I awoke at 8AM lit the whole place up welcoming me wholeheartedly into the new day.

Careers I've Considered

1) Horse Trainer
2) Farmer
3) Editor
4) Midwife
5) Veterinarian
6) Horticulturist
7) Massage Therapist
8) Personal Trainer
9) Flight Attendant


When my girlfriend and I were 18, and I was home on Christmas break, we stayed up all night one Saturday just because we hadn't ever done it before- not the whole night, not together as bad-girls-with-a-car. (I think we did bad-girl things like go to Dunkin Donuts, drive around the mall parking lot, sit at the beach and talk about boys- yeah, a couple of bad asses we always were).
Now, I insist on being home by 10PM on a work night, and she won't go out after 8:30PM on a weekend.
What the hell??

Addendum- to acknowledge the crappy boss and depressing job this friend has sucking the wind out of her- and adulthood is great for getting to eat what I want for breakfast and choose my own pets, but it makes you want to sleep in the spare time instead of staying up all night to party. Boo-Hiss.

Sleeping with strangers

In my college days, I was a flasher.
Get the girl out of the Catholic school, away from the over protective mother and ten PM curfew, and the top will come off. Outdoors. Any time she can find an excuse. Such as, it's night time and she is outside. Such as, she drank a wine cooler lying flat on her back and- spilled.

I also slept with several men.
There were one homesick-lonely-girl one-night stand my first month away, and two boyfriends, my freshman year. There was the boy who acted very kind and even snuggled away two full nights- the first time I ever spent a night with a boy, actually- only to tell me when I wouldn't have sex with him that sex was all he had been after.

I also just slept with a few men.
There was Bo, the African American fraternity brother to my roommates'sorority- he came to visit, we wound up talking, he respected my wish to keep it platonic, and once too tired to talk any longer we curled up side by side, his one arm comfortably around me, and slept.

I met Rob shortly after midnight one Saturday morning when he was walking behind our apartment and I was looking out my bedroom window. We greeted one another, and eventually I invited him inside where we played cards and conversed until the time came to sleep fully clothed stretched sideways across my twin bed.
We never hung out after that. But once in a while on a walk through our development I'd pass him catching a football with other guys. We'd say hello and nothing more and that was enough for both of us.

There are things you get away with in college. It's a world between worlds with its own set of rules and at eighteen I had boundless trust. I didn't yet comprehend that people will cheat you and break you to get what they want and need.

I was utterly susceptible to friendship.

Isn't it great?

I am crazy about this part of my life.

I look at these friends of mine, these men I knew as single college age boys, and I see grown men with wives they love and houses they tend. I've smoked cigars, watched porn, fielded guy-talk, sampled scotch, stayed up all night talking with them; philosophized out way through early adulthood, nursed break-ups, heard the husband side of marital discord and rough times; and I watch their happy pot bellies, pot bellies of weekends spent painting porches and laying floors and visiting in-laws, shrink and grow and shrink again; I have come to know their wives and call them friends;
and I hold their babies close to my face breathing in that fabulous smell, greet them when they are born and watch them grow and learn to walk, and love them dearly too.

Sometimes I really love this life.

I am in love

This is my cousin's son, their very first child (the cousin with whom I am so close we sometimes forget we aren't sisters). He was born on his due date, April 2nd, and I had the sweetest pleasure of meeting and snuggling his six hour old little self.
I miss him already and am going back to visit them this Wednesday.

the spirit

When I smell a horse barn or pass a field of one or ten, something lights up in my heart. When I see a horse running across a field unburdened, tail parallel to the ground, or a beast of lightning and heaven's breath galloping pure fire down a beach transporting some blessed rider, tears fill up my eyes.
And every single time I listen to the song Wildfire* I cry just a little when the horse is lost in the blizzard because the death of a horse just breaks my heart the way it always broke my child's heart watching nature documentaries to see wild mustangs captured.
I cry at whale song recordings, and when giraffes run; but horses flying crumples my heart up every time.


*Michael Murphey

Spring

Spring comes different in Maine. For months there is a progression of increasing mud with the ongoing threat of new snow. There are plow piles that linger in the afternoon shade, in the land of the morning sun, that linger on into June. There is the patch of flattened, soggy, brown grass that is first to show through the snow in March and gallops the heart with joy at the sight of ground last seen in November. There is the flagrantly bright flame of green sprouted boldly naked along the tarry black river's edge, the cars parked two tires in the roadside mud, owners gone off in thigh high boots hunting still curled fiddleheads. There is the May morning you step outside and your entire body screams with exhuberance your lungs and fingertips can't contain for overnight the buds have popped on every tree and there is color in your scope once more.

Bear with me

Very recently I read that the intense feelings of anger during PMS might be caused by low blood calcium levels. Okay, for all of you who experience the cramps and actual menstruation there is much else to cause frustration! But for me, who only gets the hormonal fluctuations, perhaps this could be legitimate. Well I am taking Calcium supplements now- time will tell if the month can pass without me turning cannibalistic again. Just in case, there are chocolate chip cookies on hand to stave the madness!

I pulled into a lot around the corner from my apartment to jot notes on my weekend's roving thoughts before they were lost amongst the post-weekend unpacking and resettling.

To my ex, thought passively, musingly, as I lay in bed this morning:
_________________________________________________________________

You were almost my husband. Had I stayed we would be 2 1/2 months shy of our one year wedding anniversary. It would be you sleeping beside me. Maybe we would be waking in the same apartment and I would be a college student still, almost done with my third semester. I would attend your work functions greeted finally as your wife. We would pick blueberries in your grandfather's backyard and I would still be helping you chop and stack firewood at the end of summer. I had a life up there the only way and the only one I ever will have.
I am at full peace now with my decision but in leaving you I learned something about trust and staying the distance, about watching my love's back and being his best friend, about the strength and importance of what I've got versus the glittering mirage of what could be, about the beauty that comes from sticking together through the day to day grit; about the selflessness sometimes required by 'for better or worse'.

Waxing nostalgic

I can't wait to grow up so I can:
Go to bed whenever I want. (Some nights I wish I was allowed to go to bed earlier.)
Eat whatever I want. (lowfat cottage cheese with fat free yogurt and almonds? Baked potatoes with ketchup? Is this the wild diet I had in mind?)
Wax my upper lip. Now that never figured in to my plans.
The hairs come in darker now; still soft, but dark enough that I look like a thirteen year old boy working hard to earn his first shave.
I bleached for years until my upper lip itself started having pigment reactions in the sunlight. That wasn't going to do.
So I bought the tape strips. (gotta love Sally Hansen- the woman of my dreams)
Ow. And ow, ow, ow.
Now that I know how good it feels, after sticking the strip on my lip I pause wondering if perhaps I could just leave it there like an absent minded accessory. Eventually I cringe and rip- and yowl.
My aunt knew people who put in invisible fencing for their dog with an electric collar. The dog knew he could jump the electric fence but he would get zapped and it hurt him. So he would start way back in the yard and begin to run toward the fence, yowling ever louder the closer he got til he sailed over, got zapped, and was done.
I think of him while standing at the bathroom mirror with an adhesive strip stuck well to the tiny hairs on my little upper lip.

Don't eat the rope!

After my first bite of swordfish last night I frantically waved my boyfriend's venture-some fork away from my dish.

After my third bite, I burst out laughing and was greeted with puzzled looks by my table-mates.

The waiter was anxious but I assured him nothing else was needed.

The manager came over to appease, but was reassured his guest was happy and full and even amused.

I have never encountered such texture in fish. It was bizarre but I will attempt to explain.

When it entered my mouth it was dry on my tongue and exceptionally tough to chew- try as I might, my teeth could not be forced through. The more I chewed, the tougher and drier each piece became and swallowing it was near impossible- it was like trying to wash down a bolus of sisal.

Even now I am laughing remembering how it felt in my throat!- a wad of entangled, moistureless fibers.

I forgot to mention- Tasteless. No flavor at all.

I didn't complain one bit, hadn't a complaint on my tongue (a wad of sisal fish, but no complaint).
The salad bar was phenomenal, the coffee fresh, my potato and broccoli tasty and filling. But the manager, after honestly offering anything else I wished from the menu, voluntarily took the whole meal off our tab.

Thank you, Charlie Browns!

The pot of change

Rolling up on my 33rd birth anniversary I wonder if it is too late for me to get off the pot- that is, if I should have gotten off long ago. Maybe- but we each have our individual marinating times and every life and situation, though similar to several others, is individual.
Have you ever heard the same line of advice multiple ways for years but never had it touch you inside until one day you are in a symbiotic emotional place or the words are twisted just right and suddenly it all clenches and you embrace it with understanding?
I got raped eleven years ago. I found out 15 years ago that I don't have a uterus. These two things have ruled my life ever since from being internalized to being burdens promoted to badges. This year has finally become time to let go.
Maybe becoming a wife and a mother are like other circumstances - I can't chase them down. Hot pursuit is like trying to run in socks on ice. I am afraid if I take other paths I will overshoot my chances for marriage and motherhood, but perhaps if I get busy living the rest of my life these things will come my way.
With a little shame I realize not having a uterus has been a crutch for the last 15 years. Now that I know that my thinking can change.

Give me a cookie...

Give me a cookie, and back the fuck up. Better yet, for your own safety, throw the damn thing from five feet away- just aim well or I'm coming after you.

So- fucking- cranky! It has got to be the hormones. No uterus, no periods, hard to tell... but the bloat, the completely unnecessary crying, the intense chocolate cravings...

and the one day a month I want to fucking eat people.

No reason for it- just recognize the red pupils, toss me something chocolated, and get the living hell out of my way. Quickly.

Me? Rooted??

It is true that growing up I wanted to be a gypsy, my idea of a gypsy being an intriguing woman sporting a kerchief and all her worldly goods in a knapsack, living the nomadic life with a horse-drawn cart. Horses, travel, a nifty little knapsack (of red cloth) on my shoulder: I was all for it.

Albeit within tiny borders, I've done my share of job hopping and traipsing since high school. Think me a fool for not recalling a former address, but only until you count how many I've had in ten years. It seems every two years I am ready for a move, and every three years ready for a complete overhaul. If I suddenly cut all my hair off, look out. It means I'm itching for ditching my life, and my hair was simply the first thing I could control.

It seems my priorities have shifted now. I am choosing to remain in NJ and move no farther away than SE Pennsylvania to stay near my family and near my lifelong friends who have families of their own now. I want to be a part of their lives and watch their children grow.

Having been stationery now for only one year, I wonder if the urge to move and wander will rise again in 2008 or 2009. Will I be more disappointed in myself if it does, or if it does not?

price of tea in China

news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070316/pl_nm/usa_crime_plame_dc;_ylt=AlgVhHFoUFhEJ6JijmFGXX2WwvIE

The much-anticipated testimony by the striking blonde, the subject of a photo spread in Vanity Fair magazine, drew dozens of reporters and photographers and was shown live on cable TV news channels.


This article concerns Valerie Plame, a former CIA spy, and what she has to say about her cover being blown.

This has what to do with her physical appearance? Do you ever, in a national associated press article, read, "Donald Trump, a chubby man with a bad comb-over", or "Nelson Mandela, who certainly must still have a lovely, well defined chest".

Am I over-reacting?

Help me come up with some funny comparisons!

No babes in the brush

My mom has a favorite Christmas photo of me. I am two and one-half years old with shiny, wispy dark brown waves of hair and clearly blue eyes. I sit on my aunt's living room floor on one leg, the other extended, in my red calico dress. My eyes are open startlingly wide. My mouth is agape. In my hands is a freshly unwrapped Madame Alexender 'Victoria' doll an in that moment someone caught the pure amazement and joy on my face because in that first moment, I thought she was real.

I have always wanted babies of my own. Always since I was old enough to know what a baby is, anyway. When I was ten I watched the parenting shows on television. In puberty I started reading Parenting magazine. In my teen years, when my menstruation had not come though everything else had begun at age eight, I secretly waited for a flutter in my belly hoping it had not come because I had been lucky enough to get pregnant just before it arrived.

It never arrived. When I was 17-going-on-18, the final test for the cause of my amenorrhea was an abdominal laparoscopy. I went into day stay and under general anesthesia. My pelvic cavity was reached through an incision in my belly button, and a camera was inserted.
They found two normal ovaries, two healthy fallopian tubes, and a band of fibrous tissue where my uterus should be. Well.

My maternal grandmother who was like a second mother, a close aunt, a giant cousin to me, sent over a cluster of freshly picked pansies (her very favorite, and it was late May) for me. As a grown woman I understand that she understood, and empathized with me. She has been gone for six years now, but I wish I could give her the appropriate thank you now.

My mom had a very difficult time getting pregnant with me, her first of two children, in 1973. She remembers my grandmother screaming, "Yippee!! Yippee!!"when they got the good news.

I always wanted babies. I wanted to have four or more children. After the news of the missing uterus I kind of gave up- grieved a little for the last 15 years over the children I will never conceive.

About three years ago I was hit with what must be the chiming of the biological clock, suddenly possessed with an intense drive to get pregnant. It mattered naught how I told my body, "But we can't!" I have for years had occasional dreams of being pregnant, but they were unrealistic.
Two years ago the dreams became very realistic. I would have a belly full of fetus I could feel. I would see the baby moving, touch the kicks, revel in being pregnant. I never dreamed my way through labor but would either awake before labor began, or suddenly have a baby and begin to nest and shop and gather.

And invariably wake up still feeling like I was a new mom with a new baby, still warmed inside and ready to get up and go gather that baby to my side, or look down and marvel at my belly. And then I would realize it was all a dream and want to sob through the day every time I saw a mom with an infant.

That was part of my intense depression last summer- I finally accepted a lot of things, once I finally realized what was upsetting me, like my rape and my inability to conceive.

These days the urges have thankfully subsided but I am caught further and further in a fold. I want to be a parent. I need to give myself over to that responsibility. But I am almost 32 and marriage hasn't happened yet. There is no reason to believe it is even on the horizon. (yes I was engaged last year but I had forced it, when it was wrong for both of us). I see parenthood slipping further and further out of my reach and I am becoming actively afraid the chances are going to slip on by. Do I risk further romantic relationships and just decide I am going to adopt and whomever I am with when the time comes can hang on or bail? Do I continue to wait around hoping a healthy marriage will come my way? How long do I wait?

I think about foster parenting. I have thought about it for ten years. Would I be allowed to do it living alone in a two bedroom apartment with a crappy car and little if any savings? I am thinking of keeping a two bedroom apartment for myself so there would be a child's room available.

I think decision time is rolling, slowly, up my highway.

"...you get what cha' need."

I've oft learned that sometimes what I have wanted for so long, what I really and truly need, what I have asked for and prayed for again and once more, what I have strove for down a hundred wrong alleys, comes to me after all but not in the anticipated packaging.
Sometimes I find myself cherishing something new, finding it fulfills empty spots in my heart and makes me a better person, only to realize it's something I've been chasing down in all the wrong forms for years.

I have also learned truth in, "When the student is ready, the teacher appears." (oh, not verbatim!)
I have found teachers in the most unexpected places and fashions. So it goes that as people are often teachers in disguise for me, examples whether or not they know it, I am just as likely to be at teacher for someone else.
Along this grain I have discovered that I am adult now, and children are watching. One afternoon I was typing with great difficulty- one of those off days when my fingers seldom found the intended key- and I was otherwise the High Priestess of Cranky that afternoon. I typed, and I grumped- out loud of course.
And was quite ashamed of my behavior when the young girl across from me proclaimed to her mentor how very well I typed, and shouldn't she take a typing course herself?

How frequently we are examples for others.

VAGINA

Did I read that correctly? Were two 16 year old young women in New York suspended for saying the word 'vagina' in a school play? Were two young women actually kicked out of school for a few days for appropriately referring to a beautiful part of the female anatomy?

What were they supposed to say? Pussy? Cunt? That special place down there?

Labia, clitoris, cervix... HA! Are they shocked now?

Yes I have heard only one media bent and quite brief angle of the story, but I can think of no logical or educationally solvent reason for disallowing a young adult to respectfully use medical terminology.

just thinking today

In my early twenties, my life was an unmitigated disaster. I formally dropped out of college at age 20 and while floating worked well short term it would no longer suffice when I was 21 and recently moved back home after the rape and kidnapping. I needed a sense of control.

Before the rape I was fully free spirited and ultimately trusting. I was happy, silly, fun and often nicknamed giggles. Sound annoying? But I was intelligent, too, and an excellent listener. I would certainly go for the buzz or get sociably drunk at a party but more often I would drink slowly for two or three beers then switch to water mingling all the way and lingering until the wee hours savoring the borderless talk among the sobered up somewhere between 2AM and dawn when everyone else had gone home.

The change within myself was coldly palpable. Pre-rape and post-rape; the entire escapade covered 16 or 17 hours and part of me was killed. The very hour of escape I recognized the death of the who I had been for so long. I didn't know it would take years for me to recognize the new me.

From the very thick of it I once wrote how strange it felt- there was a personality inside of me but I didn't know who it was and I missed terribly the girl I had been. The man who assaulted me, the people who knowing, roughly, what had happened stood and openly laughed at me when I finally got home; my trust was gone and it would be years too before any of it came back.

Being raped wasn't about sex or sexual acts. Except for the internal bruising, I wasn't afraid to be with my boyfriend again. (He was afraid to be with me though- afraid he would hurt me somehow and being treated differently made things harder. Our relationship was done within the month.) My body was the vehicle but my spirit was raped. His method was ultimate control and what stayed with me over and over again were the fear, anger, and grief.

Shortly after moving back home I cut off all my long hair and took two jobs. I got involved with men who were stronger personalities, men who dictated what I wanted. I needed structure. It would take until I was 24 to have a serious, mutual partnership with someone but when he showed up I was ready.

Within that same time period I took some community college courses, became an LPN, and moved back out on my own.

I swear I've lived dozens of different lives since then- the towns I've lived, the jobs I 've had the hours I've worked, the men whose girlfriend, partner, and lover I've been.

Even at my age it's hard to remember being a teenager- how the moment you are in is the only one, how 25 and 30 truly seem so old and far away; adulthood is so intangible it's impossible to believe your teenaged actions could have any consequence on the far off land of your grown-up years. At the same time, when things are going terribly as they often do in puberty, it is just as impossible to believe life will ever be any different.

In my own times of depression sometimes the only thing keeping me adrift is the knowledge that some day things will improve. I may not always feel like riding through the rough parts to get to the better days but I hang on. Sometimes it is easier to look backward and see all the life changes I've survived than to look forward when the slate is yawning blankly.

Under the Influence (of germs)

The news heading "Iraqi Police Go Missing" becomes "Iraqi Geese Go Missing".

Wandering through the grocery parking lot aiming toward the car I've misplaced I glance over and over at a car that looks like mine but the trunk is open. Obviously it belongs to someone else who must be around the corner lifting full bags to deposit there.
Or, I left my trunk yawning when I got out and that's how it stayed the full 45 minutes of shopping. Good thing the sun came out.

I notice myself picking lint off my left thigh instead of paying attention to the rain dampened curves beneath my 35 mph thrusting tires. I have to remind myself to also look left backing out of the grocery lot car cubicle, then thank luck I stopped before hitting the car behind me once looking left consumed my full attention span.

Me and the chicken broth and movies (the boredom of staying kaput is making my head hurt more) came home where we will stay. Maybe we will hide the car keys on me. If the chicken broth helps out and the key stash is effective you are going to want some of what I'm on aren't you?

maybe not least but hopefully last

Promise after this I'll shut the donut hole for today!

All week I have complained about my boobs and slowly aging body. Standing in the pharmacy prescription drop-off line at WalMart today I remembered I'm being a brat.

My cousin, who reads this blog (Hi Lady! Don't worry- no one will know who you are!) (Hey- I just thought of secret identities and ... remember playing "Undercover Cops" in your double beds? Didn't we play at Grandma and Grandpa's too?)
is eight months pregnant and having been endowed before pregnancy is now ready to give her boobs away to me... to the beggar on the street corner... heck, to the Boy Scout charity drive if they knocked on her door and she could lop those two beauties/beasts off fast enough!

We spoke this afternoon and she mentioned reading my recent blogs. I said, "I was thinking about that and here I am with one friend who has cystic fibrosis and one with multiple sclerosis. I should be happy to be aging normally. Who the hell am I to complain?"

She said, (ad libbing here) "I know Kar', I was thinking the same thing," and proceeded to tell me about a 34 year old woman- a coworker and peer at her school- who was this week diagnosed with breast cancer and in one month will have a unilateral radical mastectomy with peri-operative lymph node biopsy and, if thereby indicated, lymph node removal as well.

Damn.

Handicapped inaccessible

Walking around the inner harbor of Baltimore that first weekend of January, on what was actually our third date, my new boyfriend and I rejoiced in the unseasonable spring like weather and the glory of being able to enjoy it.

We weren't alone- the harbor area was packed and partying with crowds of people- ethnic mix, age mix, lifestyle mix, class mix. In the aquarium alone we each noted at least five non-English languages being fluently, natively spoken.

Strolling along in the sun watching the passerby we occasionally commented. This time it was me speaking and Boyfriend rapidly responded, "I was just thinking the same thing."

A man had gone by as passive passenger in a wheelchair.

If you have ever been to the inner harbor you might recall the sidewalk that half-circles the water, and on the land side of that half circle lie concentric shops- sort of a pretty two-tiered mini mall for tourists. And between the sidewalk and the shops is a short flight of stairs. Unbroken. All the way around.

So if I were pushing someone in a wheelchair I could:
a) try to haul the loaded chair up the steps backwards.
b) throw the passenger over my shoulder and carry him or her up the steps lugging the chair with my other arm, or abandoning it.
c) attempt to carry loaded wheelchair up the stairs.
d) unable to lift carry twice my weight up stairs, simply walk the walk and never go inside.

And if I were alone propelling myself in a wheelchair? And I couldn't walk? And certainly couldn't fly... .

Until I worked with people who depend on wheelchairs for mobility, handicap accessibility or lack there-of was not something I ever noticed. Have you ever tried to pull a 150 pound person in an 80 pound wheelchair over a 4 inch lip through a non-automated single door that opens outward on a five foot deep landing on top of stairs? It can be done but it's a tad challenging.

I see problems but have no idea how to go about helping with a solution

The word is out

This weekend a premonition dawned of why for two years every bra I have bought just doesn't quite fit right. I've been buying B cups. Today I purchased an A cup. And tried it on at home. And went back for a second A cup because apparently -

I get an A.

Today for the first time (that makes first No. 4 & 5 for today) I experienced what other women have squelched about- some bra styles don't even come in A.

Too big for children's clothing. Too small for women's. Too old for the juvenile prints and cuts of Juniors and Misses.

At one time people with obesity had a rough time fitting in airplane and movie seats, shopping for clothes in the one relegated corner of K-Mart. Now there entire sides of shops devoted to Plus-size clothing and when I eat in a booth at Pizza Hut I need to (literally! no truth stretching) sit on my feet and lean forward to eat off the table top.

Honestly, I have noticed improvement in the amount of petite clothing available, and in the variety. Style availability has thankfully ranged beyond stretch-band waisted polyester pants and flower appliqued waist-cuffed cotton tops.

Still, if I had the knowledge and ambition I would start my own clothing line.

Mucous and me, cranky together

I had two new experiences before noon today! Well, three:
Sent home from work (I stayed out sick Tuesday and Wednesday but insisted on going back today), my very first bronchitis diagnosis, and my first ever inhaler!

Granted not as much fun as My First Orgasm; strikingly lower shock value than My First Car Accident.

Now that there is a medical explanation for the teeny bouts of dizziness with limbs weak and wobbling like Jello in the wind, I've been gleefully sharing my revelation with friends. And just last night amidst snuggling after Boyfriend had to lower the sheet we joked about how high maintenance he is insisting to breathe.

Really no big deal at all but kind of fun to have something new because bodies are interesting that way, and now I also feel a tad less guilty for calling out sick (but I still feel like a slacker, and just because I need to rest myself doesn't make it any easier to sit still.)

Whine before bed

I am aging. I am 32 going on 64 and physically aging and it scares the crap out of me. Vanity and insecurity mix poorly with aging and old-maid hood. Oh my aching, wrinkling, sagging head.

I know I should just be glad I am healthy and all the parts I entered with are still attached and functioning-
but for the love of ass implants and Oil of Olay, do the fuckers have to soften and droop?

Apparently the label fell off my weight loss prayers. Or perhaps I mumbled as I am wont to do and 'weight loss, bigger boobs' came out as 'lose the boobs'.

Need a vote for pessimism? Laugh lines. Little sons of bitches! Crikey on a cracker.

bits and pieces

There is so much more I could share but never do- do I look beyond the immediate any more? When the weather calms and my walks of six or seven mind wandering miles resume perhaps the muses will be illuminated again.

Lying in bed Sunday morning my boyfriend sleeping quietly beside me I wanted so much to slip my left arm beneath his dozy head and roll him onto my chest but chose instead to let him slumber on. In short time he did waken and we embarked on our drowsy morning cuddling ritual.

For the first time my partner's body size is close to my own- there is but six inches and thirty five pounds of difference. It is face-sparklingly wonderful. I can hold my lover in my arms in bed or standing rest my head on his chest just beneath his chin; one glance up lands me in a kiss with eye contact and no broken necks.

He chides me often for not fully smiling in the photos he takes and I, wishing he might stop expecting more, explain over and over that when I smile for a camera my little eyes disappear beneath my risen cheeks. Except yesterday, he then said, " But you have a beautiful smile!"
and finally I understood that is what he hopes to capture and enjoy.

Laryngitis is setting in tonight and being the eternal goofball I am finding excuses to talk because my squeak sounds so silly- and you are supposed to strain your vocal cords right? Why just scratch when you can lose your voice completely?

On Thursday I have an admissions interview with a local massage therapy school. If I gain admittance, and full financial aid, I need only sacrifice myself to 15 months of busting my behind and at the end gain a new career. Yea!

I like nursing- but a career in massage therapy might offer me all I like about nursing but lots more of it. Besides, the holistic approach is much more my game. I am excited by the opportunities to branch further into natural ways of healing and patient teaching. I strongly feel human touch affords relaxation and comfort. Heal the emotional and the physical stands a better chance. Heal the physical- increase mobility or range of motion, ease the pain- and the emotional benefits from increased independence, activity and comfort. The components of our beings are tied together intrinsically.

Missing: one pair of boobs

A strange thing is occurring about my boobular area- it is shrinking. Back in the days before smile lines and sagging I was a D cup. The lapse to a B cup made sense as I lost 25 pounds senior year of high school (and another 15 pounds Freshman year of college- yes, the famed 15 only I starved myself instead and dropped it.)- Of course, 1/10th of that came from my chest.
But what is this slip to an A and a half? I am not liking this. Help from the boob gods is needed!
Think if I roll them in fertilizer and wrap them in a copy of Maxim over night they'll get bigger?

What is it?

Not sure what I've caught, but it comes with progressive phlegm and a sore throat,
and sitting at the computer reading blogs and downloading I-Tunes until it's 2AM and I am knocking myself in the eyeball with the headphones and thinking I'm very funny.

Powerful Word

Summertime.

Close your eyes (okay that will make reading difficult) - No, close your eyes and imagine your dreamiest, best ever summer moments.

What did you see?

I remember waking up hot and sticky at 10AM in the middle of the week, or awake in my T shirt and underpants sitting in a silent kitchen in the early morning grey light, the varnish on the chair still cool on the backs of my thighs, humidity seeping under the window sash as the sun rose.

Night time laying goose bumps along my arms and legs as we caught fireflies until the rest of the neighborhood went to bed or curled up necking in sand damp and scratchy, ducking when summer patrolmen panned the shore line with flashlights.

Dancing around the house with my girlfriend singing loudly and bumping hips to the Pointer Sisters' "I'm So Excited" or Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young", Aqua Net perfuming the air, eye shadow boxes and blush brushes scattered everywhere, posing and primping to walk up and down the boardwalk smiling at the gatherings of teenaged boys clustered tightly along the railing, hoping to be asked for our phone numbers and dreaming we'd meet the loves of our lives.

Summertime.

What do you remember?

Things that suck

When you cut your ankle shaving either:
a)right before a job interview or any other activity where blood on your pants is unacceptable.
b)in someone else's shower and you don't know where the bandaids are kept and they've given you the 'good bath towels' to use.

Hello!

http://www.thingsinyourhead.com/

I am falling in love again! Rather I found the above blog today and am immersing myself in a most pleasurable read. Isn't it the grandest to stumble upon an intrinsically touching blog rife with archives? Read and read and read sucking it all up like a pizza crust dipped in milk.
(ha! sneak in one of my eating secrets with a bad analogy!- growing up in my house we had milk with every supper, including takeout pizza; ergo, when I have pizza the urge is strong to snog the crusts in cow suds!)

My BF asked last night if I am addicted to blogs, the reading and writing. Honestly, I paused to consider his query before responding, "I could stop if I wanted to!"; then I giggled.

Your blogs make me laugh and cry; they make me want to be a better writer. (you can see by that sentence the forecast is dismal ;)

I started blogging to encourage myself to write again. I continue blogging because I like to hear myself talk, and because on any given day I just might still have some masochistic readers continuing to show up anticipating my drivel.

Your advice and comments have import. I am sorry I am not a better hostess, but I am really glad you are here.

Some perspecitves of mine

* (if you get bored reading, at least please skip to the end and consider my question- Thanks! )

Currently I am listening to Peter Murphy's 'Keep Me From Harm', which I would upload and post to share with you if I knew how or even could. So much for that but perhaps you are familiar.

My Harold had the cassette and I would borrow it for night runs when we lived two blocks from the sea in Long Branch. After remembering and missing the music for two years I bought the CD (Wild Birds) used from Amazon.com.

When it plays I recall running beneath the stars on muggy summer nights and returning home to Harold in his studio; I recall lounging in the tub last summer caught between a fiance I left, a wedding I nixed, a future that would surely start some day but wasn't showing yet on the horizon, and being popped back into the dating world at 32; a dating world much different from the one I left behind at age 24.

My life has contained two complete alterations. The first was the rape at age 21 when a change was pushed upon me- my life eclipsed over night beyond my volition.

The second time came leaving Maine and I can't efficiently explain the depth of metamorphosis enabled by that decision. I consistently think I am 34 years old, an age yet 17 months away, and wonder if in this year I aged by two. Well birthday 2007 should be a pleasant surprise when I drop a year instead of adding one.

If I look quantitatively at time gone by(e) I am flabbergasted at the speed- wind whipped and dizzy and slightly disoriented. Have you ever fallen asleep on a car or a plane? Have you ever closed your eyes at the beginning of a trip to open them and find you are nearly arrived? The hours flew by and you slept through it all.

But a qualitative look tells me there were years tucked between the weeks. Peak back at yourself ten years ago and consider every change your mind, body and life has undergone during the past decade. Little lives tucked within.

When I start to feel old, when I can't fathom how I got to my early thirties so quickly, when I am shocked to imagine sixty may come quicker still, I remind myself that hopefully there is still all the lifetime I have had remaining ahead of me .

*In the opinion of my great-grandmother, people never aged beyond 16 at heart- at least that was her love age. I wonder, in the center of your heart, the core of who you are- how old are you?

Seeking Advice

So here is the goal:

I want to go to school for massage therapy- the whole shebang that will leave me fully licensed to practice.

I hear that the market is currently saturated with massage therapists; but markets fluctuate and some day there will be a dearth of therapists.

Why massage therapy?
I enjoy touching people therapeutically. Simple human touch can effect wonders. Physical contact and comfort soothes the body and the mind. Soothing the mind fosters emotional health and healing.
Did you know there is such a field as Infant Massage?


The obstacles:

Finances! Once ends are met every month there is little left over if any.

I am near $2000 in debt (nearly all of this being college loans).

My circa 1995 Saturn is nearing both 116k miles, and the crapper.

When I flew the Maine coop last year I did so mid-semester- that will not look spiffy on my transcripts.


My question for you is;
How in this situation do I get back to school?

By the skin of my teeth (Almost!)

Oops- I nearly missed a Saturday but here I am gliding in at 11:12 PM, and mostly only because I finally remembered how to log in through Google, and because my boyfriend, whose laptop I am using, left me unattended for a bit so that he could complete some chores.

Attending my cousin's baby shower today set me, as being involved even secondarily in major life events oft does, thinking about the path my life has traveled.

I've suffered my minor share of bumps and bruises, mistakes, and surprises. My mom tells me now and again that I have 'been through so much' in my life. Now, comparatively my life has been a feather bed. I grew up caucasian middle class in the suburbs- the nuclear family (at least until my parents separated with grandiose enmity when I was 15).

The phrase 'biological clock' was an objective part of my vocabulary through childhood, a rite of passage I assumed I would inherit as part and parcel of womanhood. My body is unaware my uterus didn't grow; my hormonal levels and cycles are within normal range for a healthy 32 year old woman. Along comes age 30 and with it an unrelenting biological urge to procreate that coupled with my emotional and conscious desires for pregnancy and motherhood caused frustration and depression. The urge has thankfully relented, and during that last depression I may have finally come to terms with my inability to procreate; rather, I can now be around babies and not once find my joyous heart puddling into tears of grief.
Rather, I can simply enjoy the babes to my heart's content: my friends in Pennsylvania who now have infants and toddlers tease that the babies are the only reason I come to visit and kindly delegate time specifically for Karen to cuddle and play with the little ones. The two hours I was allowed to keep baby K cuddled on my chest at New Year's is an excellent example!

I've oft wished aloud that I had partied and skipped school in my teens when I had the chance, but truly if anything could be changed I would pay more attention in school and thoroughly apply myself, I would visit my grandmother more, I would never drop out of Millersville University a wee three semesters in.

All the same, as Maya Angelou said in a very different light, I wouldn't take nothin' for my journey now. And as the magnet on my childhood refridgerator said, "I yam what I yam!"
(did you guess it was molded in the shape of a yam? ;)

Garage Sale Cow

Boyfriend bought me my first MP3 player for Valentine's Day (yes, it's the 12th today... details, details... ) (he also uploaded for me one of his Hendrix albums and one of his 311- Hooray!)
(Yummy Hendrix.)
I have heard All Along the Watchtower by Dylan, and remade by others. I have heard other Hendrix cuts. The guitar flowing through Hendrix's Watchtower still wrap around the inner bits of me making them twiddle, float, and dance. Still one of the best things I've ever heard.

Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?
Except I'm not sure how that applies to two adults in their thirties dating in 2007.
My boundary now is no living together unless nuptial plans are well under way. Perhaps cohabitation is the new fornication?

the sound of my own voice

I've begun to think that this age of women being everything can be emasculating. I know I need my sexy, feminine side recognized and appreciated even if I can hang my own mini-blinds, check my own oil, hold my own door, push and jump my own car, move furniture all by myself and paint my own walls.

I am learning, partly on my own but instigated by experience, that I need to let a man be a man; that men need to take care of me (at least a little bit.)

I need to bite my tongue and let him pay the bill. I will earnestly offer once in a while but when he refuses I will let it go.

If he wants to carry my bags I will let him, and thank him, even though I know I can lug thirty pounds of groceries two miles home on foot and partially uphill.

I have been successfully crossing streets all by myself for at least 22 of my 32 years, but if he is a happier man holding my hand and leading me to safety I will hang back and let him navigate.

It is not about being weak, or giving up female power. It is about respecting my partner and letting him feel good. It is about satisfying his needs and in turn fostering our relationship.

erratic saturday streaming

'I remember...' is an extremely powerful phrase in my language. Uttered silently in my head or caught from the voice of another it transports me to places I want to linger, warm places amongst people I loved once, homes decorated where I languished in comfort; age four lying in a sun ray on my grandparents' coal dust saturated low pile rough on my cheek navy green carpet watching the dust motes dance and wondering if they were live creatures wiggling just for me;
racing through the wind on a equine muscles hot in the sun air roaring cold between every hair rushing fresh straight through my body muscles responding to keep my seat up a hill and back down rocking my pelvis to the rhythm suddenly a cowboy and a wild girl taking the plains free and fast holding the pace locking my legs part of the horse smelling of horse covered in horse dirt sticky and grey in a paste on my fingers and face nothing existing but us and the earth.

Some people dream they can fly and awake sad it is not true.

I dream of being pregnant, and of being given a child, and wake up ready to give birth or gather my infant from the crib.

I dream of running for miles legs scissoring smoothly feet digesting the ground in three foot bites and wake itching to let myself loose.

I want to be a giraffe or a leopard or a wild horse with four long muscled legs made for running and soar over the dirt and grass all muscles flexing in one giant scream of living power and joy.