We had another snowstorm come through last week, dumping a lot of wet snow on everything. It snowed all day Friday, stopping just in time for there to be a really pretty red sunset but it started up again early Saturday morning. I awoke around 4:30 Saturday morning feeling that if I were going to do anything I should probably get it done quickly. There really wasn't much I could do, I couldn't get out, luckily I didn't need to. The power went out at 6:15AM. There's nothing like being stranded out in the country during a snowstorm, during a power outage with absolutely nothing to do especially if you are no longer a smoker. At least when I smoked I could light one cigarette after another (sometimes off the other) to wile away the hours. On the plus side of no longer being a smoker is that I haven't had to deal with the panic of what will I do if I run out of cigarettes. The next time I'm in Richmond (if I ever get out of this place) I must see if anyone carries phones for landlines that don't require electricity for anything, they do nothing more than allow you to make outgoing and receive incoming calls.. I have an old phone that I leave plugged in and it will work for 24 hours after the loss of electricity. I also have a cell phone that Kim gave me several years ago but the battery doesn't really hold a charge for very long which really doesn't matter because you can't pick up a signal out here. Kim wants to replace it for me but I hate the thought of giving up that phone because it's such a pretty color. Before I lost phone service I had called the electric cooperative for progress updates, laughing slightly when the recording started with 'Due to current conditions'. Most of the updates would mention that there were 10,000 plus customers without service, extra crews, private contractors and other states linesmen were all pitching in to get power restored as quickly and safely as possible. This electric co-op covers five or six counties but the only location they mentioned by name and gave a description of the problem (four utility poles down) was the only gated community in the county. There are other properties in Fluvanna with gates but they are designed to keep livestock in, not riff-raff out. I wasn't sure if this was mentioned just to give the customers a feel for what the crews were up against or maybe they were being bombarded by calls from this neighborhood demanding to know why they were without power or perhaps they were subtly trying to inform the rest of us that if we thought we were getting out power back before Lake Monticello got theirs up and running then we were delusional. Just outside the den window there's a Chickadee that seems to be spending a lot of its time hopping back and forth across a tree limb and boycat, Perch, not schooled in physics, keeps banging his head against the glass each time he lunges for the bird. It almost seems as if the little Chickadee is amusing itself as it Hammers its way along the limb. It was 38 degrees in my bedroom Sunday night, same as the downstairs temperature. Evidently you actually have to have heat for it to rise. No one has ever frozen to death in 38 degree temperatures but if I did I would probably achieve some type of immortality by making it into a world book of oddities. I just wasn't sure which category and that gave me something to think about for the next half hour. I finally fell asleep and dreamed about the lines in my hands that told a story I couldn't read but even as I slept I realized that wouldn't keep me from retelling it. I woke sometime around midnight. It's strange how loud dead silence is. I wondered if I should put a new 9 volt battery in the radio, they seem to have only a 12 hour play-life. I put in a new battery and lay in bed listening to a station out of Charlottesville. I was good, almost excellent at recognizing songs by their opening music but terrible with the lyrics: You're as cold as ice - your eyes are like broken dice" Who knew? Monday morning I found myself thinking about what would happen if I started thinking about all the things that could scare me and I knew that was something I really shouldn't be thinking about at all but, of course, the minute that thought entered my mind I couldn't get rid of it. Suppose my or one of my neighbor's house were to catch fire, you would just have to hope that the flames and smoke would billow high enough that someone in the firehouse eight miles east of here would see it and investigate. But that is a legitimate fear, it's not like thinking about all the David Lynch style stuff that could scare me. Oh man, wish I hadn't thought about that. Time to prioritize: What would be the first thing I'd do when the electricity comes back on? Number one would definitely be to flush the toilets and hope I have water. The nighttime temperatures have been going down into the lower teens but during the day even when it was snowing the temperatures have been above freezing so hopefully my kitchen sink lines, which I'm sure have frozen, will thaw without breaking the pipes. Second on the list would be to make a real pot of coffee. I've been making coffee on top of the stove but I never seem to get the ratio right. Coffee hasn't tasted good to me since I started chemo so the fact that this stuff tastes like crap really doesn't matter. I couldn't come up with a number 3, there were just too many things to narrow it down to one. It just seems like a decent pot of coffee and flushed toilets make for a nice day. Oh, some heat wouldn't hurt. The electricity came back on this afternoon around 12:30 about 78 hours after it went off. The toilets are flushed, fresh coffee has been made and the heat is on. The cats are looking at me in an almost adoring matter, as if I am somehow responsible for their being comfortable again. I'm so glad I chose to stay here with them instead of going to a neighbor's. I had two invitations from neighbors to spend the duration of the freeze with them; one has a generator the other has a sense of humor. - Location:den
- Mood:warming up
- Music:lost in their overcoats waiting for the sunset
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Last September during all the prelims before starting chemo my height was measured at five feet nine inches. Last week I barely eked in at five feet seven and three quarters inches. Wonder if it was my hair that made the difference?
- Tags:rapunzel
- Location:den
- Mood:sonofabitch snowing again
- Music:got on a lucky one came in ten to one
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It was minus 2 degrees when I got up this morning (two hours ago). The temperature has now risen 6 degrees. Good times. Guess I'll file my taxes today. - Location:den
- Mood:(ice) chipper
- Music:her knees got weak she could almost taste that easy money
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- Tags:slide scanning
- Location:den
- Mood:cold
- Music:young blood is hiding here somewhere if you're looking for something to do
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Yesterday, when I mentioned to my 13 year old granddaughter that when my hair got enough length to it (at least an inch and a half) I planned to dye it light pink and wear the top in hundreds of little spikes. Lindsay's response was "That would be totally awesome and I could have a rocking G'Mall"
- Tags:rapunzel
- Location:den
- Mood:enjoying coffee
- Music:Is back where you used to go if grown-ups would laugh this long
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- Tags:slide scanning
- Location:den
- Music:but when I reach across the galaxy I will miss your company
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Most of my life I've always had hair that hung down across my face and now that I don't I feel like I need to learn how to wear make-up. I do wear mascara fairly regularly. Needing to wear glasses to see anything but especially anything close up, I quickly remove my glasses and hope that I remember where my eyelashes are and feel like I'm ahead for the day if I don't stick the wand in my eye. I've learned that if I can see my lashes before I put my glasses back on then I have on way too much mascara. I've also learned to let it dry before putting my glasses on lest my eyelashes stick to the lenses. My luck with lipstick hasn't been much better. My lips are so thin they're barely noticeable so when I've used lipstick it looks really peculiar plus the lipstick feels greasy and has an odd taste to it. I usually remedy this problem by wiping the lipstick off with my fingers then smearing it across my cheeks. Waste not want not. Years ago, long before I needed to wear glasses, I tried putting on full make-up and the effects weren't very encouraging, as I stood in front of the bathroom mirror I kept hearing Lynn Redgrave (TV remake) saying "You didn't eat your din-din, Blanche." Jennifer had given me an Estee Lauder makeup kit and I knew that it was still somewhere around the house. It could be something I'd be able to use just for practice and, if I were lucky, maybe it came with instructions. I found the kit last night. Oh Ms Lauder, you were so wrong. The rouge stick (shaped like a big kindergarten pencil) had turned from what had been almost a dark rose color to something resembling a rotting tangerine. The eye shadows had all separated and seemed to be just a pile of glitter. The lip gloss, a really nice claret color had solidified and I couldn't even open it. The cream blush had separated and was surrounded by something very oily looking but was really hard and almost resin like. Even the nice brushes had lost most of their bristles. But the biggest disappointment was there was no instruction booklet. I guess 'Lasts Forever' doesn't apply to gifts received for Mother's Day 1978. - Tags:rapunzel
- Location:den
- Music:but you ran out of gas down the road a piece your battery went dead
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Last night I dreamed that I took off my turban and walked into a static chamber. Though there wasn't a mirror to verify it, I could tell by touch that I had far more hair than I could have imagined (nothing beats imagining you're imagining things in your dreams) and I thought Wow! Now I can get that Patti LaBelle hairdo I always wanted. True, after 30 years it might no longer be in style but what the hell, fashion has never been my forte. I pressed all my hair toward the center and pushed it upward. When I left the chamber and finally found a mirror I saw that it wasn't the Patti LaBelle look I'd achieved. I looked like Sonic the Hedgehog. - Tags:there's the rub
- Location:den
- Mood:cold
- Music:running hot, running cold, I was running into overload
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Though I saw 2009 as just another year, I was surprised by how much I dreaded having it end. I woke up last Friday morning with the realization that I hadn't been able to stop time which really didn't come as a big surprise and thought "What the fuck." I had really hoped as I aged (rather rapidly now) that I wouldn't drag a lot of negativity around with me. I've never really thought of myself as a particularly negative person. True, that's my opinion and others might differ dramatically. I thought of myself as perhaps being somewhat reticent but that was probably more along the lines of self-preservation. I had a mother whose favorite saying was "You've got to take the good with the bad" as if life was just one big piece of shit but every once in a while, totally beyond your control something nice might happen, there was nothing you could do about it, just wait it out. It was this attitude, coupled with a bunch of crap on Sally Jesse Raphael that made Jennifer and me contemplate writing a book on 'near-life experiences', scenarios in which you found yourself on the very precipice of enjoyment when the cooler hand of reason snatched you back from any possibility of pleasure. With my mother there probably were a few more things involved than just a negative outlook, an unbelievable amount of bitterness and the constant assigning of blame. When I was two she covered up all the numbers on the set of children's books, rearranged them and told me that if I could find the one I liked she would read it to me but I only got one try and if I was wrong I'd just have to wait until the next day or week or whenever to try again. Years later when I asked about this my mother told me that she couldn't stand reading to me because as soon as she had finished a story (at least I was polite enough to wait until she had finished) I'd say "Well if I had written the story this is how it would go . . . " and it was just too damned annoying. Even to this day I still don't see how anyone would find that annoying. Twelve years later I off-handedly mentioned that I'd like to be a singer. I wasn't under any illusion that I had even a minuscule of talent vocally so this must have had something to do with thinking that if I could sing I had a much better chance of meeting Frank Sinatra, the fact that he was 47 and I was 14 seemed to matter not at all though when I finally saw him in concert when I was 46 and there was still just 33 years difference in our ages I couldn't believe how old he seemed. It was probably at the dinner table that I mentioned wanting to be a singer and I was quite surprised because I had expected my announcement to be met with a flood of derision but it wasn't. Two days later my mother informed me that she had set up an appointment for me to try out for the Richmond Parks and Recreation production of The Bartered Bride. Holy shit, an operetta, no less. Before I could even mutter 'but I only wanted to learn how to sing' my mother started in with how I was nothing but a coward, I was too chicken to even try and after she had gone to all this trouble to help me I was just throwing it back in her face. Coward, coward, coward! and to make sure I didn't chicken out my mother informed me that she would be sending my sister with me 'and you know if you don't go through with it she'll tell me.' I still have no clear idea why public humiliation was preferable to private humiliation. Public humiliation was basically just a one time thing if I didn't go through with the audition I'd have to hear about it for the rest of my life. I went through with it but I still had to hear about if for the rest of my mother's life or almost. Once I moved to the country and it cost 'money' to call me I was no longer reminded of it whenever the mood struck her. I do remember the night of the auditions, there must have been over one hundred people trying out, all with beautiful voices and when my name was called I told the pianist that I knew nothing about music and she said not to worry, she'd play eight bars then I would come in. That really helped. When I finished (I kept thinking that if there really was a god he'd make that big hanging light I was standing under fall and if not kill me hopefully render me unconscious) everyone applauded politely and I walked back to my chair. My sister sat with her face hidden behind her hands. I asked her how bad it had been. She said that you really couldn't hear me, the piano drowned me out (maybe there was a god). It could have been a lot worse. Suppose I had professed a desire to skydive or bungee jump. I can hear my mother now, "Stop being such a chicken. I went to all that trouble to borrow a ladder now get up on the roof. What the hell are you worried about? I held the ladder while you were climbing if you had slipped I would have been the one to get hurt. Jesus Christ, you kids don't care at all what I do for you. It's a thick rubber band, tie it around your ankle and put the other end around the TV antenna. Now jump, goddammit, I'm tired of waiting." I don't know if my former husband was like my mother or just quickly learned how to capitalize on control through humiliation but I do know that it really pissed him off when anyone in the multitude of occult groups we belonged to would say "You know you married your father" and I would respond "Oh thank god, I was afraid I'd married my mother." Ok, so maybe I do have a negative outlook on life.
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- Tags:slide scanning
- Location:den
- Music:I think I'll find a pair of eyes tonight to fall into and maybe strike a deal
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Over the last two years I've frequently awakened in the predawn hours with the lyrics of Golden Slumbers running through my head but I always seem to be hearing the Ben Folds version not Paul McCartney's which is just as well because Carry That Weight would just seem to make it a dietary issue and takes all the fun out of wondering why I'm waking to this song plus The Beatles recording of this is rather jarring and not particularly conducive to sleep. But this song does wake me. It's not like the tried and true little ditty I used to lullaby myself to sleep with when I was a child ". . . . . . going in the garden and eat worms . . . . . . " - Location:den
- Mood:damn it's cold
- Music:with nothing to hold yesterday's gone now all I want is a smile
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I felt extremely fortunate to have not had any really non-manageable side-effects with the first round of chemo - four sessions two weeks apart. I noticed that I seemed to just run my mouth for the first thirty-six hours after those treatments. Of course, that might have had less to do with chemo than it had to do with having an audience and a captive one at that. There was also a peculiarly sweet smell to these drugs that seem to cling to everything but still I felt almost as if I were cheating because I had none of the horrible side-effects associated with Cytoxan and Adriamycin, none of the nausea, no vomiting, no visual problems, no real extremes. That would be aside from having lost all my hair.
My older granddaughter told me that she wants to give me her hair "It's your hair that I got so you want it back?" My younger granddaughter, her raspy tomboyish voice torn apart with emotion said "I wish I was God" but there was also a "gotcha" quality to what she said because she knows that I am an atheist but knows also that I would never infringe on her sincerity. A couple of months from now or perhaps a year maybe more she will remind me that I didn't contradict her. This new round of chemo - four session three weeks apart - is using Taxotere which has none of the typical side-effects but I might feel a little 'fluey', that I might experience some discomfort in my joints. These feelings could also be caused by the need for some type of exercise. Unfortunately my usual form of exercise is to cut the grass which really isn't feasible this time of the year even if it wasn't buried under eighteen inches of snow. Having been forewarned about this possibility did nothing to prepare me the feeling that someone has been banging against my knees with a baseball bat. I have come to understand the expression on Jimmy Caan's face during the hobbling scene in the movie Misery. Yesterday afternoon I stretched out on the sofa and fell asleep. I don't think I'd been sleeping for long when I woke with a horrible sense of fear but before I could fully wake I responded to the panic of thinking I couldn't move my legs and promptly sent three cats crashing to the floor. Max and Perch eventually jumped back on the sofa but Hammett seems to be avoiding me altogether. Even now if she catches me looking at her she'll shut her eyes and turn her head away. Oh the theatrics! However if I ask her if she'd like a cat treat, Hammett replies in her faint, squeaky voice "Yeaya" and jumps up on the coffee table and waits for me to open the treat jar. - Tags:rapunzel
- Location:den
- Mood:chilly
- Music:That's why I changed my name and I didn't think you'd ever find me here
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Yesterday I exchanged several emails with my older brother mostly dealing with Christmases past.
Maybe it was something about being the middle child. My older brother and sister would often say to me when I'd express doubts about my role in their schemes "No, no, no! You do it, you do it. You're younger. You won't get into trouble." That turned out to be pure bullshit. Then a few years later having my two younger brothers say "No, no, no! You're older. You do it." My brother asked me if I remembered the Christmas we surprised Santa and how the presents were scattered all over the living room when he made a quick retreat. In this case the WE consisted of my brother and sister waking me and telling me that they heard something downstairs and I should go check because it was probably Santa. They'd be right behind me. Yeah, sure. They stayed in the upstairs hallway while I slowly made my way down the steps and into the living room. I wasn't there but a few seconds before my presence was noticed and then in a flash I saw my father in his underwear (my eyes! my eyes!) open the door and disappear onto the side-porch. My brother and sister came down and we just stood there staring at the presents scattered around the room. No one touched anything, we seemed to be frozen to the spot until, from her bedroom, my mother yelled "You kids better get in bed or Santa Claus isn't going to bring you anything." The three of us burst into giggles and ran back upstairs.
Though I consider myself a person who grew up with no illusions I always felt obligated to not destroy the illusions others might have so I never told my brother and sister that it wasn't Santa Claus I surprised that early Christmas morning of 1952. Evidently it was the right choice. The email I received from my brother last night ended with:
Yes, those were the good old days. Christmas was so much fun and I was a devout believer in Santa Claus. I purposely did not ask Mom or Dad about the existence of Santa Claus for fear that Christmas in its entirety may collapse if questioned. Instead I gracefully eased into the reality of Santa as the spirit of Christmas who exists as long as people believe in him. Finally one Christmas Eve Mom asked me if I would stay up late to help put the kids gifts under the tree. My instinctive response was, "What about Santa Claus?" Mom, in her usual warm and sensitive manner, said, "Jesus Christ, Charles! Get a grip! You're 22 years old." - Location:den
- Music:so if you're walking down the street sometime and spot some hollow ancient eyes
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Lonely Rats More Likely to Get Breast Cancer
Aside from social isolation and depression nothing else was mentioned in this article, it didn't seem to factor in the stress of having to live with the moniker RAT or a diet high in Cheetos. - Tags:rapunzel
- Location:den
- Mood:oooooooo Coffee
- Music:But all my words come back to me in shades of mediocrity
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- Tags:slide scanning
- Location:den
- Mood:cold
- Music:but the wind goes right through you it's no place for the old
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You can't do this on an LSD-flat screen
- Location:den
- Mood:chilled
- Music:But whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast
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Chemo It left my butt but took my hair still got my gut. So unfair - Tags:rapunzel
- Location:den
- Music:as I remember your eyes were bluer than robin's eggs
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The basic difference between my indoor warm weather attire and my indoor cold weather attire seems to be the length of my sleeves and the heaviness of my hose. Since the house is so secluded this mode of dress is usually sufficient for even going outside to do near house chores. When my computer was upstairs my state of dress or undress wasn't much of a problem, if someone came to the door I could grab my jeans and come downstairs but now that I've moved the computer downstairs it's different. The den's front and side windows open onto the front porch. There's no window in the back door but the window in the front door looks into the hallway making it impossible if someone's at that door to run up the front stairs and almost as hard to slip up the back stairway.
If not putting on a pair of jeans when I dress in the morning I should, start taking a pair downstairs with me. It would have come in handy last week, when on two separate occasions, someone came to the door while I, wearing only a black long-sleeved turtleneck pullover and a pair of black tights (homage to my beatnik days), sat at the computer. Well, there was nothing to do but drop and roll, a maneuver perfected during my first two years of living here. When we first moved up here, aside from irritating salesmen, we got a lot of door-to-door proselytizers who were not seeking donations but converts. They really were very nice people but after what seemed like hours of their talking to me about The Watchtower Society (and my suppressing the urge to mention Bob Dylan) I'd find myself silently wishing for the phone to ring or even the house to burst into flames but not wanting to seem rude I'd just smile and nod. After a while I got pretty good at recognizing the sound of their cars in the driveway and when I heard them coming I'd just drop and roll and crouch behind the sofa and wait while my visitors went from door to door, window to window and since this is an old Victorian style house the windows are big and plentiful and give a good interior view of the downstairs. During the summers this was even harder not just because the visits were more frequent but it would be both Jennifer and me hiding behind the sofa and, after a few minutes we'd both get to laughing hysterically at the absurdity of the situation but neither of us would move until we'd heard the cars pull away and then on creaking knees we'd crawl to the windows and peek outside, just to be safe.
Whenever anyone knocks on the doors my cats run upstairs and hide. I've just thought it was because they are so stranger-shy but they may be more like me than I realized, the major difference being that they don't have to drop and roll. - Location:den
- Mood:chilly
- Music:sometime when it always seemed to just be us and them
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Auggie in the morning light 
I first noticed Auggie hanging around the yard about two years ago so I started putting out extra food which wasn't at all pleasing to Nnati. It's taken almost the entire two years for Auggie to let me pet him, for months when I filled his dish (under the boxwoods where Nnati pretty much forced him to stay) he wouldn't come out to eat until I had left. Eventually Auggie became more comfortable with my presence, comfortable enough to approach the back porch when I was filling Nnati's bowl causing Nnati, with his typical outdoor cat claws, to slice into the back of my legs making me think of Wolverine though I've never seen the movie. Even now when Nnati catches sight of Auggie he goes into this odd stance, curving his body into a horseshoe shape, then he starts to inch his way toward the other cat which always makes me wonder if he's going to bump into himself then he gives this unearthly guttural growl that makes me think of The Exorcist, also a movie I haven't seen. Auggie spying Nnati
- Music:grasp at straws that don't want grasping
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I still find myself automatically reaching to brush my hair out of the way especially at night, after threatening the cats with banishment should they start fighting on the bed, my hand just naturally goes to the back of my neck to move my hair before pulling the covers up over my shoulders.
- Tags:rapunzel
- Location:den
- Mood:chilly
- Music:and sweet songs never last too long on broken radios
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Last night I dreamed I was going to straighten up (a misnomer if ever there was one) my sewing room. The door was closed and I was having a lot of trouble opening it. It felt as if something was jammed against it but finally, with enough effort, I got the door opened. At first I thought the room was filled with feathers, packed from floor to ceiling but I realized as the air started to stir them that they were words, words like you might have seen printed from an old teletype machine. Each sliver of paper contained only one word but they were all there. Maybe all the words in the world. This was something I had wanted since I was two years old but unlike when I was two I could recognize all these words and best of all I could do whatever I wanted with them. Life could be based on a true story that I made up. I could arrange these pieces of paper in any order I liked, random or deliberate it didn't matter, my only concern would be in finding a way to keep the cats out of my sewing room.
Of course, upon awakening I realized a couple of things; there really aren't six Ps in the word xylophone and there's no way in the world all the words in the world could fit into my sewing room.
- Tags:there's the rub
- Location:den
- Mood:bored
- Music:All the stories to tell Old friend could you bid me farewell
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- Location:den
- Mood:on hold
- Music:local news and weather
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When my younger brother was 16 his high school biology class incubated 100 fertilized eggs of those 100 eggs 70 some hatched of those 70 some hatchlings 8 made it to the end of the school year and the teacher, without bothering to consult parents, drew names and my brother, Jimmy, brought home a little white chicken. He named him Ralph and Ralph quickly grew into a fairly large rooster. I don't know how long he was kept in the house probably no longer than he was able to get out of the box Jimmy brought it home in. My brother played with Ralph the same way you might roughhouse with a puppy and just like a puppy who gets too excited that damn fowl could get mean, especially around toes. I don't know what he was fed but my mother always mixed eggs with it which I thought was grossly cannibalistic. I think at first Ralph had free range of the back yard but he learned that if he flapped hard enough he could wing his way to the top of the fence and on to a brief freedom. In early summer it became a common occurrence for one of the neighbors to call requesting that my brother come get Ralph because he had chased a cat up a tree or had a dog cowering under a car. By mid-summer it was obvious the backyard fence wasn't going to keep Ralph in so my father made pretty good-sized coop for him and placed it inside a wire-covered pen that he had also made. This gave Ralph a lot of playing room but still my brother frequently let him out to run around the yard. My mother told me that one morning after a night of terrible storming, high winds, lashing rain, lightning and crashing thunder she glanced out the kitchen window and noticed that Ralph's pen had been upturned. She went outside to check but Ralph wasn't in his house or anywhere in the yard. She thought that some dogs might have jumped the fence during the night and somehow managed to get to Ralph. After several attempts to wake my brother she finally gave up yelling for him and climbed the stairs and knocked on his bedroom door. While she was telling him that Ralph was missing my mother said she could hear an odd noise coming from his bedroom "Jimmy, do you have that goddamn rooster in your room?" and he said yes and the reason he gave was that when he had gotten home the night before Ralph sounded like he had a sore throat and Jimmy didn't think he should be left outside all night. My mother told my brother that he was to put the bird back in his cage and then he was to clean up his room with a strong disinfectant. Jimmy said that he had wedged a piece of screen in the corner and put Ralph in it so he couldn't run around the bedroom. This was followed by a grim "Oh God!" I know nothing about chickens, well uncooked ones, but Ralph didn't start crowing until late summer, I don't know if roosters are a certain age before they start cockle-doodle-dooing but once Ralph started he didn't stop. He crowed at sunrise, he crowed at lightning flashes, he would jump on top of his coop and crow when someone turned on their porch light and would continue to crow when the lights came on in other houses as the neighbors tried to figure out what all the ruckus was about. Ralph was no longer the cute little biology project, he was a nuisance. My father gave Ralph to a man who worked for him who was a machinist by necessity and a part-time farmer by love. My father frequently came home from his office with stories of how Ralph was settling in, how in no time at all he had taken over the small farm. He said that Mr. Cray, the part-time farmer, said that Ralph truly ruled the roost, he had no fear of any of the animals, in fact, just the opposite was true. When Ralph wandered out of the barn in the morning the irritable old Billy goat went into hiding. When he would wander into the barn, the cats, whose job it was to keep the rat population down, would stay in the loft. Ralph chased the sheep, the cats, the yard dogs, the other poultry and Mrs. Cray. This was a life that suited the little rooster to a tee. One day two strange dogs wandered in to part-time farmer, Mr. Cray's yard. The cocky little rooster was outraged. Eying the larger of the two dogs, as if he couldn't believe such audacity, he puffed out his chest in importance, arched his wings in anger and with a confidence born of many a chase, Ralph went after the German Shepherd and was promptly eaten. - Location:den
- Mood:waiting
- Music:there may come a time when you'll be tired, tired as a dream that wants to die
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This morning when asked if I had copies of my marriage license and divorce decree I said that I had my divorce papers but no longer had a copy of my marriage certificate. I saw no reason to mention that about seven months into the marriage, during the course of an argument, John, in a fit of being John, tore the certificate into seven or eight pieces and said "Don't think that taping it back together will make it whole again." and I, in a rational act of maturity, put the pieces in the sink and burned them then as the spigot became engulfed in smoke said "Now that option's no longer on the table, is it!" - Location:den
- Mood:still chilly
- Music:lady rose waiting for the axe to fall
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Last night I put a hank of my hair, actually it wasn't a hank, that would have been close to 600 yards if I were measuring along the lines of yarn and I know this because years and years and years ago during the first year of my marriage there was a shop in Richmond that specialized in materials that were sold by the pound and yarns that were sold by the hank and the hanks were course and thick and if you weren't careful while crocheting you could end up scraping the skin off your fingers but the colors were unusually dull so the blood gave a decorative touch to the placemats or rugs I was making. Sorry, I digress. Anyway I put a handful of hair under the kitchen cabinet last night and it was gone this morning. I don't know why I feel pleased thinking that the mice (hopefully) are using it for nesting. It's kind of like the time we trimmed Clementine and I left the shaved fur in an open wastebasket on the back porch and the birds picked through it, taking what they needed for their nests, one of which was made on top of one of the columns on the front porch. Tuesday was the first election day I haven't worked in twenty years. I learned that life does indeed go on outside the precinct, in fact, it passes a lot more quickly. That might have been because my morning started at 6:30 instead of 2:15. Virginia, as usual, went Republican in the gubernatorial and back up positions. So now I know that's the way the voters of Virginia lean and they weren't doing it all those years just to waste my time. - Tags:rapunzel
- Location:den
- Mood:chilly
- Music:I think I'll find a pair of eyes tonight to fall into and maybe strike a deal
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Last night I dreamed I was watching JEOPARDY and one of the contestants was a military general (Army, Air Force I'm not sure though judging by his hat he wasn't a Naval officer but that should have been obvious since there aren't Generals in the Navy) who, each time he gave an incorrect answer which was frequent, dropped the F-bomb. - Tags:there's the rub
- Location:den
- Mood:tired
- Music:A conversation in a crowded room going nowhere
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All I need now is a network willing to broadcast it. 
- Location:Den
- Music:Local news
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The Smoky Mountains - October 1982 Autumns in the Smoky Mountains aren't - perhaps I should say weren't since these slides were taken almost 30 years ago - particularly colorful but I think that's caused less by the fog and more by the fact that most of the trees are evergreens. I had hoped so much to see some local wildlife (I'd been living in the country less than a year and a half and it was still quite exciting to catch sight of deer or fox even rabbits - who am I kidding, it still is) but I don't recall even seeing any birds.
 I wondered how easy it would be to maneuver through these mountains. Because of the fog and density of the trees I couldn't really see what might be in them. My former husband was telling me that these mountains were far too rugged to be inhabited by people and I really needed to watch where I was walking because not only were there Copperheads all around but the Rattlers were still out in force. Because I had both hands on my camera I wasn't able to respond with either middle finger.
 In the clouds
 Above the clouds
- Tags:slide scanning
- Location:den
- Mood:tired
- Music:and you're east of East St. Louis and the wind is making speeches
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February 1980 - Tags:slide scanning
- Location:den
- Music:Sinatra was swinging all the drunks they were singing
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Last Friday morning I dreamed I was having a long conversation (monologue) with Mouser Max, explaining to her that cancer was not the silence killer, that I could prove it and all I needed was a listener. In my dream, Max and I were in bed, she was stretched out beside me, I had my arm around her as I usually do (she is the only cat I've ever had who insists upon having my arm around her when she sleeps with me) but I think she might have been listening under duress because her eyes were bulging. Bizarre? Perhaps. Realistic? Sadly, yes. I do expect my cats to, at least, pretend interest when I babble.
- Tags:there's the rub
- Location:den
- Music:Lester Holt & something that's supposedly passing as the news
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- Tags:slide scanning
- Location:den
- Music:While every folk song that I ever knew once more comes tr
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There has been a terrible smell of almost burnt plastic permeating the outdoor's and even seeping into the house over the last week. My neighbor tells me it's because the stags are in rut. As these deer wander through the yard they are leaving their calling card. This musk - their social networking, a plethora of information about who they are, where they've been, where they're going, when they expect to return - an advertisement of their studliness, stinks. It is so foul. I don't know if it's just more prevalent this year or because of the cooling temperatures I've been able to turn off the air conditioning and open the windows earlier than usual so have just become aware of it. I've been told that this stench is nothing compared to good old she-bear smell in or out of estrus. In early autumn of '78 we went to the SPCA in Richmond to pick up the the Pet of the Week. The newspaper article stated "You'll love Lucy". We did and in less than twenty-four hours she had become our darling Clementine, a name she responded to immediately.
Trooper was sitting on the front porch when we got home with Clementine. He was not pleased. He had been an only dog for almost two years, he didn't mind sharing his home with the cats and kittens but this huge ball of fur was going to be direct competition. I was surprised by Trooper's reaction because he had several canine friends in the neighborhood. He was especially fond of Pearl, a black and white three-leg Border Collie who would come over on afternoons when the weather was good, knock on the front door, come in and wait in the living room for Trooper to come downstairs (he would be in my bedroom on his pillow taking his afternoon nap) then I'd open the front door and they'd trot outside and play till the kids got home from school.
Trooper spent the weekend ignoring Clementine, glaring at me and eating dog food. This was a first. Trooper hated dog food, he would wait until the cats had finished whatever they were eating and gobble up what was left in their bowls or, if I wasn't around, he just push them out of the way to get at their food, he even learned to meow, I guess in hopes of getting first servings instead of leftovers. Though he preferred cat food his refusal to eat dog food ended when we brought Clementine home.  The Monday after Clementine's joining the family she was taken to the veterinarian's for spaying and almost immediately brought back home. Clementine was in heat. She spent the next two weeks on the side-porch. Trooper warmed up to her, warmed up to her quite nicely, though he could only see her through the screen. They became almost constant companions for the next twelve years. - Tags:slide scanning
- Location:den
- Music:love is not a victory march it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah
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Old boy, even when young, liked warmth. February 1980
- Tags:slide scanning
- Location:den
- Music:with brown leaves falling all around and snow in your hair
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Between the road and the river  | |
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- Location:den
- Music:long ago it must have been I have a photograph preserve your memories
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While in Richmond yesterday, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) kastanzie and I had lunch at Ruby Tuesday's, my choice mainly because, though their food is usually mediocre, sometimes their coffee is good, it wasn't bad yesterday. The music that's piped through is hard to describe, probably just considered background certainly middle of the road, non-offensive. Sometime during the meal Feelin' Alright starts to play and I asked Kim if that was Michael McDonald singing only I called him Ronald. It was amusing to see that at 43 Kim can roll her eyes with as much disdain as she did when she was 13. Kim was quick to correct me by letting me know that Joe Cocker was the singer. I reinforced my position by listing more songs that Michael McDonald had not sung. Kim reinforced her argument through perseverance. This morning after feeding the cats, getting coffee, firing up the computer and doing my usual computer stuff which takes no time at all now that I'm using a satellite connection, I sent Kim an email telling her that she was oh so wrong and I was oh so right, Joe Cocker was indeed the singer of Feelin' Alright and to prove I was right I was sending her a YouTube link. Half and hour later she text messaged me saying "R u F'n kiddin me. I WAS THE ONE WHO SAID IT WASJOE COCKER!!"
My reply was "PROVE IT! I got up before you did: YOU SNOOZE YOU LOSE!" - Tags:imc
- Location:den
- Music:Snake eyes sigh Boxcars cry Seven's stuck in the middle just wondering why
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I was standing in my downstairs hallway talking to a man who had introduced himself as the Emperor of Japan, and though he was a good 20 years older than I and dressed in a plain black suit that I noticed when he unbuttoned the jacket had a bright silk lining of pale pink and brilliant copper colored chrysanthemums and he must have been close to 10 feet tall because he had no problem looking into my chandelier and telling me that the fixtures certainly did hold a lot of bugs, there seemed to be no particular reason to question his honesty. For heaven's sake, why lie about your identity? He took my hand and turned it over then said "You misspelled Japan but it's easy to do that because it isn't spelled the way it sounds." I looked at my palm and it was covered in Hiragana symbols. I had no idea what they meant. The Emperor asked me if they were crib notes and then blew into the chandelier and sent up a cloud of dried moths. Was I planning to cheat on a test I didn't know I'd be taking or was my palm the only free space left? Was there just too much clutter to read the writing on the wall? When I turned to ask the Emperor I noticed Joan Collins on my front porch. She was swinging the hummingbird feeder, splashing sugarwater all over the place causing the birds to chatter in a monkey-like shrill. I tapped on the window and asked her to stop and she said "Wrong dynasty" which struck me as funny and I woke up laughing. | |
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When asked how she liked school so far this year, my older granddaughter told me that she knew "It's going to be the best year ever! I love my art class. There's this dreamy guy, he so sweet and he can drive!!!!!" - Location:den
- Music:I can see a better time when all our dreams come true
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it was almost 27 years after the concert and even then I didn't exactly get to it but I did see a sign somewhere near Newburgh saying 'Woodstock 45 miles' and I only saw that sign because, for some reason instead of heading back into the city on Saw Mill River Parkway, we headed northwest.
Since moving the computer from the book room upstairs to the den downstairs where the television is I've watch a lot more TV. It's not so much that I'm watching more TV as it is I'm not turning it off after catching the news in the morning so this past week I heard a lot about the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival.
In the early summer of 1969, Woodstock was all everyone talked about. Woodstock was our (the East Coast's) Monterey. The festival would be held in a meadow, last for three days and have every band imaginable. A strong selling point was the rumor that the Butterfield Blues Band would be one of the acts and now 40, perhaps more, years later the only song of theirs I can recall is Season of the Witch (so, so much better than Donavan's version, if memory serves, which it really hasn't been doing a particularly good job of lately).
I had two invitations to go to Woodstock. The first was from a friend who suggested that we leave on Friday morning around 2 (after the bars closed) since it would be about a 10 hour trip, he felt certain he could cram 6 of us into his Corvair - truly unsafe at any speed. Another friend said that it would be a little cramped but he could get 5 of us into his Beetle but we'd have to leave on Thursday because his car overheated frequently and we'd have to pull off the road and let George (you do the math) catch his breath.  The deciding factor in not going was the oft repeated "Be sure to bring some blankets because we're going to have to sleep on the ground." I've often wondered what it might have been like to have attended but this past week's retrospective where most of the tapes and photos were of the attendees not the music and most of those photos were of the kids in the rain and mud and mud and more mud.
After seeing these pictures I no longer wonder if I made the right choice, I wonder how we got so old.- Location:den
- Music:rock became her anchor bird became her dream
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and smell the honeysuckle because it has choked out everything else.
 - Tags:slide scanning
- Location:den
- Mood:nostalgic
- Music:Just because you don't believe it, doesn't mean I didn't mean it
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For some reason I have found myself wondering if I should have some type of near death experience whose life would flash before my eyes. - Mood:go toward the light. . . .plea
- Music:we don't need to understand
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It's the Benjamin Button of Birddogs
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Is a happy dog
- Tags:slide scanning
- Location:den
- Music:and the livin's easy, the fish are jumping and the cotton is high
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I wish I had an amulet, a talisman or just confidence that there was such a thing as magic I'm not really sure what I'm looking for; it doesn't have to be anything spectacular, something leaning more toward the benevolent, it doesn't need to be thaumaturgic. Just a little something I know is there, it doesn't necessarily have to work, there's nothing particularly wrong with a false sense of security. Even as a small child there wasn't a sense of safety, just the waiting for morning. As my mother taught it, my guardian angel was there 'to enlighten god.' How much trouble could I get into in my sleep to warrant being tattled on? Waking frequently to glance at the window to see if it was day yet. I still do that, only now when I see daylight streaming through I think "Damn! it's morning already!" Jim Morrison's mojo was risin', at least, I hope he was singing about a mojo. The first Doors album I had was recorded in monaural so the clarity wasn't great. A few months after this I got my first stereo - a record player with detachable speakers - not that big an improvement since most albums were still being recorded in mono. A few years later when L.A. Woman was released I didn't pay that much attention to it, primarily hearing it on the radio, on AM stations that tended to drift so I guess I sort of missed the irony of a man whose mojo was rising only to have him die three months later. Where would one begin to even look for such a thing? Perhaps EBay might have them at a bargain price, drastically reduced for quick sale since they might be on luck's last leg. Ok, a used mojo might not be the way to go. Are mojos mobile? Are they just floating around looking for a place to take up residence? I once dated a brooding (self-absorbed) musician who was quite fond of proclaiming, with a heavy sigh, "I didn't find the blues, they found me!" Would a mojo find me in all this grass and trees? Are there special mojos for people rapidly approaching senior citizenry? Before going in search of my mojo I thought it might be prudent to know exactly what a mojo is. First step, at least for me, in looking up anything has always been the dictionary and on the internet my favored spot is The Free Dictionary which uses the American Heritage Dictionary which gives the correct pronunciation with the definition and United States (common) and British pronunciation separately. The cats were all within easy reach as I was typing this so I decided to entertain them since they had been so patient with me last Saturday when, after watching the third season of Weeds, I serenaded them (ad nauseam) with "Litter boxes, litter boxes and they're all filled with kitty shat, litter boxes, litter boxes . . . . " I typed in Perch but he didn't seem impressed so I tried 'purchase' and he shot me a quick look as if to see if he were in some kind of trouble. Next I tried Max. She didn't bother to open her eyes. Hammett was asleep by my feet so I nudged her when I typed in Hammett. She stood up and stretched and when I typed in 'hambone' she started figure-eighting around my ankles. Snap was the only cat to jump up onto the table and actually inspect the speaker but lost interest after the fourth 'Snap'. After an hour of irritating the kitties I realized that I don't want a mojo, what I'd really like to have is a dog. I wonder if I'd be lucky enough for the cats to accept a puppy running around making their lives miserable? - Location:den
- Mood:hoodoo? you do. I do what?
- Music:But there aint no Coup de ville hiding at the bottom of a CrackerJack box
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 Amber in the shadows - Tags:slide scanning
- Location:den
- Mood:green
- Music:He laughed under his breath because you thought that you could outrun sorrow
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- Tags:imc
- Location:den
- Mood:productive
- Music:sure was gonna be rough they never liked Mama's homemade dress
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Carmella finally fucks Father Phil
- Location:den
- Music:Bill Maher's dialogue
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so don't even think about hiding
It's been five years since I quit smoking but who's counting- Location:den
- Music:Hey kids, rock and roll, rock on
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I am Whimsically creepy.
This pleases me enormously.
- Location:Den
- Music:It's such a sad old feeling The fields are soft and green
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