The Shopping Blahs

Mom wants to go Christmas shopping this weekend. She seems to feel very strongly about getting a Saturday off in December to go Christmas shopping. To me, this sounds horrific, yet for some masochistic reason I've agreed to go. My one hope? That I have to get home early so that Scott & I can dart off to the dart store like we've been wanting to do for the past few weeks. I imagine a gaping maw of demonic proportions full of empty-eyed, impatient & cross souls hellbent on getting the New Trendy Gift that is The Mall. I hate The Mall. Especially during the holidays. In fact, the last time I was in the Fairfield Mall? Two years ago. Scott & I raced into Eddie Bauer, snatched up a bottle of cologne, and raced back out again. That's it. Plus, I have no patience for shopping, whether at Christmas or any other time, and shopping with Mom..... Sweet Jesus. It's one of the most painful things. I would rather get bitten on the arm by a giant watersnake. I'm a scanner - I can see if there's anything I want just by racing around glancing at everything or sometimes I can scan from the doorway. 2 minutes tops for me to make my determinations. Then I move on. I don't enter stores I don't want to, I don't browse. I hate browsing. My mom is the queen of browsers. She one time pondered a shelf of birdhouses for 15 minutes while I stood by, bored out of my mind. So, I hate to tell her, but shopping with her is the menace of my existence. I remember being a small child & whining, "Can we go yet?" and she'd get mad at me. I still feel the same way. I have a hunch I felt that way as a kid because she would stand around contemplating the prices on the different brands of canned tomatoes for 10 minutes! When we were at Penzey's a couple weeks ago, she did the same thing. I wanted to say, "Mom, you KNOW what they sell, you KNOW where they keep it, why is it taking you so long???" But instead I went ahead & checked out while she flipped through a cooking magazine, noted the new pork spice, wandered..... Also, I'm not entirely sure what we're to be shopping for. I don't have many people to buy gifts for, and the gifts that I do buy will probably not come from this shopping excursion OR from the mall. So, basically it amounts to an enjoyable lunch, and then three or four hours of standing around, shifting from foot to foot, yawning, while she tries to make a decision. I'm dreading it. It's awful but true! The dart store is my out. My gateway to freedom. My only hope to keep me from dying of absolute boredom under a rack of sale items!

Alone

I find myself increasingly longing for the alone time. Not that I don't want to be with Scott, of course, but after so many years of co-dependency, sometimes I don't feel quite all Me. It's okay to adapt to each other, make room for each other in each soul, but there's got to be some spot, preferably a comfortable, roomy one, where each of us are still the person we were, that we are, that we will be. I'm not sure Scott is ready to find his spot, he seems completely at ease just being with me and that's that. He does enjoy his alone time, the hours of which are few & far between since he works six days a week & then we spend Sundays together, but, as for me, I need a little time to myself more often than those Saturdays when Mom is busy & I'm left to my own devices. When I did the Barn Tour a month or two back, even tho' it was just a humble showcase of agriculture, it was all by myself. I navigated, decided where I would stop, what photos would be taken, where I would eat or if I would even eat at all. I was free to stop at a lonely crossroads & offer an uneaten sandwich half to a stray dog without any questions. There was no complaining because there was nobody to complain other than me, no indecision about what to do because I knew what my mission was & there wasn't anyone to distract me from it with demands of food or restrooms or just, "Why this way?" It was beautiful. I need stuff like that more often. I have my drive to & from work each day, which amounts to about 45 minutes per direction. On the way in I'm driving like a maniac to get here but I always take time to notice a redtail hawk or a deer or a particularly attractive vehicle, on the way home I can choose to take the standard route or I can take another road & see something different. Sometimes I stop at places, like a local Indian mound, or a scenic bridge, sometimes I get lost just to see where I end up. Unfortunately, those little moments are done until next year, when the clock once again gets turned forward and another hour of daylight is mine to discover. Now, I will only see that which is directly in front of me, visible in my headlight beams, and hopefully, it won't be a deer. When I get home, it'll still be the same thing - tidy up, clean up after the cats, chase the dog around the yard, wait for Scott & then the cooking (which, mind, he does help with the cleaning & the cooking lest I sound like a domestic servant).

I have a room, a room painted a sedate sage green with eye-catching white trim, lined with bookshelves filled with my books & other things. This room is peaceful to me - the single window looks out on our quiet street, and, the angle of the desk permits me to entirely block out the old couple's home across the street so that I only see the bend in the road and the park-like woodland of our neighbor beyond. I need to spend more time in this room. I need to sit here, by myself, with only my thoughts & a cat or three & the quiet company of the Big Dog, and think. Be. And then write it all down. Thus far there are no pictures hanging on the wall in this room and the desk, which is actually made up of two desks shoved together to make a corner desk, is dissatisfying, but I do find a certain joy just sitting in there, reading or staring out the window or just passing by the bookshelves & looking at the familiar titles. But writing does not come to me, even here. As superficial as it seems, I think that once I have the some of my photos up & my old bullfighting poster, I will feel more inspired.

Maybe I just need to refamiliarize myself with myself. Too much time has been spent catering to the co-dependency & I've lost much of myself, or at least it's been stowed away deep inside. Scott will have to understand. I've always been a loner, preferring, for the most part, to be by myself, in my own head, in my own space, doing my own thing. Having another human that requires attention during all my at-leisure hours is a strange thing, and I think I just stuffed all the Me Stuff into a little closet in my head. I'm an only child - my step-siblings didn't come until later & even they were far removed from me. I've never had to divide my time between anyone other than my close friends & my parents & even then, I could close my bedroom door & be by myself once again.

It could be the constant closeness that has driven it away, quashed it down, but before Scott, there was another boy, a lovely boy who I loved so hard & deep for so many years that when he removed himself from my world, I went into another much darker & ugly world. I lived in a broken down house, my roommate had moved out, I was alone, more alone than I had ever been or wanted to be, and the thought that this other boy didn't love me anymore, or wouldn't allow himself to because my beliefs were so alien to him & his God & his parents, that it nearly drove me crazy. Maybe it did. But somewhere, in that cess pool of dark emotions & black places, that Voice that I've always had, that came so freely whenever I bid it, disappeared. Leaving me with this stilted, unfamiliar tone that I cannot accustom myself to. It has been smoothed out over time, with the help of my old friend Stace coming back into my life & our constant notes, but it still doesn't feel totally like my old voice. Poems used to come to me, descriptive phrases that I was proud of, but no more.

But I think, if I could just regain some of that me-time, if Scott can agree to leave me to myself for a few hours each week, I might just be able to recoup some of what I've lost. Or at least re-learn that which I've forgotten. Something tells me he just might be willing to do that even if he doesn't fully understand it - he is a sensitive guy, but hopefully he can understand it's not him, it's just that I need to have some time where my thoughts are devoted to what's inside my head.

That's another thing with the Jordan trip - as much as I hate to leave him for these 2 weeks & as much as I'd like him along to share the experience, he just flat doesn't want to do it. I can't argue with that - travel has never been one of his dreams, which I find strange in itself, and I can't force my aspirations on him no more than he can convince me to like football & baseball. I'll be with my mom, who, tho' a constant source of irritating trivialities, understands me quite a bit. After all, I grew up with her, she knows what I came from & my moods as well as all the ugliness of that depressed period. She has encouraged my writing since I was very young & never put any sort of book out of reach no matter if it was beyond the comprehension of my age group or not. She also has been enlightened about the hibernation of my muse, and I can honestly tell it saddens her. This trip will be time for me to see things that inspire me, broaden my horizons, add a little more depth. And to grow a bit as my own person.

As for that dark period? I came out of it relatively unscathed - I think being slightly demented is a good thing - without benefit of any medications or counseling, just my own spirit rising up against the demons to say, "This is not me. I will not do this. I will not tolerate it." Only vague memories of the drunken, black thoughts linger, but the loss of my Voice is the thing that haunts me the most. Two years after the loss of my first love, I moved out of the dark, ugly void as well as the broken down house into a tidy, small & bright apartment. A few months after that, I met Scott. Any remnants of that bad time evaporated - I was delighted to have such a fantastic man in my life, someone who understood (and still does) me about as well as anyone can & who puts up with all my quirks & daily insanities. He has only a hazy knowledge of my depression - he struggled with his own anger & demons at one point & doesn't like to discuss any of it. Which is fine with me - things like that are best assigned to paper & then set on fire, but the memories remain regardless & the hope that such a thing won't return. And, if it does, I am prepared with the weapons to defeat it - courage, mental self-awareness, staunchness of soul, and the knowledge that I am Me and no one, no thing, can change that. If the ability to imagine, to dream & express it all eloquently returns, that's one more arrow in my quiver.

It took me a while to put all of these things together, to even be willing to admit that as much as I enjoy being married & with another human for the duration, thru thick or thru thin, I need to be Me & live a little outside the relationship & maintain that homey spot inside that is all Me.

Time for some mental housecleaning.

"Kick start the golden generator
Sweet talk but don't intimidate her
Can't stop the gods from engineering
Feel no need for any interfering
Your image in the dictionary
This life is more than ordinary
Can I get 2 maybe even 3 of these
Come from space
To teach you of the pleiades
Can't stop the spirits when they need you
This life is more than just a read thru."
----Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Can't Stop"

A Quick Call & Disappearing Ears

This morning I'm in the bathroom, frantically trying to beat my mane into submission, and I hear the phone ring & can tell it's Mom. I ignore it because she always calls around the time of the morning when I'm just trying to get out of the house. A few minutes pass and it rings again. "Great," I think. "She's broke down somewhere - better answer it." So, I fetch it, answer it, she jovially starts talking, "I just wanted to give you a quick call!" which is what she always prefaces her longest calls with. "I've just been sitting here reading Breath (Breath of Snow & Ashes) & got to the part blah blah blah & I just had to know if it gets referred to again later in the book because I'm afraid to keep reading!" I'm like, "Are you SERIOUS???? You're not bleeding from the face or broke down in the ditch?" Also, she knows I'm not going to tell her what happens in the book. She cheerily replies, "Nope! Just wanted to talk about the book!" At 9:30. On a Monday morning. When she has called in the past only to be greeted by my exasperated voice. What the hell?? And to boot (no pun intended), I was hurrying around with the phone clasped to my ear having this conversation and I pulled on the wrong shoes! Once again, I put on the old, comfy, muddy yard shoes that have lived on the back porch thru rain & frost for the past two weeks & just recently have been permitted back in the house after drying. On my feet right now. At least today I'm not wearing shorts like I was during the wretched humid summer months when I mistakenly put on these hot, suedish shoes without socks and stomped around a small, touristy farm town. I'm sure I was quite stylish. Anyway. She needs a hobby. She really does!

Also - we did go up to the former White Swan, now known as Bluegills, for the final night. This little backroads bar has been a staple in my life since I moved here at the age of 13 & learned to play pool on its ragged felt table. Later in life I spent many a drunken night there singing karaoke and dancing on bars. Now, due to a broken well and expensive alternative water source, it's closing its doors and being sold to the State since they've wanted that spot for some time. It was PACKED to the gills (again - no pun intended!) with yahoos & derelicts of all genders and ages. I even had a guy grind up on me right in front of Scott (which he found quite amusing) and cause me to trip over another dude while I was backpedalling trying to get away. The dude I tripped over apologized profusely for having his foot where I stumbled while the grinder jigged away, a beer in either hand. His friend apologized to me as well, "He's REALLY drunk". No shit! But, Lou, my stepdad and Mom's ex-husband (I don't consider him my ex-stepdad tho' - he's been my father for too long) was there and Mom sat there silently, staring ahead and nursing a beer, while we chatted with Lou over the earsplitting country music from the jukebox. Interesting. We stayed for 2 tallboys & then bolted. One funny thing with Lou is that he realized some time ago that he was packing on the pounds and he was quite unhappy. He's always been a fit fellow - in fact, Stace went so far as to say he was "hot" which is something a kid can't comprehend about her parent. So, he lost the weight and has maintained his fighting weight for several months now and is quite proud that he can fit back into his old size tho' he had to buy a whole new wardrobe because he gave his old one away after gaining the weight. The funny thing was this - he said he realized "it was time to lose the weight when [he] couldn't see his ears". Mom and I nearly shot beer out of our nose laughing at that one - couldn't see his ears! Usually it's when you can't see your feet! So, he had to point out how close his ears fit to his head & that when his cheeks starting chubbing out his ears disappeared. I laughed so hard I hurt. Scott & I may head out there this weekend or next for some pool playing. I feel bad for not going out there, I really do. He's a good old guy, just set in his ways. "The liberal Democrats are taking over the country!" he roared. As Scott & I kept our mouths shut & tried to find the wallpaper interesting. Obviously politics is a subject to be avoided.

Some days you lose.

Well, called up the birdie rehab center this morning to check on Sheila the Horned Lark, and the woman told me simply, "She didn't make it."

It's something I obviously didn't want to hear, but out of the birds I've dropped off at the two places over the years, that poor little one is the only one that "didn't make it".

We do what we can & hope for the best.

On this same sort of note, sad but sort of funny in a demented way, I was driving through the country on Saturday and had almost reached town when I spied a vulture rising from a carcass at the side of the road. As I neared it, I saw that it was a cat. I could tell what cat it was from the road and I pulled up in the ditch, tears welling in my eyes.

It was a neighbor's cat, a beautiful tabby with exotic swirled markings. He was also an unneutered male and a characteristic roamer. First off, I'm not a big fan of these people. The kids are okay, but the parents..... They're the sort that believe animals are disposable. They didn't deserve a handsome, sweet cat like that, and he didn't deserve to be dead at the side of the road with vultures picking at his bones.

I moved him off the road, carefully averting my eyes from his face, and I drove home slowly, appetite dead, crying for someone else's cat. I wasn't sure what to do. If I told them, would they care? Probably not enough to bring him home and bury him properly. If he never came back home again, would they miss him? Surely the kids will, but those kids didn't need to see his poor little body, so I decided not to say anything - it's not like I'm on super-friendly terms with these people other than the kids who enjoy petting my dog.

So, at 11 o'clock at night, it had weighed on me all day. Visions of the vulture and his handiwork kept popping into my mind. I felt bad that I had never crated him off to the vet to have him neutered, even if he wasn't mine. I had told Scott when he got home in the afternoon & he was very upset, too. As we stood in the garage, half-drunk, throwing darts, he could tell my thoughts were drifting & by the look on my face, he knew exactly where.

"Do you want to go get him?"

"Yes. I do."

So, we hopped in Scott's truck & off we drove with a large paper bag & some newspaper to pick a dead cat off the roadside. Mind, it was after 11 at night. I hopped out while he turned the truck back to homeward-facing and wrapped the poor unfortunate in the papers and put him head-first into the bag. Then we loaded him in the bed of truck and drove the mile or so home. On the way down our street, a tabby cat darted in front of us and I said, "HEY!" but the markings were not the same as the one in the back. Even if we had the wrong cat, we couldn't exactly toss him back in the ditch now anyway, could we?

We dug a small grave in the rich, dark earth, under the mulberry tree in the dog run with our handy new Coleman battery-operated lantern for light. At 11:30 at night. Tho' our back yard is private for the most part, our neighbors (not the owners of the cat) can look into it from their upstairs windows. And every light in the upstairs was on. We're pretty sure that they think we're eccentric, maybe even downright strange.

And then this. As if we aren't weird enough.

But, after we had placed him carefully into the grave and scooped the soft dirt back over him, I felt a tremendous weight lift off of my shoulders and I felt a little happier - at least we could offer him something. I told Stacey the next day and she deemed us bizarre for picking up dead things and burying them. Scott admitted he thought it was a little odd, too, even if it was the Right Thing, but if it made me feel better, then so be it. It did.

Sunday night found me standing in the kitchen when I heard a persistent meow coming from somewhere. I turned around and saw my Himalayan, Bella, glaring out the window at a small calico face peering in. If they ask, how can I refuse? I fixed a bowl of food and set it out on the porch. She immediately raced up & tucked into the meal. I didn't try to pet her, just offered her what I could, and stepped back inside. How do they know? Am I on the billboard for some sort of Feline Underground Railroad?

All the same, we do what we can and hope to win.

For the birds

This morning on my way to work, driving past the fields & farm equipment finishing up pulling the last of the corn from the field, I noticed a small, upright puff of feathers sitting on the edge of the road. I drove for a minute, but since I had seen it I couldn't very well leave it, so I turned around and stopped by the little bird. There was a truck coming a ways behind me so I had to make it quick. Upon spotting me and my outstretched hand descending towards it, the bird let out a small whistling song and hopped down the ditch dragging it's wing. I followed after and managed to clasp my hand over it's back and turn it slightly so that it was cupped in my palm. The truck was nearly upon me so I leapt into the Goat and threw it into gear, bird still in hand. One hand on the gearshift, the other cradling the bird, driving with my knee. This happens more often than you might think, minus the bird.

After the truck behind me turned the opposite way, I stopped long enough to gently shove the bird into my brand-spanking new wool cap and took the time to note her dainty markings. A yellow chin, black streak across either eye, and little tiny black horns arching up like eyebrows over the eyes. She was about sparrow-sized, mostly gray. Into the hat she went.

I got to work and called the local nature center, but, as I suspected, they only handle raptors - a couple of which I've brought in over the years, and they referred me to where I thought they would, the Brukner Wildlife Rehab Center. I have also brought these good folks several charges over the years. But, Brukner's is about an hour away from where I work. Fortunately, my mom wasn't working until later on and agreed to drive in to pick up the bird and then drive her to the rehab center. She's a good mom.

Co-worker and I were researching bird species on the internet & she found it: a horned lark. And, we deduced she was female by the lack of black cap and promptly dubbed her Sheila. We peeked at her several times and she would puff up her little head which made her horns stand out that much more. Mom came and I carried the shoebox that I had transferred her to out to Mom's car and placed her gently on the front seat while the bird pecked the inside of the box insistently.

The folks at the rehab center were glad to be of help with the little songbird. They said I can call tomorrow to check on her. I hope she's okay! The one sad thing, other than that she's damaged, is that these birds are monogamous. She was probably migrating and got hit - either she didn't have a mate or he had gone on without her or was he anxiously waiting on the wire overhead when I picked her up?

Regardless, I hope the kind people at the rehab center are able to patch her up so that maybe, just maybe, she can meet back up with Mr. Horned Lark at some point.

If you type 'horned lark' into Google Images, you can see what a cute little bird she is!

Another great author gone

http://news.aol.com/entertainment/articles/_a/sophies-choice-author-william-styron/20061102065409990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

I think they could've left the spoiler off for Lie Down in Darkness tho'.

And, yes, I know I need to learn how to link a link to a word! :)