Just a note

Just a note before I run off to a hockey game.

When autum comes calling, it's easy to see the beauty of death, because we scarcely see leves changing color as dying.

Security and moving vans

I've got one more trip back to St. Louis before I'm officially out of the town. It's a terrifying and exciting feeling, but it becomes more and more apparent to me that a house isn't much of a home when there's no one there. So since the rest of my family has left, it's surprisingly alright for me to be on my way out the door as well. 

And considering that upon returning to Tulsa with the vast majority of my belongings we were hit with a 5.8 earthquake, I might just like the feeling of having a little bit more security than the accepting pillow of my best friends couch.

A little short of crazy

Well, this month has been nothing short of crazy: the slowest move ever, the hunt for a real job, the hunt for part time jobs which pay bills in the mean time, the loss of two dogs, the announcement of an engagement, the visitation of old friends and the discovery of what family is and who it is, and fully understanding what makes a person who they are. 

The emotional toll of all of this is enough to leave one willing to find a quiet day and not do anything but breathe. That's not really an option when every time you turn around a friend is harping at you about a book you planned to self-publish over a year ago and just can't be bothered to finish. What can I say? I've been distracted. I have a few hours down, I just want to cook and find a way to go enjoy some free art, is that a crime?  No. Well, then the book will just have to wait.  Then it will wait for me to finish reading the criticism of Chaucer's work too. Then it will wait for me to spend a few weeks finding a new favorite coffee house.  And... now I'm just procrastinating. It's what writers and want to be writers do best. 

Ultimately, what I've taken from this month, aside from the fact that I seem to be much more lethargic than I previously thought, is that family is what it is, but that you get to decide how you want to respond to family and what boundaries you want to place on them.  It's an important lesson. One I hope to master soon.

On the verge

I've got two days left at my current job. It's a strange feeling. Every other time I've left a job for a new adventure I've felt a bit of trepidation about the new job or the commitment that comes with it. In fact, when I took the job I currently have, I recall actually freaking out in a QT gas station because I figured this was it. I was locked in for at least five years and I would likely retire with this job... or so I thought. 

Now 2years and 9months later, I'm rolling out to Tulsa and while I'm probably the least prepared for this adventure than I ever have been before, I'm feeling excited about strolling out of this job and this city. 

It's odd to look around my house and know that my days here are numbered (3 days!) and that when I leave I'm not coming back. Ever. There are moments when I want to lay on the floor in every room and soak it in, try to absorb it and all of it's memories before I got, but then I remember that I didn't forget the house when I went to college. And who I knew and what I did while here don't fade away just because I'm going some place else. If we spend our lives longing for the joy of yesterday, we never really enjoy today, and we'll never really see tomorrow.

Song for the day (and the move): Wild World - Cat Stevens
When I was 12 riding in my father's Mazda to my 7th grade parent teacher conferences, Wild World played on the radio. Papa sang along, like we usually did, and in between the first two verses, he paused to tell me that this was his song for me. Some day, he said, I'd move, I'd get married or I'd go off to college and settle down somewhere else, and it'd break his heart, but that was ok because that's what little girls are supposed to do.  When we got to the school, I couldn't manage to get my door open. Prompting my dad to tell me "I don't have high hopes for these conferences. You have to be smarter than the door." 

Boxes and the Doctor

This is going to be one interesting weekend. 
I'm spending it doing the preliminary move of my Mom's stuff to her new home and sorting out the loose ends of who's taking what out of the house I grew up in. It's a bit overwhelming. But mostly, what we're finding is that when we seperate everyone else's stuff from our own, it's not that much and we've got it well under control. But every time things seem like they're settled and all that's left is to grab the box and roll, someone breaks down in tears. 

It is after all the house that's been home for 25 years. When we walk out of the house in September, it will be the last time we live there. It will be the last time it is our home, and that seems a bit daunting.

Still, it's all good. We're taking the memories with us, and we'll be able to enjoy Doctor Who quotes and soundtracks as we pack up and move. It's times like these that I wish we had a TARDIS.

Song of the day: Doctor Who- Vale Decem
By the way, Doctor Who is back August 27th at 9/8c on BBCAmerica! Watch it!

Fairy Tale Endings Are Lies

When I was a little girl
Europe was the home of fairy tales
Germany was home to magical monsters and witches who eat kids
France was home to princesses and maternal geese
Sweden was home to elves, Middle Earth and epic fights
England was home to would-be-kings and knights.

When I was a teenager
Europe was the home of enlightenment and growth
Germany was home to Einstein and Kessler
France was home to Pasteur and Curie
Sweden was home to social realism
England was home to the words that untied me to them

When I grew up
Europe was just like America.
We've failed to teach our youth the value of our home,
We chase down rioters and anonymous hackers
We let loose well dressed villains
While we pay off bankers and news corps with millions.

Combat Boots

When I was eleven, I wore combat boots, legitimate Navy issue Shore Duty combat boots. Lord knows where they came from, but none the less they were mine. I used to wear those boots with torn jeans (they weren't bought that way and I've forgotten how many times my parents tried to throw them out but I know I retrieved them from the trash can more than five times) and a Air Force field jacket, which came from my dad.

It's hard to know how I changed from that stubborn, confident, dissident child to this run of the mill milk toast woman longing for approval from random strangers on social networking sites. I'm sure that it wasn't a specific moment. I'm sure it was a slowly lost battle with my mother and society about what a woman is supposed to be and do and wear. I know it happened in college and came with the desire to be accepted by someone who had no idea who I was until after I opened my mouth (and as fast as my pen moves, my brain finds sarcasm and wit slowly when impressions are to be made). It was self preservation at the cost of self.

Looking back now, knowing what the world is and the battles to be fought, I miss the girl with the field jacket and combat boots. They are tools much better suited for the world of adults.



Song for the day:  http://www.thesixtyone.com/#/s/azGPSYWEo5p/

webcomics

It's so not fair. I can't update the blog from work and when I get home I'm lost in a sea of news briefs and web comics. I try to balance the crap with some smiles!

In other news it looks like reasonable housing with permissions for the dogs and Tobin is to be had in Ok. What's yet to be seen is why I don't seem to get the call back for any job.

I'm off to bed before I get stuck in another comic.

So... there's that...

There goes yet another attempt to consistently do much of anything every day for a month. But in it's place I'm inserting exercise. It's an insane 90 degrees here at night. I think it wouldn't suck so much if I didn't have a layer of blubber to carry around with me, so hello again Richard Simmons, I haven't even forgotten the dance moves.

How are you... really?

Oh what I would give if someone would ask me how I am today.  But not in the way that we ask anyone we meet on any given day. I want them to ask me with the same sad bewildered eyes that they asked me with six months ago, meaning what they meant six months ago, when "how are you doing?" turned in to "how are you holding up?".  If someone would look at me and know now that asking me that same question could give them two very different possible answers, each as likely as the other, I would give them an honest answer today.

The answer was always "I'm alright." It always is, you know. If they're not 'alright', you don't see them. They don't see the light of day, they don't answer phones, they don't come in to work. If they've gathered themselves up enough to make it out to where you can ask them that question, they give you a default answer so they don't have to tell you the truth or risk a conversation about how it happened.  Never has a co-worker asked a colleague how they were holding up after bereavement leave and gotten a blank stare from blood shot eyes and tear stained cheeks. If we've made it in to work, we're not going to fall apart now.

But now, six months later,  someone asking me that question is all I need, some one really asking me that question. I'm all right. Life is a mess. Relationships are brutal and strenuous. I have no idea how crying on my co-worker didn't make our relationship awkward as the waiting room for hell, but I'm so thankful it didn't, and I know I can't tell him that or it would be. I'm constantly torn between wanting to live a better life and just enjoying what I have here and now, and overall, I'm alright. I'm laughing again and not feeling too guilty about it. 

I want them to ask me again, with that same concerned half pitying look, because my loss isn't any less today than it was then, but now I can give them an honest answer and I want to rejoice for that.

Fur coat + 100 degree days = more panting

My dogs would love to be shaved right now.  Well... they'd love the effects of being shaved, although the act of shaving them would cause them to run and hide under tables and pee on me when I try to get them out.  Every summer is a bit of the same. About the time we hear the sound of George's panting over the sound of the fan, we grab the scissors and coax him on to the floor in the living room where he is given the worst hair cut for a collie ever. He's had that cut twice this year, and even still he doesn't want to stay out side until 11 pm when the temperature drops ten degrees and we see double digits again.  He's staring at me now, he feels uniquely positioned to lament about the heat, and the fact that it's kept him and me copped up for the last three weeks.  

I find myself longing for the rain, and hoping and feeling in my bones that when it does rain again (and my grass remembers how to grow) it's going to be one hell of a storm. 

Until then, I've got the scissors, and George is headed for the table....

Space to work

I've found over the last few weeks that my brain wants to write. Oh I've had lines and paragraphs running full speed through my punctuated thoughts. However, I haven't written a single word. I don't have the pen at the time, or the desire when I have the pen. 

So I'm carving out a space in my day to write, and force myself to write. Every day one blog and one poem. Let's see if I can pull this off for a month.  :)

Well, that's different

It's amazing how much can change in a week. Even more amazing how much can change in an afternoon. The short statement of what you're thinking and what you're feeling can, and sometimes, does change irreparably the course of relationships. Sometimes that change can, and does, change the course of your plans for life. 

After 3 months of feeling like I was unravelling, one afternoon, one statement - repressed and abridged - may have completely changed the relational balance of my family. The saddest thing is that because it was never expounded upon, the person who's most upset by it doesn't have the full understanding of why I feel the way I do, and another person doesn't realize they play a huge part in it.

Bridges of stone may not be able to be burned, but they can explode. I think this is the beginning of an explosion and the reduction of one bridge to a rope bridge.

It's taken me a long time -too long really- to understand, but I think Tim might have been right. 400 miles is about the best distance from this place. 400 miles might just be the distance I need to start healing from wounds I don't even want to look at, yet alone dress, treat and heal. 

Maybe someday before too much time has passed we'll all be able to sit down and be civil and be friends again. But I don't think we're sitting down for dinner anytime soon.

Song for the day: Fleetwood Mac "Dreams"

Head up and march

I'm deciding - at least for this week- to find some reason to smile and put my head up and carry on.  I have a knack for finding ways to fall apart, and perhaps, it's time to try to glue it all back together. I mean if nothing else, Dad taught me to laugh when life hands you lemons, because who gives lemons as a gift?

Well, that sucks.

I'm flying to Tulsa this weekend. I'm going to get out of the house, not do any work, and potentially see a few friends in the process who will make this month suck a lot less.

That is... if I manage to not miss my flight.  Which I wasn't able to do this morning. Oh, if I had been all of a minute earlier, I'd have made it. But nope. Apparently, a 10:50 flight can depart at 10:47 and still be on time, and I would not be there.

Rebooking was quick and easy and so long as I don't do it again, I'll make it in to Tulsa at 4... only 4 hours late. Somehow, that's fitting for me and my flights to T-town. I always manage to be 4 hours later than I wanted to be. 

Until then, I'm rocking out to John Prine in an airport. which is terribly ironic.

The Silence...

Andrew Belle - Make It Without You

Silence terrifies me. Seriously, and absolutely terrifies. I can not, for the life of me, think of a time when I have been surrounded by silence. If I found myself in the house alone with the t.v.s miraculously off, I would hear the sound of the dogs or I would quickly break out my walkman/iPod/radio and put something on. If somehow I wound up awake when the rest of the family was a sleep, I'd hear the steady off-beat snores from everyone in the house.  If I found myself in the middle of a glen in the woods surrounded by no one I'd hear the life and the wind around me. In a car with no radio, I'd hear the hum of the road and the roar of the engine. Even in my solitude there has always been sound.

Until this past week.

My father was the ultimate champion of a game without a name, a game we referred to as "Name the Artist." And that was the game. Walk in to a store, catch a commercial, turn on the radio and 95% of the time Dad would look at the people he was with, pick the person he thought was least likely to get it right and pose the question as a challenge. "Name the artist."

By the time I was 15, I was right the vast majority of the time. The last five years, I've been right so often my Dad stopped asking as a challenge but as an opening to a conversation to talk about music as it was, what it turned in to and who or what could save it. (He didn't have high hopes, and all of my offerings fell short... but then what can a 20 something pop hipster say to a 50 something rocker that's meaningful?)  To know enough of music to win at this game that often, I've spent the majority of my life with a radio on, my nose in a music magazine, or watching music documentaries.

So when he passed, I wracked my brain for an appropriate song to be the first song I heard to try to fill the void he left.  He was forever talking about the lasting power of classical music, he loved the Eagles, Dan Folgerberg, Pink Floyd and Supertramp, his song for me was by Cat Stevens, I've got a slew of favorite bands who all have fitting songs about loss.  I was wracking my brain for the one that was just right.  I couldn't come up with it in the time it took to get from the hospital room to the car. I couldn't come up with it for at least a solid 24 hours. Somehow, my never silent family managed to not play the radio or sing until a day or two later when we went shopping and finally turned on the radio.


The rest of the week was rather the same. Periods of silence punctuated by ill-fitting songs and stories.
I've never been afraid of turning on the radio, I've never been afraid of having a song that didn't fit get stuck in my head. I've never embraced the silence for fear of sound -even the right sound- tearing apart whats left of my heart.  But then, I've never been this alone.  

Forcing The Pen To Write

My dad passed away on Monday morning.

Seeing as it's now 3am on Thursday, you can imagine this week has been full of decisions which were much more difficult than they should have been and ridiculous questions. Trust me, the font on a thank you card should not take 20 minutes to decide on, and no one should ever ask a newly grieving widow or child (regardless of age) how they're doing. (Oh, I'm doing fine. I only woke up sobbing three times last night, and finding his hat in the laundry this afternoon only left me curled up on the floor in a numb stupor for an hour.  I'm doing splendidly. Thank you so much for reminding me that this wound is not -in fact- visible to every person I meet.)

Still, this week has made an opportunity for a million different conversations I doubt my family, friends and I would have ever had other wise. There is a certain amount of blunt honesty that comes along with the pain. That's almost refreshing.  

This week has also brought a good deal of laughter as we reminisce. Anyone who knew my father would know, that's the way he'd want it to be. So for now, I'm in the practice of forcing myself to continue to move, to write when I feel like crying, and to laugh when I feel like dying. Because, ultimately, that's what Dad would do, and that's all that I can do.