For Bill....

I wish for you ease on your leaving this world.
I wish your family peace and love throughout this process.
I hope you do not suffer any more, in body or in spirit.
I thank you for the children we share and the joy that have brought to my life and even the sad or not so happy moments. Our children will be what they choose to be and I thank you for helping in creating these beings that walk the earth.
I thank you for sharing my path for the time that you did even though our paths diverged and needed too.
I will try to remember the good, for there was good at times between us.
I will remember the promise we held all those years ago instead of the end of us.
I will light my candle to lead you on your way.


It feels so wrong to be saying this goodbye now, instead of later. There were things I still hoped for with you, for you to heal yourself, to walk down aisles with girls on your arm, to see your wonderful grandson grow, to welcome the ones that may come in the years ahead. These were a slim chance and I knew that, but I still held that hope. In saying goodbye I have to get go of that, of you, it's harder than I thought it would be.

I did not consent to this!

Ok, strike that, I was born so therefore consent to having a body must have been given by fetus me. Fetus me was a twit.

So maybe some form of consent into *having* a body was given at some point, but right now, I wish it was working a lot better. Disc bulge which is hitting the sciatic, months of PT, pain management coming up and then yesterday. All the old familiar signs started up and even though it's been *years* since the last flare up I knew exactly what it was. Diverticulitis, again, just for fun since I am feeling so great.

In a way it makes sense, personal stress going on, physical pain that has no seeming end and a batch of docs who are determined to make sure narcotic medications are given out in time with appts, yet cannot seem to understand by their own system appts do NOT happen quickly and if it's 5-25 days in between I should just deal with the pain. It was enough I guess that my body had to scream red somehow.

Yes, right now I am frustrated and irritated and hurting day in and day out. So everything has fallen in disarray around me which does not help anything. I can't keep the house up. I keep getting hit with things I do not want to deal with right now. So I am now having housekeepers come in for the heavy and big stuff so I can at least feel like this is home not "huge mess I live in". It's still frustrating.

Then to be hot out of the blue with the bout of diverticulitis. Just ew. No one ever wakes up and goes... you know what? A clear liquid and soft diet for the next week sounds GREAT! (If you do, well, more power to you, I think but yeah do that over there away from me heh) Massive amounts of anti-drugs in my system, mmm mmm give me some! They have me on antibiotics, anti-fungal, anti nausea, a trifecta of tummy goodness that I do know will make all this go away pain wise within a day or two at most, but still not fun.

I especially love the antibiotic instructions that read "Stay out of the sun on this stuff"... in the middle of a Texas summer. I swear that's like trying to say "Please don't touch the floor when you walk, kthxbai".

So, dear body, I want you know, I never consented to this. You need to heal, now. I will do everything I can and have been to help you. I am eating healthy and losing the weight, this will go slower than either of us want it to. Once I get some of the pain issues under control, I will exercise you and maybe even take you for walkies. But, seriously, get on this. Now. Please?

(For anyone who might read this, yes, this is my bug huge whine/rant on things right now. It's been 2+ months dealing with stuff, I told myself I was allowed:) )

Plants and the joys of small dirt clumps

In the past few years I have finally come around to being able to grow plants. Most of my life when I picked up a plant at the store or wherever you could almost hear it scream out as if it had been plucked up by the worst horror movie monster ever. True, I was the Black Thumb, terror of all things plantlike.

Usually a plant would enter he house, linger for a bit, start to fall to pieces and finally, wither and die and only then would I notice and go "Oh yeah, I got a plant a while ago didn't I?".

Then it was the fun of trying to keep a plant alive sporadically when I noticed it. Water every alternating Thursday that ended in a 7 if I remembered, cutting off bad bits and finally trying to salvage sections by rooting them in water that would slowly evaporate to make their torment longer.

Last year a shift came somewhere, not exactly sure how or what changed the tide but I wanted plants in the house again. I got 2 or 3, did my best to tend them and keep them going and voila! One lived!

But it was an important one! Yes, the other two fell to the ravages of dry soil and a hungry cat, but one *lived*! It was amazing, I almost killed it and yet it sits on a high shelf right now with a bunch of greenery I never expected to see on it again. So it started off ... plants... for me again.

I have gone overboard I think, just a bit, maybe. But I have 4 successful house plants now that I trim for rootings to keep them in check, not to keep them alive and strangling. I discovered the fun on green onions, when you get one from the store and use the greens simply save a bulb and place in water by a window, the greens grow back! Plant magic! I have a porch that is filled with pots of this and that and the other. I have herbs and lavender and even some flowers this year. They are actually growing things. The feel of soil under fingertips is just such a connection to the earth even in a little way and to have it right there at any and every moment is amazing. To watch seeds sprout into actual plants and not into feeble things that fall over and die in a few days is the best type os magic I can imagine. Growth and sustenance and visual power for me.

I adore the look of the sunflowers as they are popping up, breaking themselves free of this shell, hard and safe it protects them until that moment they can shuck it off and reach for the sun.

Maybe this is just a version of me I am coming into. I am reaching for my sun. I am casting off the shell. Maybe it's just a cool thing to watch too. I can run with either idea.

One shoot on the lavender is becoming, turning from plant into flowering strand. Knowing this will be the first and that it's the one winning the race to grab the spotlight. I adore lavender and I am hoping this year to have enough of these flowering stalks to make myself a ribbon tied lavender wand again, they smell so sweet and capture the scent of summer in a bit of pretty for me. They may wind up to be too few or too small as they were last year, but then again, it just means watching another year go by and having them thrive for longer. It works.

So I will watch and wait, the african daisies erupted, I might have to make choices and thin them out a little. I hope not, I would love a splash of color wrapped around each other as they grow. I do know sometimes the choices have to happen though, you have to thin out to let some thrive sometimes.


So that is my little bit of magic in life that crept up over me through the past few years. No smashing blaze of enlightenment happened, it was a snails journey, slow and unnoticed until it happened and the switch from the Black Thumb of Plant Horror has become a container gardener, might not be the greenest thumb around but it's the one I got.

Bus rides....

There is a lull in riding the bus, it steps you out of life for the time it takes to get from point a to point b. It's been years since I had to ride on a daily basis or for transportation to the things I wanted. Yet, it stays with you, this feeling that a bus ride is time away from life, though it may be taking you towards or away from things that are life itself.

The wait, the ever present wait, whether you show up right on the dime or sit there staring reading the schedule and trying to mesh route numbers and Hourly:35's with reality. That special form of anticipation that only the glance down the street can create. Did it come and I missed it or wait, do I see it there? No? Darn, okay when's the next one? Those few seconds are possibility and past wrapped into one.

But if it's not immediately there, you have to suspend yourself into a stance of waiting. Either on a bench (if available and present) or find a spot to lean, sometimes even hunkering down against the elements to be right there when the next one approaches. These moments can be dragged into an eternity or simply spent lost within thought. I miss these moments at time, not in the rain and cold mind you, but on a mild day with a bus ride after work is done the few minutes of looking forward to home before the crush of the buses interior accepts you for your fee can be simply wonderful. You can imagine anything about the people and buildings around you, this has always been a playground of the mind for me. That man in the dark long coat looking frustrated could be *anyone* in your mind. A spy who regal Rolls went kaput and is desperate to hop aboard to make the 20 block trip into the downtown area. Okay, so most likely not true, but hey. Even the most mundane though, a simple man, done with work, worried for schedules and children's bedtimes and not missing the time he wants to be home, more realistic I bet and endearing in it's own way. The woman humming softly to herself could be a musician caught in an act of creation by the ones who pick up the tune and carry it forward into their own nights with them. I always have enjoyed trying to fit a story into the person to pass that time.

Then the time is up, always too soon or too late, it's rare that a bus has perfect timing you know. The release of air brakes a sigh as it knows it's work is nowhere near done and will never be truly over. Doors that whoosh open and release whatever the opposite of outside is, cool in summer though maybe only by a degree or two or that warmth of bodies and heat for winter that make jumping up and in almost a treat after the wait. I soft beeps and chimes of cards and coins flying through and you flash your whatever and take the long look down the bus to find a seat for yourself. Personally I want either the back or the front, somehow, sitting in the middle is putting yourself right on the average. Everyone seems to want the seats halfway down, halfway up depending on perspective.

I want a spot I can rest a forehead against glass, that is my only preference. Where I can look out at the streets flying by me in a rush or pick them out one by one as they creep along and disappear behind the line of sight and are gone. It always seems as all the interesting people who aren't the middle types gravitate to front... or back... and join there in an oasis. A refresher from life, sometimes talkative and exuberant as they chatter with a friend or heck, with anyone close by.

Every so often a thought forms in my head that you could listen to the lull of voices, coughs and shifts of bodies on a bus and they might just for a moment form and create truths to be whispered just to you. Then something shifts so fast, so quick that before the thought of it is formed you lost the thought and are back to looking out the window, towards a destination or going away.

Mostly a bus ride is routine, you read a book, text someone, try and distract yourself from the fact you are riding a bus and are at the mercy of it's whims. The lurch of stops and starts moves your body in a rhythm not of your own making and you can roll with each one or choose when to tense and try to still yourself in them. There are small things here and there that make it unpleasant every so often though I have found that the rude and obnoxious tend to be over ridden by the smallest of kindnesses. The day someone gave free tickets into an event, simply because they saw I had small children with me, meant I could get them a treat instead of simply going. The child who gave up a seat for an elderly person simply because they looked like a grandma. The smile of someone friendly and inviting as you sit down that strikes up a conversation you may never get to finish since a drop off will interrupt at some point.

I will never say I would willingly choose the bus over all other forms of transportation, it does have it downsides and moments where all you can think of is the fact it will be over at some point. It has it's moments though.

There are odd moments where a bus becomes a conjunction where stolen seconds out of the rest of life combine, a moment of clarity, reflection or imagination can take the mundane and turn into your own private magic. These sparks can't be found anywhere else, other sparks for the walk at dusk or the car ride's of life exist in unique bubbles as well, I want to take all my sparks and let them dash and play with each other and yet... each one needs it's own moment.

I loved riding the bus and I hated it as well and yet, there is not one bus ride I have ever regretted taken, even the daily routine ones that took me from the things I wanted for a time out of each day. I am glad to not be dependent on it anymore though and have enough distance to look back and say that bus rides gave me a space to create in my head every day, whether or not I ever wrote down those stories, poems and randomness in thought. Still, there is nothing like the feel of cold glass, forehead resting, city flying by in jerks and shifts of color outside as you travel the roads within.

Doctor Who and me... bit of a ramble but hey...

You know, this is one thing I can completely and totally blame my mother for. Thank you, Mom.

When I was born she was a Doctor Who fan, not in a fandom way like you see today on tumblr. It was a routine kind of thing. As a kid a lot of the typical kids shows.... well, I had a recurring nightmare based on a Sesame Street skit, that might merit a post all on it's own. I still remember it vividly, though I must have been younger than 4 when it happened the first and most terrifying time.

But Doctor Who was imprinted in quiet and relaxing snuggled tv watching from the time I was born. It feels like it at least. When I was of the age of "having to go to bed" I could still hear the sound of the Tardis, the credits, the lull of the voices on the tv creeping into my sleeping mind. Around 8, I started hunting it out on PBS to watch by myself. It was great, this was the best and ultimate excuse to stay up past bedtime on a weekend... "But Doctor Who doesn't come on until 10!". I had found a loophole to bedtimes in a way. Mom never did discourage me staying up to watch it. Most of the time I would fall asleep just before the end so there are a lot of episodes of Tom Baker years that are kinda sorta stored up in the old noggin, bits and pieces that filled in on reruns. Because they played it all the time. BBC would give us these seasons and PBS ran two shows a week, one new and one rerun, this was kid Who heaven.

I grew up with Tom baker as *my* Doctor, he still is and always will be. He is the first Doctor I remember and I cried unabashedly when the end came. I had that small little girl fantasy that someday... someday when I was "mature" or just older I would hear the sound of the Tardis outside, race down steps to burst outside and see him leaning against the Tardis with a bag of jelly babies going. "I think you're ready now, shall we? lease remember not to wander off though... dreadful. Jelly baby?"

And off we go.

I am still waiting for that sound and TB to be ready to go.

Part of me always will be.

When Peter Davidson took over, I was so irritated, all I could think in my head was "Tristan! Shouldn't you be on a farm with your arm up somethings wazoo??" He was All Creatures Great and Small and *not* the right kind of doctor! How could a farm vet take TB's place? He eventually won me over, except for the silliness of the bit of celery on his lapel...

But I grew accustomed to him, he grew into the role, the farm faded and he did *become* the Doctor and it was grand.

I grew older though and when Davidson left... I was all fire and rebellion and the new guy, Colin Baker, just did nothing for me. I stomped away from my childhood series like I tried to stomp away from childhood in general. I was too old and too cool with other things to do. Better things!

Not really, but hey, I was 11 at that point, I knew so much better right?

By the time CB left I was still checking in, hopeful for the Doctor, wanting to be able to watch and enjoy still. I just never could get into that guy though. Sylvester McCoy... now I liked him, he was great, lacking in the companion sense (Never really did like Ace, kept hoping she would become alien food) but I was seriously hitting the teen years and not at home enough to make a habit out of watching. I couldn't convince *most* of the group I was around that it was cool. Except my first real boyfriend, he was a Doctor nut too, had all the comics and in what must have been a rampaging moment of teen hormones gave me the entire set. Yep, teen love, ain't it grand? But it was one person and we had other things to go and do usually...

Then came meeting the kids dad, marriage, the first born, life in general. By the time I was really thinking about "Hey, I want to watch the Doctor", well it ended the same month my oldest was born. It was gone. I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye really. Amanda must have been around 6-7 months old and curled into me one night when I tried to find it with no avail. Pre internet too so I had to try and hunt it down and never found it again.


Fast forward to 2006, I hadn't thought of the Doctor in years, I never read the books or followed the radio version. Something I still want to catch up on at some point when I have hours and days of free time. Retirement maybe, heh.

Someone mentioned it and I was off again. How had I missed this? THIS of all things?? I searched, found and dove headfirst back into it without a moment's hesitation. I have gotten the kids hooked though they pick and choose when to like it, they can take it or leave it but at least they do not roll their eyes too much when I boot everyone away for this 45 mins 13 times a year. I have introduced it to friends who now go back and search out the older ones to see what they have missed. I have found a touch point to new friends who are Whovians in every walk of life I can imagine. This... is the good stuff. Each week I have my time with the Doctor.

I still listen for that sound though...

If I ever hear it I will run and hope beyond hope that a curly headed Doctor with an impossible scarf and a crumpled brown bag will be waiting.

This old rock

There is this old rock that's been kicking around my various houses for years. Rainbow painted on one side, fading colors being worn into the rock. It almost looks as if the rock bled the colors in an attempt to stand out and be taken home by some amazed child. Even the knowing that my daughters hands laid them in place with the wide strokes of a brush one summer day, baked there by the sun, I can still imagine it wanted it this way...


Plain rock among the many just like it, worn away by the years of sun and wind on a more often than not cold Pacific Northwest beach. Year after year the hordes of walkers and children coming to squeal as they find bits and pieces that the ocean has tossed up to be take as it hits their fancy. The pretty baubles of shells and flotsam getting grabbed up in tight hands, tossed into buckets or even slid into the warmth of pockets in a rain proof coat. What else could a plain old rock do to become... noticed? So slowly, ever so slowly, the colors creep out along it's surface like a pastel bleed. Faded and worn and growing just that little bit brighter with each passing year until that one child comes along. The soft hands that encompass it and lift it free of it's ages old home to clutch it tightly. Treasure found! Can you just feel the excitement and noise of being loaded into a bus and careening around the curves of a steep grade at 10 miles an hour as the sing song of children's voices surround it? Oh that moment, the brush slowly and carefully showing the rest of the world it's striking face that she found. A rainbow, applied so that no color touches the others, straight lines that wriggle at the edges like she did in the chair as she worked.


This story in rock form kicks around my place now, laying in wait at the oddest moments to stub a toe, placed on papers to hold them down with a firm grip or having the thrill of dropped plenty of times just to see how much it would thump, the cry rings out after, "It was an accident, I swear!". Even when you just knew...it wasn't. The child has grown now, rarely does she kick or toss or drop this rock. Yet she is still fiercely protective of it, this is *her* rock. New hands grab for it now and she does allow him these magic moments of being "allowed" to touch her rock or carry it to where she wants him to place it. For years to come I think this rock will remind me forcefully in the middle of the night, as my toe finds it very solid in the liquid softness of night, of that small girl child racing along beaches until she had to stop. For this rock.

Hush a bye (poem)

Four lines
All strung into a low melodic soft touch of voice 
I sing to him, the newest in the line
As I sang to his mother
 All the sisters
Night after night after night
Always the same request came
Hush a bye please
Over and over it was sung, I could
And probably have
Sung this in my sleep
It's a deep in my fabric song
Sliver of my soul sings this always song
My heart can cry it silently song
Knowing it was sung to me to the call of
Hush a bye please
Over and over in the soft
Whisper song of my mothers voice low and deep and with a
 Gentle shhhhhh afterwards
I imaging the knowing
Of a soft voice of my mother
As a child
Calling out to my grandmother who surely
Surely
Herself
Sung these four lines
A cadence of bedtime magic
To lull a childs mind to sleep
I wonder how far it travels back
This simple song
Four short lines
In the soft hush of mothers voices
And I sing it to him
In the rocker on weekends, from the living room
Doing dishes and clean up
He calls out
My voice answers
Hush a bye

It's that time again...

I have been feeling the bug to write. So, old blog I don't really want to delete the posts from, you are going to be taking on a new form I hope. I am going to try this here 'riting thing again. So posts may or may not be non fiction life stuff, they may or may not be flights of fancy, I will try to remember to mark them so people can tell the difference. It might help. Just a little. So much has been filling my life with just stuff, stuff to do, stuff to clean, stuff to run around and get done, all this *STUFF*. That's life, I much prefer the stuff I have now for the most part. It's positive stuff, busy stuff, work stuff, kid stuff. I am trying to get a good balance of the stuff too. Writing is definitely one of the things I can do for me... that really is for me. Whether is a book review or rambling along thoughts, it is a time I can take for myself to enjoy the soft sounds of keys being hit, creating something. I really have been putting thought into painting or other creative work, then it hit me. I crochet for a reason.... I cannot draw worth a damn. But anything I could put on paper with paint and scrape, dab, fix and redo, I can do with words as well. Closing my eyes I can see the pictures I want to create perfectly. However, in reality, my stick figures usually wish for plastic surgery or an eraser to commit suicide. I will remind myself to not go on about kids and stresses to much, to let those things go and to simply...be...to let myself write. Some things may be funny, some may be dark, some days I may need to sit and just type out fuck, fuck, fuck a hundred times before I can move forward. I want to try for at least once a week, one post a week to get the juices flowing again. We will see. All that stuff I mentioned before? Yeah, there is a *lot* of it, comes with the territory of a 15 year old hell bent on independence and a 5 year old who loves to be moving and going. Somewhere under all that though, is me. I still feel like so many people all crammed into this head at times. I don't even know how half of them get along without wrestling matches or fist fights but hey, my head, no hitting is the rule. I have kept so many of the different puzzle pieces of me all sorted out into little boxes, the time has come to complete the puzzles. Of course, I may have to start with the edges and delve into the middle stuff later on. But if I can just get a border into place without loosing pieces I will call that a good start.