46 On

46. I strive to be even tempered and non judgmental. I often fail.

47. The first human baby I ever held was mine.

48. I am grumpy when I am in pain or sick.

49. I get aggravated when my coworkers do not seem to get even the simplest and most obvious of ethical issues.

50. I am a pain in the ass to live with.

51. I love to have parties. I like everyone to hang out and just chat and nibble.

52. Part of what I love about my spouse is that he says these outrageous, dastardly, terrible things. He never does dastardly, terrible things. Somethimes he is a little outrageous. My oldest boy, D, (age 29), also says dastardly, terrible and outrageous things. He does not do dastardly, terrible things. He does do outrageous things. If I had not had 18 years of D before meeting spouse, I probably would have been afraid to get involved with him.

53. I think HumVees are not just anti-American but are anti-human.

54. I am emotionally attached to my trees.

55. I have an entire closet just for paint cans and project supplies.

Long Hot Summer

In the South, June is summer, not spring. We expect June to be warm. Now warm means from about 80 to 90. It is hot from 90 on up. Starting at 96 it is f*#%)*! hot. Summer is supposed to be warm or hot. A little bit of f*#%)*! hot is ok in August, in fact most of August is that very thing.

This year we are having July weather in June. No rain for about 3 weeks, daytime temps running 92-94. Too hot too soon. Following patterns this means that this year might be the one in about 15 we have with a string of days over 100. When that happens it is about all we talk about.

"Hot enough for you"? we ask, as if the heat had melted our brains. "Could be worse" is often the answer. Could it be? Really? Everyone gets heat headaches. People die. Yes really, they do, they die.

A few years ago it rained every single day in August. It was over 95 every one of those days. Steam poured up from roofs and roads. My decking got slimy and green. The grass in the front yard was waist high. The humidity was so high the AC units could not keep the interior levels under 70%. Crepe Myrtles keep blooming like demented plants from the Amazon. The kudzu was amazing. It grew across phone lines and secondary roads. I think I may have seen an anaconda in the pool. When we started growing webs between our toes I thought maybe we had all died and been sent to an alternate reality version of hell.

So thats how it is. Too hot, too dry or too wet. Too muggy, too much.


But I have been to the perfect summer, the summer of novels and movies, the summer of beaches and sunshine and breezes. Now I am going to close my eyes and pretend I am in Montauk. The sun is pure and the light is crystal clear. The sand is hot but the sea is cool. A breeze lifts my clothing from my skin and whips my hair into my face. Gulls wheel and call above me. I open my eyes and look out, water to the end of the world. Paradise.

100 Things - starting at 30

30. I love to look at the inside of other people's houses.

31. I have enough stuff to do most of my house in at least 3 different styles.

32. My house is very old and not in anything like perfect square. The floors tilt a bit everywhere and a great deal in one room. The windows must have been set in the walls by someone with vertigo. The oak floors are much worn. I love it.

33. I LOVE movies!

34. When I was little I was afraid I would run out of new books to read.

35. I am afraid I will miss reading something really great.

36. I am very pleased with the adults my children became.

37. I like to take the same route to the same places everytime I drive.

38. I tried diligently to be a witch but after three years gave it up because the theology was too thin.

39. I think of God as Goddess as often as not. Mostly God seems less describable and less personal and less particular to me with each passing year.

40. I belive that if you invite something in, something will come in. It probably will not be something you want.

41. I belive that the book of Genesis contains the secrets of creation. I believe that the "dust of the earth" from which we were reportedly created was actually the exsisting natural humanoid on earth at the time.

42. I belive that angel DNA did enter the human gene pool and that it is still present.

43. The older I get the fewer things I regret.

44. Sometimes when I see myself naked in a mirror, I laugh.

45. When I was young I wanted long nails. Now they get too long and I cut them off.

100 Things continued

14. Reading A History of God by Karen Armstrong made me face the fact that in my life I have not had one single original idea about God. This is despite the sad truth that I have used about 20% of my cognitive life so far in that pursuit.

15. I am often so caught up in the moment that I forget everything else.

16. I wish my extended family... well somethings don't bear telling.

17. I have chronic bowl disease that is unpleasant, inconvienant and sometimes painful. I live around it. Not many people know how bad it is because I don't talk about it much.

18. I have essential hypertension that I control with medication. Recently when my doc was f****** with my meds he took me off beta blockers. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I also learned that the nice Zen state I can achieve for a few hours here and there may be more dependant on chemical beta blockers then my years of diligent practice.

19. My former mother in law is a reincarnated Buddhist Monk. She does not know this. She thinks she is a Methodist.

20. I watched my father die over a three year period. He was sent home with hospice and a prognosis of 8 weeks or so, maybe even 12 weeks. He never got any better. Every few months he would get noticably worse. For more then three years my mother was almost never away from his side. She slept on the floor next to him. She cooked for him anytime he would eat. At the end we were there. For days we slept in fitfull restless shifts and lived in a world focused on every single ragged breath he made. I was shocked at how long and hard he held on. Despite the years of knowing he was going to die, despite the often rocky nature of our relationship, despite watching with him and sometimes for him against death I was broken by grief when he died.

21. I did not learn to read until I was in the third grade. At the end of fourth grade I was testing at the 12th grade level in reading. My spelling is not great. My vocabulary is large. I sight read. Somewhere in the mix the spelling part of my brain did not completly kick in.

22. I think K.D. Lang is hot.

23. I loved Sally Mann's early work. Most of her new stuff is just so-so.

24. I painted nudes for about 2 years. I am always, unfailingly, surprised when first time viewers have odd reactions to them.

25. I love people who think about things. I don't care if they don't think what I think.

26. I dislike being around people who believe things strongly but can not tell you why or how.

27. My mothers people were all Quakers. Despite that my grandmother raised her children as Presbytarians. My fathers people were British Puritans on his mothers side and German Protestants on his fathers side.

28. I like crows. They make me happy.

29. When I see a bluebird I feel like I have seen through a crack into heaven.

Lists - 100 Things

I love reading the lists of 100 things that seem to be all over the place. In that spirit I am going to (um...try, um...attempt, um...endeavor - yeah endeavor) to make a list of my own. Not having endless energy or concentrated powers of prolonged introspection, I'll try 15 or 20 at a time, none on weekends when I am a Luddite. (Some think me a Luddite sp? all the time).

1. Usually I am not aware of my age except in an abstract sort of way.

2. I think that round is the perfect shape. I love bowls, cups, French furniture, peoneys, bracelets, marbles, and my little fat singing goddess statue.

3. I am not Catholic but I love old Catholic Madonna art and vintage crucifixes.

4. I like complex colors, I adore tertiary colors, I enjoy secondary colors and I just don't care for primaries.

5. My favorite color is blue-violet followed by blue-green then violet and yellow-green. Black is also very good.

6. If I have to stay in a room painted a warm color for very long it makes me a little ill and cranky. If the room is a warm muddy color (think harvest gold) I get flushed and start looking for a paint brush.

7. Halloween is my favorite holliday because no one else in my family even acknowledges that it exists.

8. I am the oldest child of my mother and the fourth child of my father.

9. I am the hostess of the family gatherings on Halloween (the pumpkin party- must not say the H word), July Fourth (summer cookout) and New Years Day. My baby sister, who is only 41, gets Christmas and Mother's Day. Middle sister attends but does not host. Mom has us over anytime we'll come.

10. I drive an old, ugly Corsica. It gets good gas millage, rarely needs work, is easy to park and drive, has lights that automatically come on at night and is generally a satisfactory ride. I have no urge to replace it.

11. I have been married for 10 years to my second husband. I am his 4th wife.

12. I have two sons and one daughter. I acquired the daughter when she married my oldest son.

13. I have one dog, spouse has one dog. We share a cat and fish. I also have 2 chickens.

Fly Jelly Revisited

I had dinner with youngest son last night. After eating we went to Books A Million. (We all use the bookstore as a club)

At some point son said "We all read your flyjelly post".

"Did they like it? Did they find it funny? No one left a comment" I said.

"Well, not as funny as you think it is" he answered.

By now I was laughing at the memory of flyjelly, after 23 odd years I still think it is hysterical. According to him my almost 30 year old favorite oldest son has never found it amusing. My spouse thinks it very bad. Of course, he thinks it went from funny to just plain wrong when I brought home a jar of green pepper jelly and left it out for speculation.

Clearly, I am warped. Now, these are the same children who played evil tricks on me they still find delightful. Just before the flyjelly episode oldest favorite son, D, rushed in screaming Mama Mama a man got R. This was just weeks after a man did get a child that lived a short distance from us. I will not torture you with the details of the next few minutes but suffice it to say that when I finally found R, crouched against the back foundation of the house giggling softly into his hands, I was very close to total collapse. Upon discovery both D and R fell over on the ground, laughing manically with tears of utter glee coursing down their smooth little faces.

Last summer one of them reminded the other of that incident and they both hooted like hyenas until they were red faced and shinny eyed and sliding out of their chairs onto the floor like hysterical school girls. I confess that I am not and was not and very likely never will be amused by that little chapter. But it certainly makes for a good story, especially when they tell it.

Ex-Husbands and Grown Children

My favorite youngest son told me his father has a mass on one lung and is going in for a biopsy. Now, I should have been able to say something reassuring to him, but I couldn't. Instead I was thinking, God I hope he has been happy these last years, at least happier then we think. My guts are screaming not fair, not fair. He is only 48, he doesn't smoke. Mass, lung, cough, feels bad, everyone in his house smokes, 2+2= CANCER NOT FAIR NOT FAIR NOT FAIR.

Of course it could be, and probably is, something else. Something that can be cured, something that won't force him to make decisions. You know the ones. Something that won't make him so sick and try to steal his dignity and self.

All this went round my skull quickly and all garbled, and all I could do was snifle. No support or gentle assurance that he would be ok. My sweet youngest boy, suffering, no help did I give.

Shifting gears a little, my present spouse is one of those men who thinks that when you get a divorce the other person is gone from your life as if they never really exsisted. I, on the other hand, only had children with people I liked well enough to keep as friends, even when there was no domestic bliss. Youngest boy's (boy is a 26 year old man)father's present wife feels the same way my spouse does, except maybe to an even geater extent. So ex is not allowed to talk to me on the phone anymore by his ex. Now my spouse would not tell me not to talk to boy's father, but he certainly does not mind that I don't. Anyway, my ex, the boy's father, is still my friend, and the father of my children, and part of the vessel of our family memory, and I don't want him to die.