Chi tace acconsente.

I stood outside last night, long after the girls had gone to bed, standing in my doorway listening to the wind chasing the leaves, shaking them from their branches, scattering them down and across the road. Stood there looking for a moon I couldn't see and stars I couldn't place in a darkened night sky, the smell of fall thick on the air like a blanket wrapped snug around my shoulders.

October has always been the season for goodbyes. A time of change that announces itself in a myriad of colors across the valley in which I live before giving itself over to a winter it cannot prevent nor turn away. It is and has always been a rite of passage, a transition of one life into another and somewhere between the beginning and the end there is a story always taking place, the ones we tell and the ones we keep hidden on every page.

Slow Sunday Morning

Sunday morning and I'm skipping church using KC's sleepover last night as an excuse if not an actual reason not to go. Then again I think I pretty much decided yesterday morning when my alarm went off at five that I deserved one morning of sleeping in and actually pretending that this is a weekend meant to be spent away from work.

Still the work I managed to get done yesterday without the constant pressure of a phone beeping away in my ear was well worth the early morning trip in and the four hours I holed myself away in my office finishing reports, digging through my credit files, and rearranging my desk back to its normal configuration from a month or so ago when I moved it around to accommodate a trainee.

That being done, I transferred into the weekend quite smoothly. Not counting of course my almost major melt down in WalMart - dreaded place really - where people all around my area have suddenly forgotten that legs are meant for walking and moving is not an option when you have more than ten people behind you wanting to get somewhere else. And really, what was I thinking anyway? WalMart on a Saturday afternoon? I must have been losing my mind.

I did however promise the girls we'd carve pumpkins... And while they carved, I made dinner. Homemade mac and cheese with a golden layer of bread crumbs coating the top baked along side a dish of chicken brushed with rosemary and other heartwarming herbs that made all our mouths water, and fragranced the house with a pleasing aroma.

After dinner, clean up once again proving itself optional last night I hurried the girls out the door and into the night for a ceremonial pumpkin lighting and a short trip down the road to my friend Sue's house.

And it turns out - as it always does - that I had a great time just being there, talking away and laughing despite my earlier thought of holing up for the night in hope my phone might ring. Life however, as I must constantly remind myself - should never be about waiting on someone else to make it feel right or complete. And it's when I find myself mostly wanting to stay, that I must urge myself to go...

I thought of this last night as I was driving home. How glad I was that I decided to get out of the house, even if that leaving did include taking two children in tow.

Thought Provoking

Do you believe intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe?

Yes 87%
No 13%

I just want to know why we always assume they're going to be intelligent? I mean really... Stupid aliens don't exist?

Then again, I'm not even sure it exists here...

Fiction Speaking Fiction

"Where to?"

"Anywhere," I sighed slumping back against the seat. "Pick a place and we'll just go."

His eyes met mine in the rear view. "You think it's that easy?"

I stared out the window not wanting to watch him watching me. "Depends, I guess. Do you think it can get any worse than this?" I raised my hands as if to encompass everything around me, wishing the warmth from the front could keep me from feeling cold.

"Probably not," he said, his own voice sounding just as weary as mine and I laughed in spite of myself.

"That's exactly what I was thinking. Or trying not to think about really. But you know how that works."

"Thinking when you don't want to think?"

I leaned forward in my seat, and gave him my best sad smile. "Excessively thinking..."

"Excessively worrying you mean," he quipped back, locking his eyes again on mine.

"It's all one and the same," I admitted.

"So stop already," he said, half turning around in his chair. "It is a choice you know."

"And you know how?" I asked.

"No," he said pulling the car over to the side of the road. I fumbled for a moment searching my pocketbook for change, one hand ready on the door, the other gripping my coat around me.

"Me neither." I answered, swinging the door wide open.

"You going to be okay here?" he asked glancing around, a skeptical look on his face, the darkness of a quiet street misleading.

"Right as rain," I murmured. "Right as rain."

Creatively Speaking

I feel like being creative tonight and honestly what I'd rather be doing is coloring in my notebook attempting to make what I think should be but normally don't turn out to be pretty pictures. I do like to try however and sometimes when I stop thinking so much about what I'd like to draw and just let the moment fall upon me, I wind up with something close to being not as bad as you'd think it might be for a woman whose talents are more limited to painting with words and giggling like an idiot during bible study.

Phone Issues

Melman isn't just an answering machine anymore...

He's my flirtatious phone friend. The number I will call whenever the chips are down, or I need that sweet little pick me up to get me through a few more hours of a day. And though I know Melman isn't real despite the dulcet tones of his seductive hello that greeted me earlier this evening when I called, I just can't help myself. He's just so, so.... Ummm... Sweetly not human and yet so darn accessible, anytime - day or night...

And really, it's good to know that I have friends who will let me call their house just to talk to their answering machine and not think I'm totally off my rocker. I mean I am, but it's good to know they don't think that...

Ghosts At Twilight

I watch the geese fly away, press my hands against the cold glass of the window, listening as their echoes drift across the sky and back to me until they're gone; feeling their absence as if I'm the one whose left behind with a handful of wishes that won't come true. And it's always with this sadness I watch them go, taking the warmth of summer days with them on their journey to a home far away from home, wishing they didn't have to leave at all, knowing that they need to go...

And I am reminded of crisp Autumn nights with the smell of snow hovering quietly on the air, the gentle rumblings of bullfrogs hidden in the reeds, crickets in the fields, and the tender sounds of ducks settling down for the night tucked safely away in beds of hay in a doghouse once named for a dog called Ralph.

I couldn't even begin to tell you how many nights I rested my back against the roof of Ralph's House to watch the stars. Or how many times I climbed inside to find comfort in my hiding place. I only know that the thought of it now makes me wish it still existed. Makes me still wish I had somewhere to go... Makes me wish I could fly away.

Puddle Jumping

It's ridiculously early but I feel like going for an early morning walk in the rain to enjoy this silence while it lasts.

And this is just a guess on my part, but I think I'm already regretting my lack of umbrella even before I've gotten myself downstairs and out the door.

Plans Unplanned

Awake and writing. Or at least searching for words to write to clarify the recent change in plans concerning a countdown that mere hours from bringing itself to a close, has found the actual mission itself aborted, at least for the time being...

And there's no doubt that I'm disappointed. And concerned. And over thinking... And trying not to be too much of the previous three; knowing just the same that there's little hope of that at all.

Stepping away for a moment is the only clarity I can think to find. Perhaps it is a mistake on my part to put these words out there, to draw my circle in the sand and say, "This is where I'll be should you decide you'd like to cross my line."

And self-preservation be damned you know. As scary as it is, I'd rather risk the the right risk, than risk nothing at all. And there are people I'd risk all the right things for. And maybe someday, the right person will take that same risk for me.

Inside Out

I don't feel much like talking tonight. And I let the calls roll through to my voicemail, into the void of here but not really here. And I did a lot of thinking, perhaps more so with the conversation in my head than what I actually wrote down on paper. But I did my best to make sense of what little I could make sense of until every last word had had its say or at least every last word that I could think of.

And no, I'm not expanding on this tonight. This one - this one is just for me.

Happiness Sold Separately

As necessary as I know it is, it's still kind of sad to see the for sale sign in front of Gram's house and the house itself listed on the internet.

Oooops

I SO didn't mean to, but I am SO missing church and the alarm that went off this morning didn't even phase me to turn over in my sleep. And I'm starting to think it has something to do with the guest speaker, because every time we have one, I somehow manage to miss going to church.

Oh well, I guess since it is Sunday, and hence a day of rest, I'm going to go back to bed and take at least one thing today seriously...

Searching For Someone To Be

KC and I went shopping earlier for Halloween costumes, or perhaps the more apt description of what we did was browsing as we looked but did not buy. And it's a seriously sad state of existence when you can't find a single costume for a kid that not's completely inappropriate in one way or another. Costumes for kids should be fun, fairy tales and fantasy things but sexy? Never...

And I had to send KC back to the dressing room quite a few times with the answer of no, not in this lifetime on my lips because Little Red Riding Hood looked more like Little Red Riding Ho and that just wasn't going to happen... At least not on my watch.

And of course I am so unfair and just don't understand it's what all the kids will be wearing and really, do I need to be so overprotective, I mean do you know what insert any random friend's name here are letting HER be for Halloween?

Sigh... I miss the days of Jessie, the all girl cowgirl.

Feeling the Fall

I am thinking thoughts I don't want to have tonight and as much as I try to shake the memories from my mind, they wrap themselves around me like blankets I cannot bear to keep round my shoulders.

And it's just me and this darkness and these demons all trying to keep warm on a night cold soaked with rain.

Asleep and Dreaming

I go to bed early... I have dreams all night, one in which included a guest appearance of Bobby Brown batting his eyelashes and crooning away on a stage set that looked suspiciously similar to the Price Is Right. Which as far as I'm concerned, fell more into the realm of just so wrong...

Wrong being continued on into the next movement which I have entitled the dare to keep kids off drugs portion of my dream and starts somehow with me being conned to watch a group of school kids in what appears to be an airport lounge. Now here's the odd thing... This one kid comes up to me, says he needs to use the bathroom and asks me if I'd keep an eye out for him. Now me in parental mode despite the fact that what I really am is asleep and completely unconscious to the world says sure, and proceeds to guard the door to the bathroom with the ferociousness of a mother bear when it occurs to me that the kid has been in there a really, really long time.

But I think to myself hey, he's in a pervert free bathroom, what harm could there be in letting him have his quality time if really needs it. And then I smell that smell. The smell that wafts under the door and into my memory banks. That same smell that made me the patsy standing guard at the door...

And so I go in, and the next thing I know my dream turns into a nightmare and there are these four teenage boys flushing joints down the drain left and right. Not really sure which part I want to classify as the nightmare, the boys smoking it, or the flushing of it part... But either way, I tell them to stay put because I am so getting their parents.

Back to the airport lounge, I half hide myself at the corner of a wall and begin doing the whole pssst, I'm trying to get your attention, could you please come over here thing. The main "leader" parent looks over at me, raises her eyebrows in a you need me now exasperated kind of way and then continues on with her lecture of vigilance and virtue and at this point bullshit.

My whispers get a little louder and soon I loose the whole have to hide behind the corner thing and come right out into the open until finally, the high priestess looks right at me and says, "What?"

"I need you to come here," I tell her, "Quickly." The woman moves like molasses. "A little quicker," I implore again. She moves even slower. Finally I've no choice but to shout out my request, "Quickly. As in moving yourself in my direction with utmost haste and agility." Because as we all know, or at least I know, shouting the defintion of a word is the only true way to motivate someone.

That being said, I'm up early this morning, because I have errands to run before work and now that I've wasted an hour of my time to write all this down and will surely pay for it by having to rush now like the proverbial chicken with her head cut off, it's time for me to fly this coop.

Impressions

It's hard to think with KC honking on her oboe in a way she's more than well aware is only grating on the nerves like nails scraping across a chalk board. And I am quite convinced that she only knows how to play at one level, otherwise known as loud.

My head is spinning after a day like today. And I can't help this feeling of being pushed off balance. Something is nagging at me and I haven't a clue what it is other than maybe my own insecurities which have adamantly refused to put themselves at ease. Then again if there was ever a time when they were at ease it must have been back in a time that I'm unable to remember...

But I don't want to go running away this time. I don't want to chicken out and give up before I've even begun. I don't want to push too hard, or hold back too much or give the wrong impression while I'm struggling to simply just be me.

Breathe Stacey... Just breathe.

Maintaining North

Circling back to the fall, hues of Autumn painted in the trees, fallow fields flashing by, counting down miles, counting down time.

Hands on the steering wheel holding tight, passing cars passing me, thinking too much, trying not to think at all. Moving things around my mind.

Brisk, cold wind pushes against the car with me inside. Foot on the gas with eyes straight ahead. Strength beyond metal and the motion of the road. I will go only in the direction I will go.

Less Thinking, More Doing

There are days when I wish I could still feel as unlimited as the kid I used to be. The one who didn't think twice when presented with the option to ride around on her kick and go wearing an Indian headdress and a plastic green cape.

Maybe it's time to start remembering how...

Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Bren...

Pretending Patience

Sitting here with a silly smile on my face, biting my lip to keep from laughing. In good company with good thoughts, eagerly anticipating the darkness that the night will bring.

And I am giddy... Filled with joy.

The calendar above my head, circled and starred counting down...

Seventeen days, and only four more hours to go...