Barren

She wraps her arms around herself when supply cannot meet the demand for comfort and holds herself in.

Buckets deep, my little red shovel and matching pail,

Bailing.

Leaving a bread crumb trail.

How I've been so easily

Lured.

Once again the scene of the crime.

The big bad wolves ask for me by name.

Take

Take

Taking their share.

Slicing and shredding.

Taking and getting.

Forgetting my name.

  

A Bout of the Swine

When you're sick, the last thing you want to hear is a co-worker of one of your exes share with you, "You must have been hanging around *name omitted to protect the guilty*. He's been sick too, they think his girlfriend has the swine flu and he's been told to stay home until he's over it."

Of course the guy telling you has absolutely no clue that you and swine flu's boyfriend ever had a thing going so he doesn't realize that the dagger he just brandished and placed in your heart didn't make you feel (a) better (b) sympathetic to swine girl's plight or (c) thankful for the reminder that jackass has moved on while you're still wondering how it is that the guy who seemed the most right for you is obviously still Mr. Wrong.

You murmur some sort of comment in reply not even knowing what you're saying and then you pause. Convenient, you think. Deer season just opened and the boy you know best who likes to hide out in tree stands and stake out Bambi is suddenly down with an illness that could keep him out of work and out of the woods for an extended period of time.

Plausible? Yes.

Possible? Absolutely.

Bloody likely? Not a chance.

Honestly though I am over him. For the most part anyway. It's just that when he calls, and yes, he still occasionally calls, it's like an instant connection to my heart when he says, "Hi," and I can't help myself but to say "Hi," right back.

I'm going to have to work on this. Moving forward is hard enough to do when you keep opening doors to the past and one cannot waste time on things that if they were going to be would have already been. So I'll chalk this one down to useless information. However if swine flu is in season, I cannot help but to say I hope she's got it.

Just Before Bed

The fact that I've managed to drive past my own driveway at least four times that I can remember counting since KC and I moved in should not be held against me. In fact, it shouldn't even be mentioned because for the most part the only real reason I missed it was because I was too distracted noticing everything else. One night it was garbage cans, the next it was a parked car, and goodness only knows what reasons I had for the third and fourth.

My new neighborhood is cozy. One by one my neighbors have come over to introduce themselves. Some to be nosey to be sure and some just to say hello and offer a welcome to the neighborhood. Unfortunately none of them have come over with cookies or a casserole dish filled with something yummy. Evidently my new neighbors are not the welcome to the neighborhood here is some food kind. Sad really since up until today, I've spent the past three weeks learning how to be Julia Child's with a microwave as the gas line to my new stove wasn't hooked up. And after three weeks of being microwave dependent, nothing could have been better than coming home tonight and making my very first hot from the stove meal in my new home.

As for naming my house, I still haven't come up with a name. Maybe once everything is put away, and the walls are painted something other than the stark white they're painted now, maybe then a name will come. Like most things, I've just got to practice patience and wait for the name to come to me. After all my grandmother had her West Wing, my mother has her Culver's Cove, and who am I to break the chain?

Fall

One by one they fall. Sailing. Gliding. Reaching for the ground as some would still reach for the sky landing softly, the still green of the grass a backdrop to their beauty. And a story I once read as a child comes to life before me...

Freddie the leaf, so scared of falling from his precarious perch in the tree that he held on long after his time to fall had come and gone, scared of letting go and what it would mean. It is a beautiful story celebrating the wonderment of life and the eventuality of death and it did so in a way that even now years and years later, I recall his story and smile as I watch each Freddie after Freddie and Freddie gracefully descend from the limbs that were their summer homes.

Settling In

Surrounded by boxes one would think that I would feel a bit more motivation than I do to unpack them. Three months however of constant stress, both waiting on the house to close and waiting on the hours at my job to return to normal have made this anything but a productive day. For the first time in weeks, I am sitting down without a thought, without a care, and without any desire at all but to enjoy doing only what I choose to do and only when I choose to do it. And at the moment, I am all about doing nothing.

I shouldn't say nothing however. I did after all drag the old carpet out to the curb, a microwave I've had since before the beginning of time and more or less scraped up any other junk I could come up with to take advantage of free take your crap to the curb today for pickup tomorrow morning. Let it not be said that I would ever allow the opportunity to unload go by without searching high and low for the ever elusive throw out now or silently keep your items in storage for another goodness knows how many months peace go by.

Sadly I did not make as much of a dent in the pile as I would have preferred, but at least the rug - the rug that I had loved and dragged up two flights of stairs and had up until Kate flooded the living room of the apartment one month before our move still been in livable conditions - is gone. No amount of steam cleaning could clear the scent of mildew once mildew had sent in and with a summer like ours filled with nothing but black clouds and rain, drying out was not an option no matter how many fans I set about the room to try to set things right.

I am however about to return to my state of nothingness. My couch misses me and as a newly made homeowner in charge of the thermostat, it's time to go wrap myself in a blanket and prepare to freeze.

This Would Be Easier in Third Person

I thought it was something that I wanted. Something that I was due for a long time spent waiting. Weeks later I know far more than I ever thought I'd want to know about myself and the way my heart works. Or in this case, doesn't work. And it turns out that it had nothing at all to do with him and everything in fact to do with me.

The truth is I spend an awful lot of time hiding. Not saying what I'd really like to say, not being the person I really want to be, and doing all the things I know are only going to come back around to bite me in the ass before I can bat an eyelash or two.

When it comes to men, I'm a natural disaster. And I keep thinking that maybe eventually something will change despite the fact that I keep running myself around the same circles and ending up with the same old worn out results. For a smart woman, I am optimistically dumb. I say that and smile. Somehow being naive in this fashion makes me entertaining to myself...

But not everything is a made for TV movie funny. Interaction between two people can destroy you. Rip you to ribbons. Tear you from the inside out and leave you weak, praying for mercy and finding none.

You have to remind yourself that no one can make you feel less unless you let them. No one can make you feel nameless or faceless unless you give them the ability to make you invisible. And I am not a second hand replacement. A means to an end. A night or two of peace and sanctuary.

So I made two mistakes. One right on top of the other and both with very identical results. One that was more of an I waited this long and by George I'm going to try it out to see if it was worth the wait and one on a whim because for just a moment I wasn't thinking very clearly at all. Neither brought me any closer to having happy as a result.

These life lessons are hard to learn. Because to pick apart the bones, I had to tear the seams to show myself just how far I'd unraveled. I'm nowhere close to being who I'm meant to be. I get sidetracked far too easily. I make mistakes more often than not. And my best of intentions can be forgotten on the fly. But I'm awake and trying and considering how long I've been asleep, things can only get better from here.

So busy!

I really, really need to start writing again.

Hearth Fires

Houses have feelings. I believe that as much as I believe that calling a place home doesn't always make it feel like home. Places like people either accept you or reject you from the start, welcoming you in or making you feel uncomfortable enough to make you want to leave sooner rather than later.

I have lived, if sometimes you could call it living, in both of these places... Homes I've left that I've had no desire to leave and those I've ran from as if I couldn't flee fast enough from the hounds of hell. Uprooting time and time again searching for something a little more permanent, someplace to stay just a little bit longer, a home to call mine and mine alone.

I sit in my reading room typing away this morning in quiet while my daughter, the dogs and even the cats remain fast asleep. Around me there are empty boxes waiting to be packed, labeled and put by the door in their readiness to go. But I think to myself that it's not quite real yet, this leaving. And it just may be that I won't believe that some other house is going to be my home until I'm crossing its threshold with that first box of whatever magic it is inside that helps to make a house a home.

I dread the thought of taking my pictures down from their walls, rolling the carpets up to carry them down the stairs, and emptying each room until the only part left of me to leave behind is the color I chose to paint them. Golden yellow, coffee and cream, oatmeal with a cinnamon raisin accent wall, sage green for comfort and for KC bright hues of celeron greens and turquoise blues.

This apartment has been a blessing. From the moment I first saw it, I saw past all of the problems both big and small. To me it was like a fairy tale castle high above and away from the rest of the world, safe from the dragons below. I hid here until I learned how to live here and the living has been good.

I am not the woman I was when I landed here with broken wings and broken spirit. And I have learned to let go of the lesson that I was so cruelly and needlessly taught, forced to endure rather than live. The fear I used to feel, the tears I used to cry, the feeling of always needing to look over my shoulder to make sure that no one was there, all of that is gone...

A good home does that for you.

Rebuilding as it repairs.

Protecting as it provides.

Holding the Dream

It hasn't hit me yet. Or at least it doesn't seem quite real. At least not now. Not even with a few half packed boxes scattered through the rooms, half started, hanging open, waiting to be taped shut and labeled with a description of whatever it is inside.

It doesn't feel real at all. I've been waiting so, so long... I'd almost given up. Discouraged by what I wanted, where I needed it to be and what I believed was an impossible wish list of wants that wouldn't be answered.

And yet, miracles... A touch of faith and fate that led me one night to walk by a house that even before I knew it was for sale caused me to stop in my tracks and admire what I saw. Tucked away like a fairy tale cottage, quiet as if it were contemplating great things in the smallest of ways, looking every bit as if it were waiting for something wonderful to happen by. And there I stood, dreaming...

But a girl like me knows a lot of things, namely that dreams seldom become reality. They linger on your mind, tempt you with longing and slowly fade like morning mist rising from a lake.

And I still don't trust myself that it's all for real. I hold back the bulk of my excitement, wanting now the security of my signature across a page, and a firm final handshake that says the deal is done, made and impossible to break. Then and only then, when the keys are in my hand and I'm carrying that first box through the door for the very first time will I believe that this house is finally mine and that I've succeeded in doing what I haven't been able to do for so long...

For the first time ever, I'll be able to give my daughter a place that she can really call home.

Pipe Dreams?

Libraries make me cry. Or to be more specific, my library makes me cry. Or maybe, just maybe I was feeling a bit weepy today and just happened to be at the library when the tears threatened to start rolling down my face. Then again it seems that whenever I go to the library, which mind you this is me we're talking about so the word often does come into play, I always seem to be fighting to keep myself together.

I think it has something to do with walking down the aisles, searching for that ever elusive book and knowing that the one I'm searching for is the one I've been wanting to write and just haven't gotten around to yet. And every time this feeling comes over me, it reminds me of something that Toni Morrison once said, "If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."

So what am I waiting for?

Freezing On the 4th

For a fourth of July it's freezing. And while I know it's cold, cold enough to throw a little heat around the room by burning a few flames in the fireplace, it still hasn't occurred to me to get up and close the windows. Instead a cool damp breeze blows in through the curtains while I sit wrapped up in my daughter's zerba blanket throw writing down these words and ignoring my cell phone as it rings.

Ignoring it because I know it's my Dad and I know he can only be calling for one thing, to let me know that he's going to the gym and that he expects to see me there. And I've got to admit, for the last month or so I've let myself off of the strict regimen I've been holding myself to for over the past year. Tired may be as tired does, but not going is not going to get me any further from where I am. So I suppose I should motivate and do something besides shiver.

Leave of Absence

Alligators are surrounding my bed and getting back to sleep now is not an option. Imaginary or not, they're there and I'm here safely out of harms way at least for another night. Evidently animal planet is not the way to go before bed though truth be told I turned it off during a show about cats so I'm not really sure how it is that alligators came into play... It must be my subconscious mind letting go of something too big for it to handle.

This is my few free minutes of downtime for today. Sooner rather than later, I am about to start pulling myself together to get things ready and organized for my trip to Iowa.

Iowa, you ask?

I could answer that I've joined some bizarre dating club hence my venture into foreign fields to go and find myself a corn fed boy, but the truth is, I'm going for work and at this point a corn fed boy doesn't appear to be on the menu.

That being said, I'm seriously done with boys wanting to be men and men acting like they're still little boys. In the past few weeks, I think I've heard everything that a woman can hear. And can I just say that no, I'm not buying into a word of it. Not a stinking one.

And since there's really nothing to stick my neck out for, at least not from my angle of viewing, it's time to simply walk away and chalk this one up to lack of common sense, years of wondering well maybe and a neediness in me to hold out for something that week after week after another same old really whatever happened to the word progression week stayed as stagnant as two people in the same room, sharing the same breath can be for months at a time with no resolution other than for me to decide now is the time to draw the line and say done.

So done.

The good news however is that I feel neither sadness nor remorse. My heart did not get broken this go round, although the friendship I once had with this man has suffered irrefutable harm. There is no going back from this to whatever we were before. Too many things have both been said and done to forget that when it mattered most, he proved that I didn't matter. He took all that he could take, gave nothing back in return, and turned the tables to say that it was all my fault when called out on his bad behavior. And that my friends, is no friend in my book. No friend in my life.

So maybe I'll cool my heels for a while - the field days from two weeks before notwithstanding. Funny that. I got more out of one night with --- (and who would have guessed that?) than I ever did these past eight months with Jake. A woman was due! But now this woman goes back to playing it straight and narrow, keeping her cards close to hand until something more comes passing by to say hello.

Garden 2009 Pictures

Early yet in the season but in a month from now this is going to look fantastic!

Life On the Run

I don't miss the days of being idle, but I do miss not having the time to simply take my time...

Today was over almost as soon as my feet hit the floor this morning. I was in the shower, dressed to go, putting the pups in their harnesses and out the door to take them for their walk before most people were even awake. And when I returned from my two mile trek around the block it was have something quick for breakfast, answer my phone to say yes I was ready to trade in my street clothes for gym clothes and off again to spend an hour at the gym.

From the gym to home to get KC to go to Panera's to have our Sunday ritual brunch, a cup of coffee and read the paper. To the store to pick up KC's finally fixed computer, to the mall to buy a few things the paper said was on sale. Home to throw laundry in the wash, laundry in the dryer and fold laundry to be put away. Back out the door to hit the garden center to spend another few hours making my garden look all nicey nice and then upstairs to make dinner, clean up from making yet another mess to now... Ready to call it a night and head off to bed.

It's no wonder I'm tired...

Up For Discussion

A night out with friends is just what a girl needs when everything around her seems to be crisscrossed with lines of confusion. And last night was the perfect way to end a long and endless week. Dinner with friends, glasses of wine all the way around, with stories to tell and inadvertently share with the man sitting at the table beside us.

I'm quite convinced that opportunity having presented itself he would have slid his chair over to hang onto every word in detail rather than the few he managed to eavesdrop on. Then again mention the word blow job in polite society and there's hardly a man in the world capable of resisting not wanting to know what it is you're going to say when your conversation is clearly so much better than his own.

Once

What did I do wrong?

The answer to that question could provide the answer to every question I've ever had. Every doubt, every insecurity, every give a mile to take an inch moment of my life could be wrapped up in in a matter of seconds with his explanation of why I wasn't good enough and why I haven't been worth the effort.

Families don't stop when you walk out the door regardless of who did the leaving or who was left behind. We were all collateral damage, broken with a need for mending. And I was just a kid, so crazy hurt by the whole affair that it was easier to push away than to hold on tight. I have the stupidity of my own youth to use as an excuse. I wonder though, what his excuse is? Or if he even has one. And does he miss me as much as I sometimes miss him? Or has he simply chosen to forget that once I was his daughter too?

The Frustration of House Hunting

I'm beginning to think that I may never find the house of my dreams and that it just may be in my dreams that I will ever be able to purchase a house in the area where I want to live. Just my luck, I move to a place where the price of homes, regardless of their condition is higher than anywhere else around just because the zip code happens to be coveted by those who already live there.

Still I'm looking. Every day I get on my computer and see if anything new has been added to the list for sale. And every day I hope against hope that there just may be something on that list that falls within a price range that I can manage to take a look at. Last week I was so close... I found a house I could truly picture myself and KC living in, it was in the right price range and I wasted no time in putting an official offer in. Unfortunately someone else must have had the same idea because one day on the market in my town equated into two official bids, one of which was mine and of course, mine was the one that was not accepted. Or as I said last week was the official offer of levity before the seller could say yes to the real one.

So another house come and gone has left me starting all over again feeling rather hopeless that I'm ever going to find anything that I can afford. At least not when I'm counting on my one and only income to pay the way. It honestly puts me at a disadvantage against anyone with two incomes looking for property. They can get closer to what a seller is asking for, and I've still got to use my common sense when I throw out the number that is my absolute best.

I can only do what I can do though. And though many a person has told me that I just simply need to look somewhere else, the truth of the matter is this... I need to stay where I need to stay for my daughter's education. There's not another school around like the one she's currently in that can offer her the ability to jump start her future before she's even given it a second thought. It offers the very best in teachers. It offers the very best in programs, through and through. It lacks for nothing and they are a true example of no child being left behind. They demand excellence from their students and they get it, and the kids don't even know just how hard they're being pushed.

No... I can't take KC out of this school system. I won't do it. So I'll figure it out... I always do.

Coming to Terms

I wait for better things to happen. Take small pleasures where I can. Cold spaghetti in the morning for breakfast, gardening in the darkness of the night. I ease my mind in quiet ways, taking in my disappointment measure by measure, holding onto it long enough to let it go.

I let go of dreams in singular silence, a sweet exhale of breath that sends dandelion puffs soaring on the wind, scattering seeds, scattering weeds of what remains to make flowers so unwanted by some, and only cherished by few. It is what we make of it I think. The way we feel about something or someone that can take us to the greatest of highs or sink us to the very bottom of our lows.

We choose how we will spend our days and survive our nights. In a low lit room to lose yourself in the thoughts of someone else, in a low lit room to take comfort in the feel of foreign arms. But what comfort can be given if there really is no comfort to receive? Nameless and faceless, a body to slide beneath them to dull their pain. You pretend to feel warmth rather than what you feel. Cold and clinical, waiting for it to just be over, for him to just go home. To stop showing up at your door with a long list of takes and a non-existent list of gives. You grow weary...

"I am not nothing," you say into the silence. He buckles up his pants and pretends to be sorry. You watch him sit there with nothing to say on your couch, waiting for him to say something other than the same old worn out excuse. But he doesn't hear you and he cannot see you, and you think again how invisible you are when you're not being what he wants.

Shedding your skin like ice melting on a hot summer day, you shake him off showing him the door, closing it behind him, thankful only that he is gone and you are coming back into being yourself once more...

My First 5K

When the distance behind you is far greater then the distance in front of you. When your feet feel like lead hitting the pavement. When every second challenges your will to keep moving rather than come to a complete stop. When you're there, in that moment, a number pinned to the front of your shirt, your lungs gasping mightily for air, running with everything that once told you that you can't, that you couldn't, that's the moment when you prove them all wrong. Because you can and you are and you realize that you're not crossing a finish line at all, you're trailblazing new beginnings...

A Matter of Convenience

Cold.

I want to remember this word. Remind myself of it sterility. It's lack of warmth. It's indifference.

I paint myself into a corner.

Knowing better and not taking my own advice.

Drawing my line, crossing my line, not knowing when to maintain the lines I've made.

Enough.

It's time to stop.

The New Blue

So I'm thinking kayaking today. If the weather holds that is. And I hate to say it, let alone admit it, but as much as I love the whole paddling down a river thing, I still have yet to completely lose my going to tip over and drown fear.

I haven't a clue why it is the whole kayak on top of water sparks in me such fear. I mean, I do know how to swim and I'm not scared of water which pretty much makes my fear irrational or at least not making as much sense as some fears do.

Maybe I was traumatized as a child. Who am I kidding? Did I just say maybe? I WAS traumatized as a child. And I do remember it clearly. I was in a row boat and I couldn't get back to shore, and everyone on Terra firma was finding my situation highly entertaining while I was in tears on the boat. And yes, there is a picture to prove it and I do believe I've already posted it here. (But of course will do so again to make those responsible for it feel bad about making a Kodak moment out of one that has turned out to pour some rain on my whole like to go kayaking parade.)

And I don't have to wonder why life jackets are constantly on my mind, or why I always insist I go out on the water with more than just myself, or why I don't even trust myself (at least not yet) to take KC out alone without a third and more experienced kayaker with me.

I think eventually I'm going to desensitize myself to feeling all this fear, but for the moment it's a stumbling block on my fun parameter that I just need to slowly paddle through.

Gaining Ground

Years ago I packed up my entire life and moved it miles away from home to a house that never once felt like mine, to live with a man who knew only how to be harsh, critical and unkind. I thought that I could live with my mistake and I tried. I really tried. I spent a year trying to be perfect. To do everything right. To keep the house as clean as I could keep it. To keep my mouth shut and not say a word.

Trying so hard to be something I never really wanted to be took its toll. The first few months after I left, I lived as if I were in the witness protection program. Always hiding, always avoiding any place where we might accidentally meet. Always looking over my shoulder, worrying.

My new home became my refuge. I poured my soul out in many colors on the walls. Arranged my furniture in ways that pleased me and made me smile. And ever so slowly, I began to remember what it was like to feel like me. Unburdened.

I like to think that my home and I needed each other. With every coat of paint, with every improvement I made, I released the potential in us both. I would invite people over, and I would say, if you could have seen it before. And I was so proud to come home at the end of the day to a space that always made me feel like it was welcoming me home.

But now I feel the time is coming once again to make a change. To something more permanent, to something that I can truly call my own. And I think I may have found it, or at least I'm hoping that I have. And though there is a sadness to bring anything that has done me well to a close, I know I've gotten what I came here for.

A brand new heart. A brand new chance. A brand new life.

And I am thankful in ways I am still beginning to know.

My Shiny New Office

My shiny new office has a window that opens up to the bright blue outside and I am happy, happy, happy...

It won't last long, but for today, it's enough!

Shedding Some Light

In black and white, statistics are manageable numbers. Easily read, easily forgotten, and easily ignored. It's hard to imagine them as they truly are. A face. A name. Someone real.

The reality is rape is a vicious crime against a person, against a body, against a mind that remembers far longer than any visible scars remain. But we don't talk about it. It makes people uncomfortable. Maybe because they don't know what to say. Maybe because it touches far too close to home. Maybe because no one has ever really told us how to react, how to respond, how to grapple with the complexities of an issue that get confused by the notion that sex and rape are one and the same.

If you ask me, I don't believe the statistics. Given the history of rape and it's propensity to be undocumented and unreported, it seems to me that its tentacles far outreach the numbers given. Maybe they're as close to the truth as we can get without ever being able to know for certain what they really are. But those numbers matter. It reminds us of conversations we need to have with our daughters, our sisters, our mothers, our friends.

Rape affects us all whether we have born witness to its wake, or are among those whose lives miraculously go untouched. We cannot continue to live in a world where it's acceptable to sweep violence against women and children under the rug, away from the public eye. We cannot live in the world where victims of violence bear the weight of shame for a crime they did not commit.

April is Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention month. Get the facts, share them with those you know, don't let this discussion stay in the dark. Every conversation counts, every light matters...

Get help. Get information. Support RAINN

The Restorative Value of Down Time

It's early on a Saturday morning, and save for the noise of a random car passing by, all is quiet. This just might be my favorite time of day. When things feel fresh and new and laid back, as if time is somehow moving slower than it does on any other day of the week.

I'm not hurried. Not feeling rushed. Not racing to get out the door at any certain time for any certain endeavor. I am simply in the moment, relaxed and unhurried, refusing to be hassled by the persistence of life intent on keeping its invisible deadline with its rush, rush, rush mentality.

And it's nice to just simply sit here soaking up this silence. To listen to the stillness and rejoice that for the time being all the things that will eventually need to be done, the housework, the shopping, the gym, all of these things can wait a few minutes more.

There is no rush. No reason to do anything but sip my coffee slowly, think my thoughts and take in the morning as if it were mine and mine alone.

Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures

So I've decided that it's time to be on a mission. Mostly because it's been forever since my last covert operation and quite possibly because the idea of turning forty sometime in the next six years has me scared to death that I'm gonna hit that number still single and alone...

It turns out this tiny little thought has been enough to propel me into action. And since I've already managed to open mouth and insert foot with a question so out of the ballpark that I still can't even believe it came out of my mouth, I mean really can't believe I said it without cracking up or turning red, I figure just about anything else on the list of needs to be done is a cakewalk from here on out...

I call it Operation W.I.T. Or translated into modern day English, operation whatever it takes. Because that's exactly what I'm going to do.

Whatever it takes.

This girl is not going down without a fight!

Small Reminders

Nothing can get me writing quite like a moment of weakness. And tonight one of those moments instead of leaving me speechless has given me just enough motivation to remember that I have a blog, though more or less abandoned for these past few months, waiting for me to give it words...

Needless to say this is not the levity my mother suggested for me to write. Nor is it really bad either. It's just exactly what it is which is a small level of disappointment mixed with a good level of reality combined with a hint of possibility that maybe now friends can just be friends and mean it. And honestly, I think that now after two years gone, I've learned enough about myself to know that this needs to be enough.

If there is anything I've proved, it's that I can move forward without always feeling the need to look back. Or at least not looking back as often as I used to. And maybe by getting an answer to a question that should not have even been asked, reason temporarily abandoned has been restored.

My Cup Runneth Nowhere

I tried... I failed... I'm out of practice...

How is it I have no stories to tell?

A Moment Of...

There is a space between words. A breath. A moment of silence that holds the truth of my thoughts. That if there was a way to be there beside you and hold your hand, I'd comfort you.

There is a space between breaths. A moment of silence when you know that nothing between us has changed regardless of how it feels when the walls in our cleverly guarded conversations crumble with the force of familiarity.

I cannot help wanting to ease your pain. I cannot help remembering the pain you caused. I cannot help wanting to open the door. I cannot help knowing I have to keep it closed.

A Sunday Morning Rain

I love a slow Sunday morning. Love listening to the sound of traffic lazily rolling by. Love being under my blanket on the couch still in my pajamas with a book in my hands and music softly enveloping the room.

I love being calm. The sense of fulfillment it brings to simply absorb the quiet and enjoy the smallest moment of my day. The moment before everything else of everything else is allowed in to distract me.

Peace is not overrated. Feeling welcome in your own home is the simplest of all joys to claim. Learn to be happy where you are even when happiness seems as hopeless as winter giving way to spring.

The Beauty of Being Found

There are nights when I could spend forever looking for the perfect song to play. Sometimes to capture a feeling, sometimes to chase the blues away, sometimes to bring myself to tears on purpose.

And I get so deep into the sound that I don't even realize my eyes have been closed for hours, and the darkness I thought I was existing in erupts into a brilliant pool of light reminding me, I am here... I am here.

It's like I have to constantly lose myself to find myself. Much like a gardener with a spade digging a hole to plant a bulb to watch it bloom in Spring. I am a repeating repeater. Circling back to check to see the where of where I've been and the someplace I've still miles yet to go, so busy with this finding of me and who I am.

Unearthing.

Uncovering.

Digging deeper just to know I've got it right.

Good News!

The secret to happiness is deciding to be happy... No other conditions need apply.

One Little Slip Does Not Equal A Fall

Ground chicken looks like cooked brains. And it's kind of hard to enjoy your dinner with the thought of brains on your mind. So I'm breaking down and I'm eating ice cream... Sure it's a light version of ice cream, but light doesn't knock off all that many calories when you're using a big bowl. But honestly, right now I'm thinking that I need a bit of a break from chicken brains, drowning myself with more water than I've ever drank in my entire life, and my nightly visits to the gym. Not that I'm giving it up altogether. No, I would never do that. But for tonight, tonight I just want to enjoy a big ass bowl of ice cream...

Two Times the Trouble

I live in a world where the cat chases the dogs, the dogs run for their lives and I duck for cover when quietly sitting on my couch somehow manages to put me directly in harms way. God love them, my pups are crazy. Sophia especially has gone from demure little dog to can barely hold still ever. Thinking about it now, it occurs to me I would have been more correct to have named her Lamborghini as I am convinced that she is just as fast. I just wish I wasn't always on the receiving end of her leaps and bounds, for my little bean packs quite the punch for being so petite.

Lucy on the other hand is for lack of any other word that could describe her any better, timid. Unfortunately for her, Tavi (the cat) has caught on to this flaw and now uses it to her advantage, often cornering Lu wherever she can manage to find her, when she's not hiding behind me or depending on Sophie to save the day. At three in the morning, having to somehow find my feet to get the dog who won't come back to bed for fear that the cat is hiding beneath it is a bit of an inconvenience. But it's either that or listen to her whine from the doorway where she quivers and frets, her nails tap dancing on the floor fraught with nerves.

Still I love them both. I just can't help it. For there's nothing else quite so nice as coming home at the end of the day and having someone happy to see you...

Almost...

I was going to and then it seems the yawns caught up with me..

Maybe tomorrow.

Frozen Toes

When your toes are numb and your body feels like a block of ice from the neck down, it's a sure sign that something is wrong. And when you're in your own home feeling cold enough to worry that an icicle might form on the end of your nose, with more blankets than a summer sleep away camp wrapped around you shivering, there can be absolutely no doubt that the reason you're freezing is because the assholes downstairs are purposely withholding the heat.

And at this point, I'm beyond giving them the benefit of the doubt. For if anyone were ever going to be intentionally leaving me without heat in the dead of winter when it's a whopping twenty degrees cold outside, it would be the gruesome twosome from downstairs.

So as usual, there's only one thing I can do... Pick up the phone and complain.

Bad Dreams

A sudden sick feeling that can't be explained except to say that something is wrong. Wrong from the moment I woke up this morning more startled than rested, afraid of a dream that had followed me home. All day I tried to shake it from my head, writing it down in my little black book to chase it away, only to find that the more I tried to outrun my thoughts, the more they seemed to want to catch up with me to be carried back home.

I'm almost scared to go back to sleep where the dream might dare come back again. For my dreams, the very worst of them never play themselves just once, but follow a path of repeating over and over again like a skip on a record stuck in a groove it cannot get out of.

And I am sick with that same feeling I woke up with. Dark thoughts that gather like the snow laden clouds of winter, reaching out to cover my landscape with a cold, killing frost.

Miracle on 233

Driving home from work, I saw a man walking down the side of the road with a pair of crutches... Except he wasn't actually using the crutches just carrying them and I thought to myself, "Miracle!"

I am far too easily amused by the most ridiculous things.

Sick on A Saturday

My sojourn back into society ever so brief as it was seems to be back on hold. I feel like I've been taken down in my prime, waking with a sore throat that has stayed with me throughout the day, shuffling around the house trying to both entertain myself and conserve my strength to prevent getting any sicker than I already am.

But where this has come from I haven't a clue. I fretted for a moment that maybe it was my peanut butter that had done me in, even going so far as to peer deeply into the jar wondering if its creamy goodness had been tainted by Salmonella.. And although it did look rather odd, though there's never really been a time when I've studied it quite so intently, I've decided to drop the alarm and consider this the common cold.

But what is it exactly that makes it common when your throat feels like its gotten a recent rubdown with a block of sandpaper and the inability to stay conscious for more than an hour or two at a time makes you think you've contracted a rare strain of narcolepsy?

Like the answer to how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie-pop, the world may never know...

Memories of a Summer Day

She holds her pose like a tree stands still in a forest. Captured in the moment, a click of the flash, laughing. Holding the paddle in her hands, a look of shocked amazement on her face, her hair dripping wet with a lakes worth of water.

"Good day for a swim," she says, pointing out the wetness of her clothes. "The water is warm."

She reaches back and tugs the bright blue kayak beside her, heavy now with its insides filled up with sloshing water. "Perhaps a little less confidence and a little more caution is called for," she confesses.

She banks the kayak on the sandbar, her feet happy to have reached dry land and sighs.

"Somewhere out there," she says pointing towards the middle of the lake, "one lucky fish is sporting a killer set of shades."

Reclamation

Behind tall buildings where even shadows don't dare to linger long, the barren silence of leaves scattering down deserted roads whisper.
Streetlights burning cold and distant, keeping their silent watch.
She counts her steps, retracing her route, learning silence as she goes.

It is this she knows. The better left to be unsaid.
The better left to be forgotten. And so it is left unspoken
for more years than she's been counting.

She counts her steps.
One foot in front of the other taking it back.
She opens her mouth to find the words and begins to speak.

Retracing her lines.
Finding a way back from what was lost to
what waits to be reclaimed.

A Matter of My Opinion

Stephenie Myers is overrated.

And though I'm sure this is not a particularly popular opinion to have, at least not with females in the twelve to eighteen age group, I can't help but feel a little shortchanged with her Twilight series as a whole.

To me it was almost like reading a well thought out instruction manual. Tab A fits into Tab B which slides into Tab C resulting in the finished piece D.

Or in layman's terms, completely and utterly, and exponentially predictable.

Now I know I really don't have any business critiquing a published author but I couldn't help my wanting of more. More background, more character depth, more something that would make something seem different from one story to the next. But it was not to be. The author, having found the magic of what worked in the first go round, kept up the same laid out routine in book two, three and finally book four.

And I know the whole if it's not broken, don't fix it rules apply to writing just as much as it does to anything else, but honestly by the fourth book I was so ready for something to surprise and shock me, that when it was over, I was just relieved to know that I was done.

Mostly I felt a sharp keening of disappointment for what I wanted out of these books when compared to what I actually got. And I kept thinking to myself, that the story - and yes, it really was a good one, would have been so much better had she strayed every now and then outside her own self imposed boundaries and freed herself to write without worrying so much to sticking to her premeditated outline.

Still she did what I haven't been able to do for thirteen years... She got my daughter reading.

It's hard to get any work done with two incredibly cute puppies begging for your attention.

I'm writing. I'm writing. I'm writing!

Still Struggling

How easy it is to slip back into old habits. Old ways of dealing with new problems flair back to life as if they'd never been cast aside. And it's so much for thinking that I'd somehow managed to escape myself completely while struggling for middle ground.

And middle ground to me is an equilibrium that can be easily disturbed by the slightest of shifts. A choice between right, wrong and the dreaded in-between. I learn nothing but how to fall right back down into that rabbit hole.

Crash. Burn. Pick myself back up to dust myself off to do it all again. You'd think I'd be a much smarter woman by now...

And yet.

And yet I'm the same old mistake. The same old narrow eyed view. The same have to have it all right now rather than sit back, relax and let something good come to me. And maybe that's why it never works out the way I think it should. Wish it would. Know it won't. Because it can't... Not when I only choose what I know will end.

A Matter of Public Opinion

Dear NWTLO,

It's been a while since you and I have had a good heart to heart, but I can no longer deny that there are things that need to be said. Things like facebook is taking over my life, leaving me little time to do anything else but keep tabs on what all my friends and my not really my friends but they're my friends on facebook are doing. I think it may have something to do with the comments. As in I get them. I don't want to make you feel bad or anything, but the comments around here are almost non-existent. No one even says hi and I've got to tell you, that's more than just a little bit depressing...

But I won't hold it against you since it's mostly my fault. I used to get loads of comments and then, well I did kind of sort of let you down by taking a hiatus long enough to lose almost all my back then regular readers. Or at least the readers who would also take it upon themselves to speak up every now and then. So yeah, that's completely my fault and credit must be given where credit is due.

In other news, life goes on as normal... To work, to gym, to bed and then back to work again. I keep thinking that at some point there should be a little fun in-between all the routine, but fun seems to keep it's hand up in a give me a little space wave that keeps me at a distance. I try to get over this, but there are moments when I'm sitting at home waiting around for what turns out to be nothing when I feel like I'm at the edge of losing my mind from needing to just get out and have some fun.

So maybe I'll make plans NWTLO and then maybe I'll have something to write about besides doing my laundry and how damn cute my dogs are.

For now though I've got to get myself to bed... At some point this week, I'm going to hit the gym before going to work and since there's only two days left before the weekend, I'm running out of time to make this happen.

Let's make it sooner rather than later, shall we?

Yours...
Stacey

If I Only Had More Time

One of these days I'm going to find enough hours in the day to write about the floppy penis boy at the gym. Or maybe even about the little old man who nearly accosted me at Panera's. Because you and I both know that floppy penises make for good story fodder and my magnet pull on the geriatric would almost be comical if they weren't the only men who hit on me...

If I weren't on my way to bed, it would be on. So on...

Floor Possible

Angry?

Miffed?

Ticked?

Turned inside out over little stuff gone big?

Try ripping out a floor. No seriously, it works!

I started with my hands. One little spot in a cheap old linoleum already gone bad floor and I was in business just pulling away a days worth of frustrations. And when the pulling had pulled all that it could, it was to the trusty tool box to find some useful tools.

I felt like a doctor...

Hammer.

Pliers.

Screwdriver.

Band-aids. (For those tender moments.)

And I huffed. And I puffed. And I pulled that nasty old floor right from where it was until it was no more.

Now that it's done, I have just one thing to say..

What do I do now?

Filling In the Gray

Another glass of wine. This one goes down far easier than the first. The second even quicker. She's feeling all her years tonight wrapped up alone in her blanket, the suspension of her silence hanging heavy on the air.

Waiting, watching the clock and wondering if maybe there was some shift she forgot to notice. Some catalyst that toppled her over when she was distracted for a moment by something else.

She feels off tonight as if there's something not quite right, something not quite wrong. She closes her eyes, committing herself to focus on just breathing. A steady catch and release, in and out with no thought required.

No thought. That's important for her tonight. She doesn't want to think anymore than absolutely necessary. She doesn't want to interpret any of these actions as anything that might resemble a beginning of an ending, or an ending to something that never really was.

She doesn't even know if she knows what she's been doing. Whether it's wrong, or right, or something inevitable, something she could not have resisted had she tried.

If I were a man stranded in the desert, she reasons to herself, no one would blame me for taking a sip when handed a glass of water.

She doesn't think that this is just an easy excuse for bad behavior. Black and white has a gray she says with some authority. You don't really know what you know until you know it. And even then, you know you knew it all along.

She smiles. Laughs at herself in the darkness, trying to ignore her own questions. Trying to ignore just how much she could use a comforting hug to chase away the cold that lingers on her skin like a dull and settled fog. But there are no hugs tonight, and she's trying not to dwell on the question that would ask why.

My New Laptop

Waiting, my hands lovingly stroking the keyboard of my intended. I read the description again. RAM, GB, processor, all that computer lingo that could really jazz a girl up if she understood the half of it, rather than the bright shiny light attraction that is the real reason she's about to put her money where her mouth is.

I wait for the beardless sales boy to figure out I'm waiting on him. "Here to buy!" I want to yell out across the store. "Service please!" I'm impatient. No surprise there really. If I were a super hero, I'd be Instant Gratification Girl without the cape. My motto, "Now is not soon enough."

He swaggers over, his geek squad badge riding high on his chest, his pocket protector high on the other side. He is not John Wayne. "Is there anything I can do for you little lady?" he drawls.

I answer gleefully, "I'll take this one."

He gets a look on his face that says he knows that I know that he knows that the only thing I really know about this computer is that the keyboard lights up and that's why I'm buying it. I decide to let him think this even though I know that he knows that I know that he's still a virgin. This as it turns out is besides the point.

And then he does it. Asks the one question that no one should ever ask a woman such as myself . Not if they know better. Not if they know me better.

"So what will you be using this for?" he asks.

I try to keep my mouth shut. I really do. But I'm stuck with the first answer that pops itself inside my head and there is no resisting.

"Porn," I say and smile.

Pondering

Why do people decorate their bathrooms with seashells?

Is it because the flush of their toilet bowl reminds them of the roar of the ocean?

Consider the floor open for discussion...