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life and living – Page 7 – Life as an Extreme Sport
Life as an Extreme Sport

these things go through your head

When I was little, my mother would buy the peanut butter that had separated in the jar. When we got home from the store, there was always the ritual of dumping the peanut butter into a bowl, stirring everything up, and then placing it back into the jar.

I never had to do this; Mom always did. It was sticky and messy and lunch for all of us, so leaving it in the hands of an impatient child probably would have been a bad idea.

Even though I never had to do this, I always hated it. It was so pointless, I though. Why spend the time and the mess and the energy when you could just spend a little more for the stuff that was already mixed? That was faster! It was cleaner! Therefore, it must be better.

Mom would just shrug and say that this was the way her mother did it, and this was the way she did it, and maybe some day I would understand. I was a child, so of course I knew that I would never understand, and fastercleaner would always be better.

It’s nearly 4am, and these are the things that go through your head when you’re standing in a bathrobe in the kitchen, mixing a new jar of peanut butter.

The Women [movie review]

For the last half a dozen years or so, women outnumbered men in my family home. Me, my sister, my mother, and my poor lonesome father. While there was the ex-husband for a while, and my brother when he was around or living there, it wasn’t at all uncommon for the three gals to override Dad on some movie choice, and he’d end up groaning through some Disneyesque chick flick. Granted, he had me, and when Lifetime or Oxygen got to be too much for even me, we’d disappear and watch football or science fiction and leave the kleenex and girly stuff to Mom and Trace.

Before Mom died, she took the two of us girls to see Menopause, the Musical. I think she knew, even then, even when she was on the first round of chemo, that she wasn’t going to make it. She said she wasn’t going to be there for us when we went through this. She had needed a hysterectomy a few years earlier, so she knew… and this was the best way she could really share with us. So we went to the musical, and we laughed and laughed, Mom sitting between us, holding our hands. Sharing knowing looks with my sister.

It was wonderful. It was shaded with sadness. In some ways it was the epitome of all those Hallmark, Lifetime, Oxygen movies, rented taped or watched live.

Laurie and I went to see The Women tonight. It was a funny and touching movie, about friends and family, the bonds women form. Best friends, mothers, daughters, grandmothers. And through the entire film, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was a movie I would have seen with my sister and my mother.

Mom would have loved it.

misreading at Panera

I’m at Panera, trying to wake up enough to do a tutorial I need to finish ASAP, before gathering my reserve energy to run errands – mostly stock up on food before the trimester officially begins. So I’m blearily trying to make weekend plans, chat with friends via email, and contemplate getting a pastry or something, since I’m still hungry. And I glance over at the table tent to my left and see:

Caramel and Nuts go together
Like fresh bread and warm mercury

The WHATFUCK?!

Oh. And warm memory.

But it still looks like mercury.

Whistles of the Wind

Whistles the wind
Blowin’ my way
Sweepin’ me back, back here to stay
Can winners be losers?
Runnin’ on the same track
While some head for glory, others we crash

Well it breaks my heart to see you this way
The beauty in life where’s it gone
And somebody told me you were doin’ okay
But somehow I guess they were wrong

My isolation
Now there’s a sobering thought
A minute alone, a lifetime too long
See the face in this mirror
So pale it could crack
Desperately wantin’ the color it lacks

Well it breaks my heart to see you this way
The beauty in life where’s it gone
And somebody told me you were doin’ okay
But somehow I guess they were wrong

So you drank with the lost souls
For too many years
Tied to their ankles now crippled with fear
Never been righteous though seldom were wrong
Life’s only life with you in this song

Now there’s an ocean between
Where I am and where I want to be
So you prayers in doubt
Doubt not for me

Well it breaks my heart to see you this way
The beauty in life where’s it gone
And somebody told me you were doin’ okay
But somehow I guess they were wrong

Well it breaks my heart to see you this way
The beauty in life where’s it gone
And somebody told me you were doin’ okay
But somehow I guess they were wrong
-Flogging Molly


Sigh. Sometimes, not being able to fix things for other people really sucks. And I am not very good, when it matters, of thinking of the right words to say under pressure (even if that pressure is my own).

Which doesn’t mean those in the know should worry – things are still fine. Just, baggage handling issues.

ink trailing in the sea

It’s not that I forgot, it’s just that missing you has died down to a steady ache, rather than one sharply punctuated every year. Or maybe it’s that I’ve been talking about you a lot lately, to new people, retelling the stories and the lessons learned – how important it is to never let things go unsaid. And what an amazing impact that’s had on my life, especially lately.

In life, you taught me a lot – fierce stubbornness, how to play. But in your death, you gave me the strength of conviction, of following what’s right even when it’s hard. The final emphasis to live without regret.

I know you would like him, and I know you’d be pleased to know the fruits of your efforts were felt on Friday – an appropriate day, of all days.