telling time

Can you not see what you've done
you gave your heart away like that
I didn't want to fall in love
with anyone but you did

I can still hear the songs
the melody behind the kiss
you gave me you were wrong
I was right so I walked away

and let you dance alone
I got so tired of talking on the telephone
How many times could we say those words goodbye?

I've made mistakes and one
was telling you that I'd be there
when telling time had come
I should have said I did not care

oh the time I would have saved
If I had been less willing to accomodate
you'd been a little less likely to cry

you go back to the high life
I'll go back to the low
I should have known
but now I know

there'll be no words from you
describing how it felt to go through
what I put you through
It all makes perfect sense

the way you cut the rope
that kept you dangling from such
pitiful amounts of hope
I would've cut it too...

Lopez

Finding home

When the smells of tears and starfish mingle with stars thicker than
pepper in good gravy, and there are hills and trees and grasses that
are simultaneously ancient and contemporary, it is a good place. I
feel the happy of all of the things I love coming together at once. I
feel possible. I feel peaceful and loquacious and curious and content.
I am happy being an islander. Maybe lopez is my tree to escape the
Wild hogs. Maybe it is my window crashed open from the slamming doors
of the recent past. Maybe it is home. A home with new memories and old
friends I didn't know I had. Maybe it's discovery and redemption and
restoration in one place. Maybe it's a fantasy, but for tonight, it's
beautiful. And I will smell the tears and starfish and feel the
serenity that being surrounded by water and countless stars brings.
And I will sleep well and dream happy.

Sent from my iPhone

family time

There really is nothing like getting hypothermia on an old time steam engine going 6.5 mph around a 14 mile track after you have just been soaked to the bone by giggling teenagers shooting giant water guns at you on a raft ride. Unless you are getting hypothermic with all of your favorite people, the train car is open air, and you get held up half way through the ride by a couple of bad actors and sprayed again with freezing water during their badly improvised skit.

We went to Silverwood yesterday, we, being the entire Stecker conglomeration minus Josh, Lindsey and Ben. It was a beautiful exercise in good parenting, patience building and white trash tolerance. We had a really good day, the kids were all good. Mostly. Nattie had a hard time because she had to spend some time riding on the "boring" rides since everybody didn't want to spend all day on the biggest baddest ones. But she survived.

I fell asleep at the pool. The kiddie pool. The one with a multitude of little sprinklers that small children and males of all ages like to stand and put their hands over in various conformation to see how far into the sleeping parents they can make the water shoot. I woke up when they were playing Peter Paul and Mary and I was worried that I had accidentally slept into the Christmas season since that is the only time I ever hear Peter Paul and Mary anymore. Turns out they were just sandwiched between the beach boys and simon and garfunkel in the boulder beach mix, so I had really only been asleep for a few minutes. It's hard to tell except by the sunburn degrees on the backs of the albino children from Canada playing under the sprinklers. I know a couple of them had escalated to second degree while my eyes were closed so it must have been at least 15 minutes. Or so. Either way, it was nice. And the strange thing was that I didn't feel like I was missing out on anything. As far as I know, no one drowned while I was passed out, and although MacKenzie abandoned Natalee in the wave pool to come back for lunch, she was recovered when an all-stecker search party hit the waves and combed the shoulder to shoulder crowd for a little blonde in a turquoise swim suit. Turns out there were at least fifteen that fit that description in the pool. But we found her, and MacKenzie will NEVER leave her sister alone in a wave pool again. But nobody said anything about the lazy river, so we had to track the delinquent nine year old down again, bobbing through blue floating doughnuts and short blondes in turquoise swim suits around the eternal loop of pee-warm water. Once again MacKenzie was insulted by the reference to her lack of understanding of the buddy system, and insisted that she would just stay with the stroller for the rest of the day and hold the baby who had less propensity for wandering off and getting lost in a sea of look-a-likes.

The kids were really good though. I had to make Halle take off a couple of the three tank tops she had on over and under her full coverage tankini so that she wouldn't die of heat stroke, but she was apparently concerned about violating marble modesty standards, which I insisted weren't enforced at Silverwood, pointing out the 19 year old that actually had boobs and wasn't wearing a swimming suit at all, as far as anyone could tell.

Steckers are funny people. As much as you thin the blood down you can never fully escape the treasure hunting, trash hoarding, quirky sense of value that we inherited from our fathers. Or their parents. It was interesting to me that with all of the rides and activities there were at the theme park, the three younger kids were just as well entertained by three plastic chairs and a beach towel as they were by egg scramblers and tilt-a-whirls. Between the pool furniture and Baby Judah I am not sure that we would have had to pay for tickets to a theme park at all. They would probably have been just as happy if we had set some lawn chairs and judah in a stroller out in my parents driveway for them to fight over. I guess the problem with that is the high probability of Judah being injured on the 60% grade driveway in a stroller with wheels and 6 curious young relatives all arguing about which way he should be facing. Maybe a padded, hoseable room with a drain in the middle and velcro strips for hanging misbehaving children on really is the way to go. If we saved all of the dollars we spent on entertaining them elsewhere it would probably pay for itself a thousand times over. Especially in a self-contained, soundproof building with hidden spy-cams and an entertainment system with self-starting DVDs (which obviously skip the previews) in the ceiling and out of reach of all of them.

We live in such a silly, disposable world. full of disposable relationships and disposable entertainment. I hope with each day that goes by, and every choice that I make, that the memories that we form, me and mine, are not disposable. That they echo through time with the solidarity of an ancient sequoia. I pray, to god, the universe, the powers that be, my own will, that I will waste no more time, no more passion in disposable things, and the pieces of my heart will pile up in a cosmic landfill of worthless events and things that don't matter. I wish that every day that belongs to me, from this one out, is memorable and full. And that even the bad things leave the taste of meaning in my mouth.

You must rise above
The gloomy clouds
Covering the mountaintop
Otherwise, how will you
Ever see the brightness?
--Ryokan

Monuments

Several monumental things happened today.

I woke up at 0700 and didn't go back to sleep. For reals. But yes, it was involuntary. I also forgot to change my underwear when I got dressed. I don't know why, and I am not sure what makes that monumental other than the fact that I have never forgotten to change my underwear in the 30.5 years I have been changing them. (That I remember). Of course there have been days when I have NOT changed my underwear intentionally for whatever reason, or turned the same underwear inside out to avoid laundry for another day, but forgetting? I don't remember ever doing that. I am not sure what the other monumental things are that have happened today, but maybe that's because they haven't happened yet and they will later, but I know they are coming. It is that kind of a day. I can read it in the glowering stars that came down from space because they were bored and now they are trying to pose as clouds but they are much brighter and grayer and flatter than the clouds so they can't fool me. And yes, they are glowering, not glowing, because they are disgruntled stars, who think that we must somehow have it better here on this little green and blue thing because the laughter of millions of children has trickled up through the atmosphere and made them envious.

Today is a good day. In spite of the grey stars and the summer wind that is trying to pretend to be fall because he wants off the hook and doesn't want to do any more work. If I could just find somewhere to hang my hammock it would be better. It isn't that I haven't been called just as many names as always today, by myself and the ones that I would rather be fielding lavish praise from, but the names somehow take on an endearing effect, as if telling myself what a lazy and worthless loafer I am is kind of cute. It is the kind of day when anything is ok. Being a disgruntled star, an imposter wind or a highly complicated piece of white trash - it's all good. Maybe it's the cherry chip cupcakes that susanna made for me because I have a cupcake fetish, and it's the only craving that I can satiate right now. Maybe there is prozac in the air today, or maybe I woke up on Truck's side of the bed and I have the perspective of a dog with no responsibilities and no fleas. Maybe things seem ok because I will see my babies in a few days and will get to be a mother for a little while. How silly, since it is the thing I spend all winter waiting to escape from. Like the stars, and the wind. We always want to be on the other side, until we are there.

I think I will go change my underwear now.

Some days

You know that it all has to pay off, somewhere, somehow. That is
karma, right? The good and the bad, the yin and the yang, the equal
and opposite reaction for every action. The universe seeks balance.
And maybe all of my good deeds are still working to compensate for the
wrongs I have done, but eventually, if I keep doing good, being the
best person I can imagine finding, the good will overflow and spill
back into my own life. Can't it be that way?

I have had too many good deals, easy breaks, maybe, to ask for one
now, but I sure wouldn't mind running into an open door along this
seemingly endless brick wall I crash into continuosly.

But there's always tomorrow.

Sent from my iPhone

ni hau

6.28.09

hello from China! I am now in Su Zhou with internet and lots of time while bickley is at work, most of which I will use for sleeping to compensate for the 374 miles we covered in Shanghai and Beijing over
the last few days. We power packed the Olympic Village, Roasted Peking Duck, Great Wall of China, The Summer Palace, Dr. T's Traditional
teahouse, The Beijing Zoo, Tienamen Square, The Forbidden City and the
Temple of Heaven all into less than 48 hours. Quite impressive, and we really didn't skimp on anything. Ok, maybe after covering a couple miles of the Temple of Heaven we tried to bail early, but since we
bought the cheap tickets it took us about an hour and a half to find a gate that we could get out of, which was ALWAYS proceeded by another
gate (gate of perpetual peace, gate of long and healthy life, gate of continual abstinence, gate of important honor, etc, etc, etc.) until we finally burst through the outer limits and found ourselves in Mongolia. Luckily we found a cab driver who spoke no english and tried
to charge us 6 times what the meter said and got back in before they shot us.

The Wall was awesome, we had planned on taking a car to a more remote spot and doing a 10 KM (roughly 6 mile) hike along the wall, but the hotel we stayed at (The Intercontinental Financial Street [highly
recommend] offered a few different tours, and obviously, since we are independently wealthy, we took the private limo from the hotel with
our very own personal guide, Ms. Lee, and driver Mr. Peace, and went to a spot where less than a mile on the wall nearly killed Bickley. I, of course was totally fine, you know how I am in peak physical condition. Actually we both agreed the 6 miles would have been a huge
regret at about mile .75. Plus, our tour included riding plastic
toboggans down a metal chute that had to have been at least 4 miles. It would have been really fun except the chinese lady in front of us was afraid to go too fast so we ended up scooting ourselves over the flatter sections to try to pick up momentum after she would come to a screeching halt before every corner. We finally stopped and had a tai chi session and a nap and let her get to the bottom so we could scream the rest of the way down at a raucous 25 miles an hour. It was super fun then. At the bottom there were guys all dressed up in red bathrobes with big tinfoil weapons that were threatening to cut off my
head, so Bickley took my picture, then we had to run away really fast because apparently they wanted money for new tinfoil. What a scam. I
was going to just beat them up for threatening my life but Bickley talked me down so we let them just shake their fists at us and say things in Chinese that we pretended not to understand. Speaking of
which, I have figured out the best way to get a beggar or salesperson to leave me alone to to answer their semi english query in Russian, it always leaves them puzzling and they forget to follow me. Bickley
thinks I am dorky but I don't have "english professors" from the university of collective femoral biotechnological chemistry tailing me into the subway because I said no in english. The chinese people like to use as many english words as possible to name or describe something. The hotel we stayed at in Shanghai was nice enough to leave us "friendship prompt" cards that told us how to do everything from open a window to use the toilet or open a bottle of water. They were very helpful. We have since been sure to give each other friendship prompts for every activity we undertake. It seems to be the polite
thing to do. We visited the famous TV tower thing in Shanghai but had to leave right away because Asia's highest revolving restaurant at the
top had closed already (well it was 730 after all) and the big
information board at the gate informed us that "ragamuffin drunks and psychotics were not allowed in the attraction." We thought since we were completely sober that we would have been fine but the psychotic factor just ruined our night. Actually we went to the top observation deck where we observed the chinese and their penchant for dressing alike and wearing things that would be considered kitchen utensils in
other cultures. They have this great fad of wearing nylons that are cut off at the ankle, but not like leggings, the other way, so it's just the foot. I am obviously wearing them every day, and am bringing back some for Em and Sanna so we can spread the trend in the US. Like
a disease. A slow, miserable disease, worse than H1N1.

Speaking of which, I almost got quarantined coming in when the junior high group in seats all around me had to have their temperature read like 6 times because four chinese people in hazmat suits with 3 different thermometers were having a hard time deciding if they made
the basal temp cut off. I think the real problem was that all of their bio-suit face masks had fogged up because the plane was 780 degrees from sitting on the tarmac for an hour and a half with no AC, and they couldn't actually SEE the thermometers.

Anyway, there's much more to tell. I gotta run... Later.

...I won't even try to pick up where I left off, there's way too much to cover. I have a little time now since I am recover from a vicious case of vomiting because we walked past a kid eating little baby octopuses dipped in something that resembled bbq sauce on sticks and it was more than I could bear. We went to Suzhou Industrial Park to the market last night to see what kind of black market deals we could get. Bickley had his handler "watch guy" meet us and guide us from shop to shop looking at knock off watches and jeans and bags. After about six or seven shops the guy realized I was way more into cheapo fans and parasols than gucci polo shirts, but since he put in so many hours we felt somewhat obligated to spend a few bucks on a coach bag and a tag heuer watch and an odd assortment of traditional chinese trinkets, all made in the USA. Just kidding. One thing I have noticed here that is wildly different from the US, obviously, is the non-presence of any OSHAish agency to regulate working conditions or public safety in general. Renovations are carried on overhead of passing shoppers with the aid of bamboo scaffoldings and rotting wooden planks.steel toe boots and hard hats are only things people wear to make fashion statements, and eye protection comes in most useful weaving through the bobbing umbrellas that are sported rain or shine.

tending wounds

I am tired of tending wounds. No, I don't want to band-aid my emotional owies with sex or alcohol or any of the other wonderful things that would certainly provide short term relief. But I do want a reprieve. I hate that the wounds must be aired out and left untouched, unpicked before they heal well. Some days it seems as they will never ever go away. And those are the days that I pick. and the healing is delayed that much longer. If I could just find the patience to let them be. To not touch them myself or let anyone else tear the scabs off in a rough and tumble game of "choose your own ending" relationship experiments. Or to not poke at anyone else's wounds to see how much I can make them ooze. We are sick people. Our fascination with healing, or preventing it, or at the very least, prolonging it. Where is our aptitude for healing words and touches that don't complicate the wound or compound the scars? When and where did we lose that? Or did we ever have it. How I long for the power to touch the hurt of a person I care for and see it healed up. To whisper "Vulnera Sanatur" and have them all whole and unhurt again. Where is my wand? And why am I so helpless in the healing?

4.14.09

4.14.09

another night

Tonight I didn't drop my books in a lake of rain water in my driveway. Tonight I left them in the car. Tonight I came home to a quiet house, where only the gentlest telltale ambiguous thump lets me know that my kids are in fact, upstairs and alive, and more than likely, still awake. But it is ten oclock. Es el diez de la noche, to be espanolishily correct about it, and I have just returned from a fun filled evening of learning that water lives in reservoirs, lakes, streams, and big city systems, and that is where we get it to fight fires. Rocket science. But we got to put our turn outs on and play with a hydrant. Well, one real hydrant and one fake one sitting on the ground being pathetic as we wrenched away at it's various orifices. Even though I sit in class next to a guy that makes my knees turn to butter fresh out of the overclocked microwave, questioning my self worth and why in God's name I decided to cut bangs, doubting every choice and action and inclination in my life up to this moment and beyond, I know that I like firefighting. I like hoses, and couplings and nozzles and pumps. I like wildland even more, the smell of chainsaws and smoke that saturates everything. I love it. I stuck my head in the tool compartment of the brush truck while the fire girl with the pink nomex hood was telling at the other students how hard it was to find pink biners and a pink helmet, and the euphoria washed over me like when you slam a bottle of beer and it hits your hips first. That warm, melting feeling. It's like how the guy next to me makes me feel but full body instead of just a knee to torso region effect. I feel lucky to be there. I want so badly to succeed and be a contributing member to the effort. I want to not be the dead weight they're dragging around the drill ground. Just like everywhere else in life. I want to be somebody. Somebody that somebody else needs, wants around. Somebody that makes everybody else's life better in some way. It would be an added bonus if I could figure out how to make a living doing that. You would think the years I spent in the cult with a husband of questionable bent, and giving birth to four daughters whilst getting an AA and working and becoming a firefighter and an EMT and basically spreading myself so thin that most everybody could see right through me would pay off at some point some how. Don't I have a story worth hearing? I mean my honeymoon alone would be a kickass movie.

Maybe tomorrow... which is coming much faster than I would care to think about.

4.13.09

4.13.09

along the way

So, it's silly how even while I am being angry about silly things that really don't matter (that prozac must be kicking in) that I make dinner for my girls, and out of the woodwork six neighbor kids surface and kick around awkwardly hinting that the spaghetti my kids are eating sure looks good. Ok, so they come right out and ask if they can have dinner with us. I send them to ask their parents. They come back with a questionable blessing ("my mom says only if my brother Mason can eat here too" or "my dad is watching me but he is gone right now"[from a 5 year old]) and I dole out the food with fear and trepidation, praying every blessing I have ever learned and hoping that I didn't happen to use the one package of Italian sausage from Top Foods that was laced with botulism, or feed it to a kid with a lethal pork allergy. Or worse yet, Jewish parents. My only hope, is that if they do get sick and they didn't really have permission to eat here, that they will be too afraid to tell their parents where they got the food poisoning. But for now, Seven thousand kids laughing on the back "porch" (5x6 feet) with plates of mediocre spaghetti in their laps and Truck circling protectively makes me smile. I miss feeding people. And hosting parties. And having friends. I miss barbeques and the horse trough swimming pools and empty beer bottles piling up. There are so many, very many things that I miss these days. I want my missing to be happy, thankful, positive missing. Grateful for the moments I have had, not painfully yearning for the next. I miss, with every cell of my being, dancing in the kitchen. I miss the kitchen times. I miss the porch times too. Dusk was my favorite. A beer on the front steps. Batting mosquitos, or wrapping up in a blanket because there is frost on the ground. Always one or the other out at the ranch. I miss floating foot to head in the horse trough with homemade margaritas. I miss falling asleep on the living room floor. And Lego Star Wars video game dates. I miss the smell of the shop. It was awful. I miss uncomfortable rides on the wretched three wheeler, with a million dogs in the dust behind us.

Every day I am more convinced, or convicted, to use a marble word, of the wrong choices I made. Every day I understand more how much I gave up and for how little. Just like Esau, and the bowl of pottage sucks ass. I think I would love God more if redemption involved rewinding time and getting a redo. Or if giving forgiveness was as easy as asking for it. I would be more inclined to spirituality if I could believe that people are capable of loving and being loved by someone like me, unconditionally, and if a change of heart really meant a change of life, and we could actually put stock in apologies and repentance. I am more keenly aware of my flaws, my mistakes and my regrets than I have ever been. Maybe that is what the hard times are for, to see where the good times really were and learn gratitude, so if by some miracle they are offered to me again I will not be the fool I was and give them up for a twisted soul and gaping, oozing hole of need in my heart. Fool, heal thyself. Get over the shit and make the life you want. Make it happen. Over come the petty, outlast the rugged terrain. Buy new boots on the other side but don't quit in the middle. Eat the shame that is yours to eat, before it is too late. All of the shame eating in the world will not save me now. I mean, I might feel better, but I won't give me back the life I threw away. Now I know how they feel. All of them, All of us, the ones who have lost it all for a stupid stupid moment of stupidness. And now I have to piece something back together that I can live with. And all I can think of, all I obsess over is the glimpse of happiness, a few short weeks, when I knew who I was, and more importantly, why. Oh for a second chance.

Oh for redemption.

4.7.09

el furiouso

I am angry. Angry on a whole new level for me. I swore I wouldn't do any more of this negative blogging (which is why I haven't written anything for a long time), but since the PA I saw today in a fit of despair gave me prozac, lorazepam and ambien, I feel like it might be my last shot at negativity for awhile. It might be my last shot at any coherent thoughts for awhile. But at the moment (before the first doses have kicked in) I am angry as a rattlesnake on an anthill. I don't know if that would make a snake angry, but it sounds angry to me, so that's the analogy I am using. I hate the rain. I hate hate hate hate the constant outpouring of unnecessary moisture that seeps into every thread of clothing, every page of a book, every frayed lock of once curled hair. I don't blame God for the rain, people (yes Susan I am talking to you) I blame people for insisting on living in this sun-forsaken place when there are places, not too far away, where a big violent rain storm is one of the best things to look forward to in the summer, not the constant drudge of a relentless year. I hate the rain, and the wet.

I am angry at myself for taking on things in a perverted attempt to fill my life with...life. And now I am completely overwhelmed and innundated with a million things. Not only do I not have time to be a good mom and do positive, warm-fuzzy, good mom things with my kids, I don't even have time to be a bad mom and scream obscenities whilst beating them with leather belts. I have time only to tell them to be quiet in their beds and to get up so they don't miss the bus. The rest of the time someone else is mothering them. Where am I? I am in silly classes that may or may not indicate my attempt at a better, brighter future. Classes in Medical Terminology, and Basic Chemistry, and Introductory Spanish... all universally important in their own application obviously, but enough to justify the complete abandonment of my children from 7:30 AM - 22:00 three days a week? (the other 4 are only a mere 4 hours of class... hardly worth mentioning.) If, for some weird reason, I found myself at home, I wouldn't know where to begin... laundry would be a great start, but oh yeah, the washer's busted. So I will take the dirty clothes over to mom's to do in the 1.75 hours I have on Tuesday between Chemistry and Spanish. OF course the house hasn't been cleaned since the last coming of Christ. And if I had had time to remind the girls to do their chores, maybe last weeks dinner wouldn't be on the living room table still.

But I am still angry at the rain. Mostly because it made me drop the three overloaded book bags I was carrying, as well as the mail, all in a muddy stream of water trickling merrily down my driveway like some psycho crazed element intent on ruining my whole disorganized and falling apart life. Maybe my life wouldn't be so falling apart if I moved into mom and dads. Or maybe that's exactly what will make the fall apart complete. Maybe I just need to competely fall apart... I think what has eaten away at my soul is not that I am failing my kids or my family per se, or that it would be so awful to live with mom and dad (they have been nigh unto saints since I have lived here), but when I come face to face with the reality that I can't make it on my own, I can't deal with life by myself, And I begin to wonder if the kids wouldn't be better off with David in a cult, and then it hits me... There really is no point to my existence if all of that is true. me living is a non-essential part of the equasion. My worth as a contributor to the race of humans has been defined and found to be lacking. Worse than lacking, a complete deficit. And that is when the why questions swirl in my brain. Why do I have to keep trying if we all know I shouldn't be here anyway. Why can't I just disappear into a big fluffy cloud of denial and relinquishment and drift away quietly to another dimension. The girls wouldn't notice while their dad entertains them with baby goats and horse back rides... I could just slowly outfade. It's not like I'm doing any good now...

But I am angry because tomorrow and the next day I will push through and play the "good mother" with all of the psychotic undertones imagineable, and smile sweetly susan while the sun is slipping slowly away...

And tonight. Well tonight will be different. Different from the lonely aching nights when I lie awake, alone, with my arms wrapped as tightly as they can around a big pillow, fists clenched, tears rolling down face and pillow and arms, all the way to the bed where a big hound dog will lick them up morosely and make a grighing noise (it's like the cross between a grunt and a sigh) and fall back to sleep, while I wish with ALL of my godlovingdisneyprincessuponastararcbuldingfaithofnoahhopelessromantic might, that someday my prince will come and forever I will not lie alone and aching. It is a desperation I have never felt before, that stems from a remorse I have never known so intensely. The life that I had, albeit flawed. The love that I gave, albeit twisted. The silliness, the fun and the family that I had, all thrown away on a fit of selfish doubt. Greed. Neediness and twisted dark wounds that I have preferred to hide and deny than to seek healing for. The ugliness was too much for me to bear. I did it. I destroyed my life. Everything around me. I did it. I broke the thing that was almost whole, complete, but still in the tender stages. I anhilated it. Destroyed it to beyond recognition. Because in my smug presumptuos little world that I could fix anything. That I was worth anything being fixed for. Oh the folly. Oh the lies I believed. Oh the denial.

And a year. A year of pain. A year of hurting. A year of reminders and constant sandpaper memories. A year of avoiding success because I know I don't deserve it. I threw away - no - blew away the perfect chance at an imperfect, beautiful life. How stupid I was. How utterly utterly wrong. How many nights... I have not had one until now (since I will be aided by my new chemical friends) I have not had a night that I don't lie awake, staring at a wall, a ceiling, remembering. Hating. Crying. Giving up. Hurting. Every single fucking night. For one whole year. I am angry that I am here. In this place. In this place physically, emotionally, on every level. I am in the wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong place. With the wrong people in my life. How stupid I was.

God. How do I change? How can I redeem what's left of me for the souls of my children? I am asking You in all seriousness, my heart on the floor before you...What can I do? Because there is nothing I can think of that I wouldn't do to redeem predictability. Help me. I need to know. I need to see clearly.

I am done. I have not the strength of heart to love someone now. I don't have the courage to even try. I feel my life wind draining out of me every day, every minute. Is it too late for me? Fine. I will ache every night. If only my girls can have the possibility for my dreams... or their own dreams... a chance to be happy, unconditionally happy in their life. No lies, no drama, no warping. No crazy spins on things that cost them their reason... Please God, save my babies.

this may be my favorite ad ever:

best of craigslist > nashville > Yard Swing

Originally Posted: Mon, 8 Jun 10:47 CDT

Yard Swing

---

Date: 2009-06-08, 10:47AM CDT

---

Real nice yard swing for sell. Real comfrotable. Might have a few dog hairs on it but they will brush right off. Green all-wheather cover beside fence is included

Tikee torch not included but will sale for 25.00.

31 year old suburban life with 4 kids and a dog

---

Date: 2009-04-09, 9:35AM PDT
Reply to: gigs-mqzjc-1114514803@craigslist.org ^{[Errors when replying to ads?]}

---

Up for grabs today is an in-full-swing life of 31 years with all of the modern amenities that I simply cannot afford anymore. This setup includes four cute, smart, well rounded and expensive daughters, a ridiculously useless hound dog, WAY too many frivolous material possessions including an entire wardrobe of size 8ish designer women's clothing, Macbook laptop loaded with digital memories and worthless downloads, 2001 Chevy Tahoe with a million miles and several juice stains on it, full playdough accessories and equipment and 27 lbs of misc. legos, 324 my little ponies, no less than 7 gallons of polly pockets and a broken PS2 with three games. I am also throwing in about 10 years worth of food and every cartoon DVD known to modern civilization. This life comes completely free of romantic entanglements, with a VERY small selection of oddly assorted friends and a gigantic quirky extended family. I will add on my useless AA in liberal arts if you think you can do something with it, but seeing as how I have been unemployed since December, good luck. Unfortunately, this life does NOT include a place to live, unless you want to negotiate a contract with my parents, since that is where I had planned to move as soon as the eviction papers are filed. I will give you my dad's cartop carrier since I still have it and maybe he won't notice, and that should hold a lot of it. Maybe like .004 %. Or less. Whether you choose to take the 9 year olds collection of scrap paper and junk mail that fills an entire half of a bedroom is up to you, and I will recommend some sort of fashion retraining for the 5 year old who has a strong leaning towards awkwardly mixed, brightly colored prints, and anger management for the 11 year old has a tendency to kick holes in doors and throw tantrums, but we have great faith she will grow out of it in 29 years or so. The 12 year old offers wonderful opportunities for community involvement such as large financial donations to oil companies to cover her transport to and from every sporting event in a tri county radius, as well as connecting with local hormone tolerance support groups as her mentor and chief victim. The dog requires the most expensive food on the market unless you are amenable to wallpaper-curling flatulence. I would offer to send along the child support for the kids but I really hate to make vain promises and can't tell you for sure when or if that will ever come in. I will however, give you all of my extensive fire and EMS training which, judging by expense put in, must be worth a lot, and you get the added bonus of being able to use said skills to donate all of your spare time for the good of the community, saving lives and all that jazz. There is a clothes dryer, but the washer just bit the dust so you're out of luck there and I would throw in the dishwasher but I am fairly certain the landlord would notice that after the door with the hole makes him take inventory of the house. Also includes one mostly destroyed couch and a futon that my ex fiancee left me with only one duct tape repair, one oversized leather armchair with the 5 year olds name scratched permanently into the seat, one elliptical machine that was used only as a catapult for cross room flingings of the five year old, two sets of bunkbeds and 18 dressers. Ultimately it's a good life, and a heck of a deal for somebody who is bored, ridiculously rich, or slightly masochistic.

the preface to my fire story...

All of the speakers I listened to at the writers conferences that I went to as a kid said the same thing. “write what you know.” In other words, Bullshit is transparent. So here I am, writing about the thing I know, because it is the thing I love. But can anybody ever really know fire? For all of our studies and protocols and predictions, there is still no way to say for certain if the burnout operation at 4 AM is going to torch the 200 foot conifers when RH should be at it’s peak. There’s no way to predict whether the wind that is working so beautifully on your behalf for hours will suddenly spin on it’s heel and spit in your face. I think I know fire simply because I love it, I gravitate towards it and am irrevocably fascinated by it. Maybe it is my lifelong quest for god that has led me to sit at the feet of the flames, worshipping the godlike and mysterious qualities. They share many characteristics, god and fire. Hell, I am not the first to notice. The Hebrew word for fire is closely related to the unutterable name of the One True God. I couldn’t ever quite grasp the "gods" that religions present, so I threw it all out the window and grabbed the tangible, obvious higher power. If there is a God, he lives in the fire, and the wind, the people and the earth and the powers that we can neither control or predict. That is God, and that is as much as I ever hope or need to know about him (or fire). You can live by certain parameters that better your odds of surviving the flames, just like you can walk the lines of morality that make coexistence with other humans possible and bearable. Yeah, god is in the flames, and there really isn’t any place I’d rather be than up close and personal with this higher power that walks the earth, consuming everything in it’s path and pulling back up into the heavens for a reprieve on a whim.

Ok, so now that we've established that I don’t really know fire, maybe it is transparent bullshit, but it’s real to me, and it is what I have immersed myself in for the part of my adult life that wasn't drowned in kids and diapers and nursing bras and dishes. Somebody asked me once on the fireline if I had ever set anything on fire as a kid. Sheepishly I told the story of lighting my grandmothers carpet on fire in her retirement home with her cigarette lighter. I was congratulated at meeting the firefighter prerequisite of being a pyromaniac....

(summer of 2007)

first off (warning: any offense taken to following words will be promptly disregarded)

8.8.09

Something I need to get off my chest. Or my abdomen, or anyplace that has a few too many pounds. Many of you know my affinity for Wal-Mart. It's is like a public swimming pool, in that you can't visit without coming away with a whole new regime of viruses ruling supreme in your body. Head lice, ringworm and just feeling generally like white trash. I have the same feeling about IHOP. My mom swears it's better than Denny's, and so we always go there for breakfast, and I get ill watching 700 pound humans pack away the all you can eat pancakes like giant trash compactors. I guess I haven't experienced that nauseating side of Denny's since I have only ever gone there after the bars close at 2 am and all of the obese people are either in bed or securely planted in their stretched out arm chairs in front of their tvs. So I will still have to vote for Denny's in the which-gross-place-are-we-going-for-breakfast poll. Anyway, I hate IHOP. And I hate even more, sitting there in shame while the 700 lb waiter (it is my theory that he was there so often to eat that they just offered him a job [since he obviously knew the menu better than any of the employees]) has to bring out extra pancakes for my brother because the ones they brought him were not 5 inches in diameter and you couldn't see the syrup that was supposed to be on them, and my mother had her hashbrowns redone three times because she asked for extra crispy and they brought her a brick of some unrecognizable substance and then a slimy pile of mush with something that looked suspiciously like sputum as a garnish, and then watch in horror as she panicked realizing the scrambled eggs were probably made with pancake mix and thus obliterating her gluten free diet. (No worries on this one - Nelson, the waiter, assured us that only the omelettes were made with pancake batter and sputum) I really get crabby sitting between my two youngest siblings and surrounded by a world of strangers that I have absolutely no interest in ever seeing again, much less getting to know on an intimate, I-know-how-you-like-your-eggs basis. But I survived. Barely.

There. Now I feel better. For the moment.

Reasons Why

08.08.09

Once upon a time I had a blog, wherein all of my finest thoughts, funniest stories and most blatant exaggerations were showcased for all of the world. This blog tended to get me in trouble though, when the occasional cuss word would find it's way to the cyber-page, or there was a questionably kind reference to my fairytale upbringing... So I deleted it. All of it. Letters and sounds and pictures of things that have forever been obliterated from the imagination of mankind. More's the pity, for it was fraught with tears and belly-laughs and petty mock offenses and juicy gossip.

So I am back, and as a disclaimer, would like to kindly disinvite anyone from reading who is offended by the occasional four letter word or sexual reference (meaning there mayhaps be a moment or two in time when I, in fact, acknowledge sex as an actual existing thing and not just an old wives tale that mothers made up to scare their daughters, and perhaps even to lead the reader to believe that I have not only once or twice engaged in said activity, but would like to again at some point in my life.), or is happy living in the charming delusion that mistakes are embarrassing things we don't admit to rather than the embellishment and possibilities of our haphazard lives. I, for one, am eternally thankful for almost every mistake I have ever made, or that has been made against me, and will issue that disclaimer throughout my journeys.

So in this winding narrative you will find letters, journal entries, bits and pieces of the life that I have stumbled my way merrily through, and I will attempt to date things so that you, my dear reader, are not left in a befuddled sense of timeless chaos. Oh no, my chaos has a definite timed cadence. It is, after all, predictable.