Yeah, the list keeps growing. 

But everyone does their thing.  We each have something we do.  I do blogs.  Lots of blogs.  Truly though, this is my struggle.  It has been for about 9 months.  I've been pregnant with ideas and desires and models for a blog that would feel to me like me.  I wanted a blog that felt like a keeper.  So I set about that.

I suppose ArtSpiceLoveZen is then my new blog baby.  I have so much to say and the type of mind that must be compartmentalized and organized and it confounds me to have so many different types of blogblah in one blog...  So I proceeded to experiment with myself for many months.  I created a few different types of blogs and taste-tested each one.  I never did quite find a favorite, but I am pretty sure I know how I want to blog now.

I don't want to rant about politics.  That is too negatively emotionally demanding.  I don't want to go on about my life, as I do in this blog as I am the type of person, if you've noticed, who when she writes spontaneously she is prodded to write about the less than satisfactory aspects of life, living and family.  I have so many, many positive aspects to myself and my thoughts that MuseLife does me no justice where myself is concerned. 

My garden blog was a disaster as was JumpOnTheBunny and another full lot in which I did my best to assimilate with an average blog.  I cannot assimilate into the collective.  Just ask my husband, sister, best friends and my daughter!   

As one of my habits has always been to print out and catalogue a blog before I render it defunct I will proceed to break that habit by shutting down ScatterMuse and MuseLife and MuseGardenGreen, but leave them with one post each so that they do not become just another dead blog in Mindsay.  They are pieces of me in blogland and I feel like leaving them here as little signposts.

As for my other two blogs- I am not sure what to do with them.  One poor little guy never even got off the ground!  Only one entry in there.  But I didn't like the nameID I chose.  The other was prompted by Tootboy, but he is no longer someone who interacts with me as he used to so the blog and my desire to keep it become moot.

So I am moving on again into another room.  This isn't due to any other reason than I am trying to create a blog that screams out who I am in great measures rather than continue to keep blogs that only whisper the smaller parts of me.  For in blogland, whatever your blog says shows up large even if it doesn't really represent who you are.

And then there is decision to be my own simple and for the most part uncomplicated self.  Some of the things I do are complicated, but who I am is not very complex at all. I have deep dreams and overlapping thoughts, but I am a benevolent soul in my soul of souls. 

So those are my final MuseThoughts.  I am a Muse no more, at least not in Mindsay. 

Driving back into Philadelphia at sunset put a rat's nest of blaze into my mind.  The pink streaked across the sky in feathered daubs gave me shivers.  Those clouds are too much to stare into for too long a time.  Your car veers right and left as if you are inside chattering away on a cellular phone.

This weekend was not what it was supposed to be and I am glad for it...  I was to travel with my husband to Ohio to attend the array of post-death traditions with his extended family.  We were to leave via automobile very late Thursday night or very, very early Friday morning.  But as the deceased was his half-brother's mother, my husband instead left straightaway late afternoon Thursday.  His brother had actually already went off as he wanted to get out there to his dead mother's corpse ASAP.  My husband came in from out and sat down in a nervous huff.  I couldn't get into an automobile after just returning from my own five-hour stint driving across Pennsylvania from east to west, so I urged my husband to have his brother turn around and pick him up.  My husband did not want to go on without me, but also wanted to be with his brother.  So Gerard turned around out near King of Prussia and came back to pick up my Lane. 

Off they went.

I was very, very glad. 

I did not want to attend the post death traditional ceremonies of crying over a hard, dead and cold body.  I did not want to stand around trying to feel for a group of people I do not feel for.  Isn't it odd; some of us feel so emotional when complete strangers die or when tragedy strikes someone from a family of a friend, but at times people we are related to, even if only through marriage bring no emotion to heart when we've negative experiences with them.  In other words, I really liked Grandma Robinson, but I have no feelings at all for one of her daughters (my husband's half sister) or her kids.  I just did not want to be there.  I would've gone but I am very glad Gerard took off so early and Lane felt the need to drive with him for numerous reasons.

So then I drove to New York to pick up my daughter as I do every weekend I am here and not traveling or out of town.  Many times she goes along with me (us) when we head out somewhere but the past three weekends I've gone places while she was busy being a teenager.  School stuff.  Boyfriend stuff.  Friend stuff.  I've missed Liz as there have been only a handful of times in her life that I've not seen her for more than 3 weeks.  With her going off to college next year I am sure this will be a common occurance, but for now I miss her severely and she me when life has us moving in two different directions...

It looks as if there is a very good chance Liz will be attending college in this city.  She originally wanted NYU but after realizing the campus was not a nice green vale, she changed her mind.  I like that about Liz.  She has the city in her but not to that extreme.  There is plenty of time for her to jump on the crazy train of buzzing big city life.  She wants a more sedate setting with less noise and less hustle and bustle.

So then we worked on college applications, talked through her latest break-up and cooked together.  She is gaining an appreciation for fresh tofu.  We put this really excellent Sesame seed / Garlic glaze over the tofu, onions and green peppers sauteed nicely.  We also stir fried an great mushroom assortment.  Both went over jasmine rice.  Good Eats!

Tonight my husband will be returning early in the A.M.  I haven't seen him much that last week.  It is nice to go our seperate ways at times.  We are not the type of couple who will ever say we only spent a handful of days apart.  I never thought I would be lucky enough to meet someone who wanted to create a life together yet remain independant.  I need time away from married life at times.  As a married woman, but a married woman away from wifely things and the house and the husband.  I need time alone.  Space to think and write at my leisure and to ride bike alone.  I am a quite solitary person in form.

Aidan phoned me today but I did not pick up the cell phone.  I am torn about his returning.  He just left and now my head is in a swoon as I bend over, bleed out the grief I felt when he left and breathe in attempts to grasp he is coming back.  I think he is coming back for me.  I miss him too.  But it was supposed to end that way- his leaving and returning to his home.  And if it wasn't supposed to end that way then perhaps my future is one I didn't imagine.  I can't think too much about it.  It makes my head hurt.  I've lived so many lives in my 40 years.  I am just settling into marriage and into the state of becoming a new mother again.  I don't want the drama any longer.  It is like Scott all over again.  Aidan had ten years to plant roots in the firm soil of me and he did not.  And now that he's lived a few months without me in his days he is in a panic.  But I've moved on.  I am married now.  And I love Lane in a way that no fantasy could match.  I love Lane true.

This coming week my mind will be in a tailspin for so many reasons.  I will find out if I am pregnant.  I will get a new cell phone.  I will wonder about Aidan.  I will avoid 19th Street because I know who he will be slumming with until he sets up here.  I begin Clay Class.  I begin Glass Blowing class.  I begin another new week in this new year of my life...

The skyline in my city has changed this summer.  With the new Comcast building it will change again.  I want to run out and snap a few photos of the skyline at night now so I can snap a shot of the skyline after once the new Comcast building is built.

And later since it is a clear night and I am here alone, I will drag out the telescope and look at the BunnyStar.  I had it named through the National Star registry.  My star.  Secret and silent BunnyStar.  May she guide me through the hills and crags ahead.

I don't want another twisted ankle.

Two are enough...

I'd like to thank you for the birthday wishes and greetings. 

I didn't feel much when I entered years 16, 21, 30 or 35.  But I do feel differently entering year 40.  I am not sure how much time you spend thinking of your life or mapping out a plan, but I've always since my early Yoot (youth) given Great Thought to my future.  I'd say that in my early 30's I lived more in my mind and heart in the future than in the present.  Though I didn't feel 30 to be any different than any other year prior to perhaps 18, I knew the Time Had Come To Think About My Future.  Never releasing a close game of patty-cake with spontaneity I had my ear to the ground.  I decided at that point I'd like to live out my life in a commited marriage.  You wouldn't think this changes much in some people, but it changed much with me.  With the types of employment I chose, with the way I considered myself and others in any given situation, with the choices I made where mind, body and health were concerned.  I became a bit more serious though no less silly. 

In any case at 40 I feel like I presume and make assumption a true adult feels.  Whatever that is...  I mean to say- what do you base any control group on?  I suppose you can't base what you feel on anything other than the way you feel and how you feel it, but I feel my age now.  I still skip and hop and get completely idiotic-silly.  I still love a challenge and all that.  But Yoot is gone.  Outside I still look 25 even close up, but inside I do not feel 25.  My memories are at hand and my days of so many things you think and feel at an age less in number are now past.  I feel good to have caught up to myself in a way.  I don't yearn for Yoot.  I don't want to hang onto being in a younger frame of mind.  Many people know themselves so well at all points in their own personal life-timelines, but I am not one of those.  The duplicity and complication of my family's interaction throughout the years has always made me feel confused about who I am.  It is sort of like a swimming pool.  They are all filled with chlorine and they all have pee and body hairs in there somewhere, but no two quite complicate your immediate moments in the sense open water of an ocean does.  Just think about that for a minute and maybe you will understand where I am coming from...

I know myself when it comes to my artistic and curious sides.  I know the fabric of life I wish to wrap myself in.  But thinking about my mom, dad who wasn't there, my childhood and all the years after leading right to this very day have been so filled with a sort of caul that I haven't ever, until very recently, felt as if I could touch my own core.  Writers are like that.  We put out so much that we are distracted at times with coming to grips with our own selves.  We mother or father, we run, we pace, we create and sometimes keep our creations to ourselves wondering at the fact we've put some story together in our minds that no other person but ourselves will ever know about.  There is so much to us and in us that except for our children and sometimes our husbands we feel endlessly adrift.  We are confounded by anyone who does not write or who has no story to tell because we try to imagine not having those running and looping voices in our heads nearly 24/7 calling to us to let them evolve, be and become...

So today I sit and type after a really great visit to Latrobe with my sister thinking about how suddenly sometime in the past few months I've become me.  I am me.  I felt it happening as it did, but to say all you can be is you and then to go further and become the you that you feel like inside are quite different.  I see the other half of my life up ahead and I know it is a kind future.  You'd have to understand all of the grief waiting ahead when I was 16, 21, and 30.  It is so strange but I felt it up there even though I couldn't possibly see it.  It never felt like a dark cloud, but more like an initiation.  I don't actually feel like I've paid my dues; that is something you decide to do or to evade, but I do feel like I've learned enough about my own wants, needs, desires and requirements that I can jump through the ring of fire rather than accidently lean up against one side of it or the other. 

I am not in a hurry to be beautiful because I am, inside and out.  I don't need to rush to secure my or my child's financial well being because between me, Morgan Stanley, Met Life and Dow Jones, I've accomplished that.  I think I will be able to muster through marriage.  That is also a choice and the gift of it all is realizing it is a choice.

There are some things I know only fate and faith can detail.  But I like me.  I see me and I feel like I've come ripe.  I think of the world and I feel familiar with her just as I always dreamed of feeling.  I know places numbering in the dozens and that feels like going back to an amusement park and knowing the best food booths and games.  Knowing the rides.  Knowing where the toilets are without having to ask.  And the picnic areas.  It is like going to your home church.  Not feeling like a visitor.  I like feeling at home and familiar with my world.  I spent many, many moons wishing I could see this or that and wondering if I'd ever have the money to do so.  We each have our own dreams.  When you realize some or more than some of the loftier dreams in the context of your own specific life you begin to feel more like yourself.

I've wondered during the past few years about myself.  The internet grabs your arm and drags you over to the funhouse mirror.  We are all and each warped here.  Some of us like the way our arms look sort of deformed and our feet appear clubbed and our lips clefted while gazing at our reflections.  But I never did after the fact.  I realize just how unique I am now.  I think we all take that for granted, but I never realized how much an open mind I had until I experienced being pigeonholed by closed minds.  I never realized how much a paradox we create with all the facets of ourselves until I felt and fingered my own facets.  I have never really cared about fitting in or being worshiped or respected but then again I've always been well liked by those who actually take time to get to know me, and now at 40 I am glad I am not an easy read.  I need more than two minutes of your time!  

So today I feel refreshed.  I had an opportunity in Latrobe to set some things straight with myself and it happened well.  I see my sister trudging up her own hill and now tumbling happilty over the Other Side and I feel like wow, we did it!  Two little poor kids from the wrong side of the tracks are now homeowners and with Life Companions.  I see that her guy is a Good One and I am grateful for her joys.  While we were in Lowe's and choosing my house warming gifts to her and for her home I felt one little whisper of a prayer come true and that is a rare moment in life outside the I Do kiss and the infant in your arms.  Wishes for yourself, anyone can make them reality...  But wishes for others are really all on a wing and a prayer. 

On the drive back to my city my husband phoned to tell me we'd have to turn around tonight and drive right back west; one of his extended family members died this early afternoon.  I think to myself that wow- that was my husband who just phoned and we will be attending our first wake together.  We've shared so much, but never respect for the life of a dead person.  Somehow that makes me feel 40.  I've been alive long enough to be married and attend an interment with my spouse.  If you marry young or in your Yoot, you can't apprecaite that.  But if you waited for years to settle down into domestication, you will.  Because these are the types of things I didn't think I'd ever have exposure to.  And as a personal coda, I don't attend funerals or wakes or interments.  That is an entire other post, but I know I've moved ahead on my own walk of life to have my first thought be when he phoned today wink out something like I hope I give him comfort...

All is well.

And that is good...

I kept my eyes averted and my earplugs backed up with my fingertips pushed down deeply into my audio canal somewhere near the hammer and anvil. 

I was very excited even though every birthday I've enjoyed since my husband Lane entered stage left has been surprising and filled with wonderment and joy...  I packed some pretty/sexy things, because even though I did not know where we were going, I had a feeling. 

He took me to the very same place I'd planned to take him exactly six months in the future to the date (to celebrate his 38th birthday).  What a warm feeling; to know someone so well that even if they haven't really surprised you, you are nonetheless surprised.  Because for me, it has never gone this far with a man.  He really does know me.  He measures my wants and needs and wishes and doles them out like an extra serving.  So nice... 

I noted on the plane that there were no children and the women- even those outside first class, were dressed nicely and not in line with the way most women dress when flying. Every one of them looked presentable and attractive.

As for me, I looked very cute!  I know how to do that while flying...

In any event all women abaord were all dressed up and raring to go somewhere very early in the morning.  I immediately thought either Vegas or the Wine Country.  But for some reason I didn't think Vegas.  He didn't ask me to bring anything special but for some upscale outfits for nightlife.  In my mind he'd have asked me to bring certain items if we were going to Vegas.  But he is good that way; not letting on...

The overall experience was broad and exciting, with many, many surprises and such.  I loved Olives (ahhh... Foie Gras from heaven- er Boston) and Fendi, I loved 'O' and 'Zumanity'.  Danny Gans was very funny and the Bellagio just made me feel like a Princess- I couldn't believe the shops and the people we met and became friends with...  I won my first Texas Hold 'Em tournement and am thinking that I could become better than good at that game.  The craps tables were so much fun I can't even articulate the laughter and the thrill of winning stacks of chips- it is just as clubbing and the Electric Banana, the Green Door and Tramps once were for me in my 20's!  We took the monorail from one end to the other and had a V.I.P. introduction to the Pussycat Dolls which was a high point for me as I love girly-shows one and all with beautiful women.  I walked and walked and walked and walked.  And walked.  I wanted to see everything on foot so we ditched the limo for the duration but for a arrive and depart from the airport (which was a freakin' madhouse in and out) and one swipe both ways on the strip.  One horror-filled hour was spent taking a peek on Freemont Street.  I don't know exactly what types of phobia of my childhood remain intact within my psyche, but the tackiness and the types of people there had me bracing myself until we left.  My husband threw words out like 'cheese' and 'frumpy' and 'oh my' which is completely out of character for him and so I felt secure that it wasn't just me.  I didn't live this much of my life and come this far to be in an area like that with people who are just plain disorderly and without ettiquette or manners.

I had some Very Good Wine, Very Good Food, Very Pleasant Accomodations and Very Delightful Treats!  I won so much money that I had it tucked in my Bolo boot on the way out.  A lump under my arch and that there is my proof of coming from the lower income bracket and up out of nothing.  I can't carry a few grand in my bag for fear of a pickpocket or purse snatcher! 

Ahh... What a nice experience!  Those few days felt like weeks and we've decided to keep the reservation I've already secured for my Lane's birthday in March and to return.  We never made it to the Wynn or for a round of golf- just not enough time.  I loved this birthday every bit as much as the birthday spent picnicking along a canal in Holland with just he and I and the big blue sky and a few cows across the way.  I think just being with him and exploring new places with him makes any bit of travel all the more rich for memory. 

And I did return with one additional joy; at the Hoover Dam he bought me a RingTail Cat BunBun!  I will add her to the collective and fill with joy when I look at her, remembering that amazing astrological monument outside the Dam.  I think the fact the builders put at map of the sky at the very time the Dam was complete for all posterity to view as cool as the fact there is enough concrete in the Hoover Dam itself to pave a 4-foot wide sidewalk around the entire circumference of this planet!

Wow!

Happy Birthday to Me.

I'm 40.

I will receiving my 40th year in a few days.

I have wide open arms and a warm torso with which to draw her in.  Many, many times I have been here, at the cornerstone of the shelter built around another year of my life.  I never know what each new year of my life will present all around me.

The walls begin with a new foundation each turning of a 12-month section of being.  There are times when I've stood here, looking at what the previous year has created, sort of awed.

As I step near the beginnings of my year to come I turn and take a good stare at the structure of the year nearly past, behind.  What I see are 200,000 stories, each with only one room.  Last year was one new beginning flashed up quickly on the previous.  There were overlapping friendships and travels and schemes of employment both professional and personal.  I see the lights on in each room; not one window is dark.  This coming year will be a continuation of many situations/ideas/creations from the past year.

Turning 40 has my hair thinning a bit more with huge chunks of pure white hidden in my Feria #100 Pure Diamond Hair Colouring.  The hair around my ears has turned brown and my roots now grow in this ashy color.  Gone are all remaining pores prone to producing the Platinum Blonde I was born with.  My hair is longer this year than last. My eyes are a bit more worse for wear.  I have very light blue-green eyes and I wonder if I will  have cataracts as most women do in my maternal family tree.  My skin tone is better this year; I've invested a small fortune in eating very, very well and anti-oxidants serums.  I use a top of the line buffer in the shower so that my nearly 40-year-old skin glows without Mystic Tan or sunrays.  My heels are now void of all scars from blisters caused by years of wearing cheap (bad) shoes.  Mr. Pumice helped with that!

My personal aspirations were filled one and all for my previous year.  I was blessed with the opportunity to fulfill a lifelong dream- rushing off to aid in helping people displaced due to a natural disaster.  I feel as if the three items remaining on my lifelong dreams list are now possible to entertain.

I saw the past year wrought with all types of family problems- not between myself and an another but between the other and their own personal demons. 

It goes on and on.  I said good-bye to a friend I worked with, laughed with and played with for over a decade, writing the final chapter for a very long portion of my life.  I wonder if there will be a prologue...    I went back and forth over the oceans in a plane or jet more times last year than any other 12-month section of my life, birthday to birthday.  I had two surgeries and 4 miscarriages.  I had more invasive procedures performed on my body than all those from the rest of my life combined.

******

My husband is whisking me off to a Secret Place for my 40th birthday.

I am not sure where we are going, but I would guess it will be either Las Vegas, Napa Wine Country/Valley, Maui or Fiji.  Those are next on my list of Places I Long to Roam.  I am tired of Europe, the Caribbean and South America.  I am tired of the same old same old.  Cafes and shopping and touring- I want to go DO things!  Like get liquidated on 70 types of wine as we use are private car to be taken here and there for wine tasting.  Or playing craps at a high roller table and watching top of the line nudie girls dance and visiting the Hoover Dam on cycles!  Or going to see a volcano or live with natives for a week.  Something different.

I never thought I'd travel so much that there would be a dozen other places in the world that no longer felt new to me!  But such has come to pass...

I am excited to put on the blindfold, which is actually a piece of silk I used for a scarf when we eloped.  I put it on before we get in the car, wear it onto the tarmac until we get into one or another private plane and don't take it off until we are in the air.  Since we have to go over the Rockies for each of my next on the list destinations, it will be time that will be the giveaway this year.  Flight time that is. 

Things have quieted down a bit.  I have carved away much of my immediate involvement with any endeavors or business that have any type of underlying stress attached with the project/work.  As we are now in full blown IVF courses, I have pockets of life between cycles that I can do normal things, but mostly I watch what I eat, drink and expose myself to.  It is an oddball way to live.  All this fuss for a baby!  I would have never dreamed something could mean so much to me.  Life is like that.  You go along very farsighted with your own imaginings of Where You Will Be When...  and the When is here and you would have never imagined...

I am very glad I have a secure financial future.  This means I not only have real estate and cash, but real estate and cash on three continents and thus pretty much no matter what happens I have a safe haven to dash off to if necessary.  I never thought that I would stop writing, but I have.  I loved writing.  I mean really writing.  But as life surprises us just as much as we surprise ourselves at times, I think looking back I wrote for the money.  I mean to say I knew that making money was important because at the time I absolutely needed to get something going, but it nicer to make money on no-brainer avenues than making it while strolling along hopeful streets.

I find myself quite satisfied at the junction of 39 and 40.  Not overwhelmed as I was last year or jumping out of my skin excited as I was between 38 and 39.  I am sedate and relaxed for the first time in many a moon... 

Welcome, 40.

May we be well met...

There is a chaos in my mind that resumes, unsheltered, from a downpour of anxiety.

I know where the point of origin resounds from; that place in my heart of hearts... 

Life is crazy for me.  For some, maybe even many, life is sedate and rustles along like the dress of some southern debutante.  I'd like to trade my razzle-frazzle for the mundane please!  Lend me the boring and platitudinous routine Jim!  I'd love that for a while.  One month ago, my sister was doing a stint in Mental Health of the local Nut Hatch.  She'd just had her live-in arrested for illegal fireworks and explosives.  Now the two of them have just bought a mortgage for a house.  Well in any case he has and they consider it their home though he is on the deed.  Amazing!

My husband and I are preparing to take a US Air flight out to ButtFuck Ohio to attend the wedding of some irksome individual and her internet-sought-and-found spouse to be.  This is the same creepaziod responsible in part for the cancellation of our own  $40,000 family wedding to be held at Glenn Ford Mansion.  Within the hour I will find myself delving into the Red Envelope website to order the two of those hicky-dickies a silver engraved platter.  And not once in four years has she or any of her family for that matter, acknowledge my husband's marriage.  This woman permitted a pregnancy to a man who'd told her for five years he didn't want to marry her or have children with her.  She proceeded to post herself over the internet to find a man from a wealthy family to inject herself and her bastard son into.  And somehow she managed to have her big to do.  She has shunned my husband for years and now we will attend her shindig.  Insanity. 

I once had a sister who at least held up the appearance of normality.  Who could once speak of the 'white trash moving into this apartment village' with good reason to exclude herself from the very mix she would demean in derogatory adjectivity.  I once had a boyfriend and in fact two finacees whose families found my idosyncrasies and harsh edge honed to a sharp point by my youth endearing and worthy of respect.  But low and behold I sit here typing, feeling like a fucking freak.  What has changed since my days trolling with pals to see Black Flag or M.I.A. sing in some stinky dive of a hall?  Freak then, freak today. 

Freakiness of Me.

1981-2005.

The irony does not in any way escape me.

And the thing that hurts me the most- the thing that makes no sense to me and I feel completely is too personal to type here or to even permit liberty for a day from the cage I've locked it all away in my mind- the irony of my own daughter blowing off filling out college applications due to complete laziness that she herself admits to.  I feel like I will implode.  I truly have not one person to speak with this about.  Not a one.  I can't.  It hurts me too much.  I feel that my daughter will enter college next fall.  I think that she will succeed at and in whatever endeavor she chooses.  But I also see she will wait for me to either sit beside her and fill the damn form out for her or to harass her about it all enough that it will be completed in due time.  Thing is, oddly enough, that upon her return from USC, Cocky aside, she was in high gear to fill out that application... She was so diggin' the rolling application and the fact you could place out your ACT or SAT scores.  That her private school education, GPA and AP courses would give her favor. 

We return home and two days and nights pass and she never did go online to apply, as is necessary.

I love my child.  I love my daughter.  But I am old school- I believe that at 18 one is legal and on one's own in the world.  There is no My Baby Can Crash in the Basement Bullshit philosophy in my character.  My family running both side were hard working immigrants until my mother's generation.  And even those in her family are hard workers though not educated.  So I am struggling to decide where to draw the line on helping her/doing things for her/ riding her rear end about this college situation.  Her father and his wife have the attitude that I am paying for my daughter's education so it is up to me to deal with all that entails.  They are working class to the extreme of feeling reduced by those heading for things better than their own circumstance.  While they don't or won't begrudge Liz her college education, an education I have socked away enough money to fund into her Doctorate Days, they refuse to help guide her to that day of departure.

I could lose my mind.

Today I cried my head off.  I really cried all the way down to my gut.  Making huge chocking gasping retching cries.  I felt so tired.  I felt so utterly helpless.  I wanted to escape somewhere else.  I know there are people who never, ever feel this way and God Bless Shit in the Hole- I wanted for just a moment to live another's life.

This somehow took something from me that I cannot describe in a Blog Post.  I wonder about being 24, 28, 31 or 35.  Or even 17.  Good God in Heaven!  Where has the time gone?!  I truly thought I'd accomplished everything I have set out to whip into shape.

But my sister is still whacked out.

My husband continues to know not one bit about the human element, sweet as he may be.

And my daughter is presenting signs of negligence to her own future- with absolutely no intention of shirking her life away.  She has simply been too sheltered.

Me?

I have a headache.  I feel beaten down and ill.  My heart aches and my mind pinches.  My insides feel in need of repair.  I have forgotten how to be fancy-free.  I feel like I need a hug.  But as always, I would never ask.  I will figure it all out on my own.  Not yet learning to ask for help due to the fact those who are closest to me assume I can take anything.  That I never let anything get to me.

But I do.

And I have.

Touring College Campi(uses). 

Theme of my recent days where my child is concerned...

In her Freshman year of high school we visited West Texas A & M.  And then Arizona State. 

Last year it was U Conn, NYU, Pace and Brown. 

This past Monday we visited Drexel University here in our City, which is thus far her favorite college.

Next week we are off to points and campi(use) in the direction of the South.  We visit USC at Columbia on Monday, Coastal Carolina U on Wednesday and UNC of Chapel Hill and Duke on Thursday and Friday.  At month's end we will travel to Florida State.

We return home from next week's travels to proceed to jam at the Warped Tour on Saturday on Long Island with my husband in tow on/during all adventures thereof!

I am very happy with my daughter's choice to venture into higher education directly out of high school.  And that further, she is very much interested in going on for her Masters and Doctorate.  I think of our cousin, a young woman destined for very little in life at this point due to her attitudes and understanding of adulthood, feeling so very fine that my child is not out gumming for working papers or making out with a guy for shits and giggles rather than studying for SATs and applying to college.  I do not look down on our young cousin, but I see where life will lead her if she remains neutral to her own future and I feel relieved that my daughter has a better grip on her own wants and desires.

The world today- it requires college experience not only for the degreed paper, but for the introduction to all possibilities in life.  I have offered my young cousin to be her benefactor- and I myself would have jumped at the chance at her age for someone to put me through college, offer me a chance for more than working for minimum wage...  I am not much pondering the lack of judgement or direction of my cousin so much so as reveling in the rearing and the good sense of my own daughter.  It is very satisfying to see my girl out there with other kids walking the halls of public and private universities alike with hopes and wonderment and dreams in tow.  Rather than finding a dark corner to make out with some boy...  I know where one leads and where the other leads are rarely do the two paths wind round to one another.  My young cousin can't see beyond the 90-120 dollar per week paycheck she will recieve at week's end working at Rite-Aid.  She can't see she will stomp into the ground her dreams of modeling and acting while running a register and stocking shelves at Wal-Mart.  I feel a sort of terror that my young cousin either never asked or refuses to see how her mother ended up as she has; wasted and used by a life of working her ass into the ground for so little and settling for a man who will spend $700 on fireworks before setting aside money for real estate taxes.  I see a young woman heading straight into nothingness.  She is jaded against her own promise and that makes me very sad.

I look at my daughter and I see so much innocence.  At times I feel overwhelmed by it.  She has no misconceptions about the amount of work it takes to rise above an average lifestyle and yet is intimidated by nothing.  I imagine her out in the world and find myself most certain she is prepared.  I see the little lights go off in her eyes as realization of any particular thing sets in and I fill up completely with joy.  She knows that at 17 she is a clean slate with endless possibility and she has seen enough in my family to what happens as time goes by to dreams and wants and curiosity as the years beyond 17 roll out.  One of her peers recently commented on her choice of new friends as 'too modest' and to me that sums it up.  Lizzy isn't looking for a guy to like her or to make a guy her boyfriend, she is focusing on herself.  She will depend on herself for esteem and accomplishment.  She chooses to befriend modest boys as they are less apt to be at her for sex or just a cheaper type of thrill.  She likes the cerebral over the short term excitement.  She has goals and wants and she refuses to let anything temporary interfere with those goals.

Dreams are thwarted by Friday's paycheck from Wal-Mart.  They are hemmed in and laid low by car payments and daily life in the low income bracket.  Before long people with no education for the most part find comfort only in the arms of this person or that person and falling in love is the highest level of immediate stimulation one can hope for beside getting a 40 cent raise from the local retail establishment.  I have met very few people happy with a humble or poor lifestyle (financially).  I know these types of people/couples exist, I just haven't come across any.

I don't want to find my little girl, now a young woman, strapped with bills and babies in some apartment with a sullen man in tow, wishing wishes of what she might have been or could have done.  I think of Emily, of her living in her little slice of heaven and I know that will be my girl one day sooner than later.  A doer.  Someone who doesn't only talk, but achieves.

I don't want to ever know the pain of watching mydaughter argue with a man she settled for because at some point in her early twenties she fell in love with the way he made her feel special for a few weeks or months.  I want her to know true satisfaction as I do.

To know that she is earning a better life.  Better food to eat.  Better types of employment both recreational and financial.  Better and happier circle of friends.  Better forms of comfort and security.  Less working hours should she choose and utterly no need to depend on someone else to pay her salary.  To be self-supplying as I am.

My dreams for my child are coming to fruition.  Considering she has lived between two homes and two entirely different cities for the past ten years this is no small situation to find herself in.  Most children of divorce are raised by only one parent and that parent's bitterness and contempt for the absent parent normally leaves the child in a state of suffering for most their adult life; ramifications of a life led always wondering why the absent parent did not come around.

My husband's impact on my child's life for the five+ years he has been a part of our lives is also amazing.  She has this amazingly successful who lacks the chip on his shoulder her father carries to show her how she wishes to be treated one day by her husband.  She has seen two people, Land and I, who love each other on many different levels, work together to build our life as husband and wife.  She has witnessed kindness in great measure and come to realize she does not have to settle for the first man to come along- that you can find your ultimate if you are patient and keep your resolve near your heart.

Visiting Drexel will forever be imprinted in my memories.  To walk into the astoundingly beautiful Main Building, thinking of my child walking to and from certain classes there- talking and laughing with friends- attending class functions at University with other like minded young people brought tears to my eyes.

I have worked very hard to instill something of substance into my child.  To lend her all the goodness in me and to open her eyes and heart to the world around her and to her own endless possibilities.  I have done my best to present her honesty and a positive outlook on life.  To explain the pitfalls of having no 'plan' and no dreams.  To brand her mind with a desire to know more and see more and do more.  To let her know that there is time, God willing, to love and marry and settle down and to treat herself to life unbound and unfettered before taking the jump into domesticity.

She could have been anyone.  She was certainly not born with any type of silver spoon in her mouth. 

I remember teaching her to read and write and add.  I remember never jumping around bees or pointing out ethnicity.  I remember teaching her to find the one person in her class who had no friends and to befriend that little boy or girl.  That drugs will not kill you but they will fry your dreams into muddy mush.  That sex is for those who are ready for the consequences and the responsibility.  That her female charms are all she really has when it comes to her sexuality and to discriminate before giving them out or up.  That life is a series of lessons and if you never fail or let yourself down then you must stretch further.  That there exists no perfection in people or desire; only the very sky and stars are worthy of praise for the lack of flaw.

That at 17 the whole entire world is at your feet.  You can without exception strive to be anything, do anything or achieve anything.

And she believes me and she believes in me and she believes in herself.

She will do great things, my daughter...

Today my head is crowded with the debris of putting off...

Putting off this and laying away that.  Sliding those papers to the very edge of the desk and carefully covering still more paper with other paper so that what is beneath is hidden by what is atop.

I am not in the mood to work.  The one drawback (and only drawback as far as I'm concerned) of being self-employed is that you choose when to work.  But for contracts and settlements and deadlines on re-writes I can pick up or put down as I wish.  I can grasp the crystal knob to the door of which behind sits this desk and monitor or I can take a left away from this area of my home.  Proceed to paint or read or dabble in the ongoing construction of my Dollhouse.

The first weekend of August shall find my husband and I heading out to some foriegn shore.  I'm not privy as yet to our destination as it is a secret but I'd wager we will be in Bermuda.  White sand.  The Caves.  The gardens.  Chickens afoot.  A motor scooter.  Wind whipping against my helmut.  Sea Glass.  Bermuda off Jobson's Cove is the absolute best place to find Sea Glass!  I long for it! Kisses stolen as we dine.  Meredith's front porch with wine, crackers and cheese- the two of us whipering quietly while gazing out jealously at the Southern Shore of the Island.  I do want Bermuda.  More than anything right now.

My sister is now in the process of editing her recent tryst with madness.  Now it goes along something to the effect the police just searched her apartment.  Oh yes sister?  And what was it?  How was that exactly?  The police were just near your place at C-5 and dropped in for a friendly search?  Bugger.  She is getting herself set up with a therapist.  She's not ready to speak with me as of yet.  When she is she will find I've no ear to lend.  I have felt this tremendous burden lifted away from my life and psyche for the first time in nearly five years and I do not intent to stumble back into the mire of pity and guilt-induced submission to the angst of her life.  She is on her own.  I wish her well.  And I wish her at a distance.

My closet is stuffed with clothes.  Good clothes. I flinched today when I went in there.  I found about 40 dollars worth of gambling chips from the Troppy, $75 scrunched up in an Anthropologie reciept and a necklace that I'd thought I'd lost in the missing bag from our Cruise last year.  I feel as if I'm filling in the empty space left by my successive miscarriages with clothing.  And shoes.  I suppose this is better than drinking away the sense of loss or going nuthatch myself, but somehow that closet filled to the literal brim with clothing doesn't fit the image I have of myself in my mind's eye.  I sort of feel as if I'd like to take an armful over to the shelter for battered women, but then no, I don't want to give any of what's mine away.  Somehow during every unwanted bleed I feel I am giving away enough of myself.  I want my period to take a hike.  Get lost.  Bugger off.  We are proceeding with IVF and are now officially on the Egg Donor list in the clinic we will utilize for the procedure if necessary.  I feel so fortunate and blessed; I have the money and means to do whatever I wish when I wish.  I can even buy an Oocyte.  And yet something inside me shifts and warbles as I think of the Science.  It is quite amazing that life can be now where once it could never be.  People looking all about for miracles when they live and breathe.  And yet I am a product of the society I have been raised in.  Greed is inbred into our core.  We always want more.  Money.  Stuff.  Oocytes.  I am both very joyful I will have my husband's child if necessary in such a manner and somehow repulsed.  We have more than enough money to adopt a dozen children, but the desire to have one's own biological child becomes paramount.  I am baffled by my own circumstance more days than not as I lay down to have this needle or catheter or substance pushed through my skin/orifices/openings in attempts to get me withchild.

Later in August my daughter and I shall venture to Places Southern to tour a few additional campi.  She is yet undecided on her final five choices for Higher Education.  It will be a Mini Cooper for her college mode of transportation.  She is so enchanted by her own life at this time and I feel breathless at times to witness her growth.  She is never anything but humbled at her own good fortune and circumstance.  Never tending toward brattiness or rudeness.  I fear I will never know even if I birth ten more children the joy of life with this child.  I feel completely put out by the last nearly 19 years of my life; has it all drifted by so very quickly?  What they say about your children growing so very swiftly is completely true and never doubt it.  Someone drops a book behind you in the grocery line and when you face back front you have a grown daughter leafing through magazines rather than the expected tot asking for a candy.

My feet are tan.

My garden presents herself as a scene from Day of the Triffids.  I wish to go out and step to her as she crouches low and high and lush, Amazon-like betwixt and between the neighboring buidlings and yet I am not free to set to the tack.  100+ degree F tempertures prevent me from pulling, cutting, slashing and tempering that brazen green jungle out there having a grand time expanding itself into the very lawn.

Yesterday as my mom came up out of the basement we had a rather regular day together- a reprieve from her acting the mole.  She and I had ourselves a shopping bit for scrapbooking material at A.C. Moore and then a stop at Whole Foods for delicious vittles.  We sat on the sofa on the fourth floor while sharing her favorite shows- Average Joe and Big Brother 6.  We spoke upon the Plight of My Sister and the impending death of my mother's sister.  The evening ended with a shared hug and my mom returned the the Deep Below.

I am happy to find I will not work beyond this hour for the remainder of the week. 

I am pondering the enjoyment of a nice cold Corona this evening as I have a very small window of opportunity with my fertility procedures of the enjoyment of a beverage.

I watch as my cell phone rings, vibrating a little dance across the desk just off my left elbow.  It isn't the ring that chimes when my daughter, husband, friends or sister rings me up.  It is the ring I've set aside for All Others which incidently translates into a work/business call.

And thus I will ignore the phone as it hands the caller into voicemail.

I am thinking about so very many things this afternoon...

I am wondering about many facets of my life.  I am a thinker, this is true.  And yet at times I delve in deeply. 

With my Mom visiting, my thoughts flitter between decades of memories.  I can't find common ground between the two of us in the spaces between my distant and recent memories.  I ponder myself; am I or am I not?  There are moments when I wonder what she is thinking while she sits in our basement.  She's been here nearly two weeks and she rarely climbs the steps to join into the day-to-day activities of our lives.

She speaks of my sister as if she's speaking of a complete and total stranger.  Or moreso, of some fictional character from a dime store novel she's read.  It has been very painful for my heart this week to know that my sister has fallen back into her alcoholic nightmare of an existence.  For my Mom, it goes something along the lines that she, my mother, can't for the life of herself, figure out where my sister went wrong.  Why she, my sister, clings to dead relationships with guys who will come out with more than they went into the relationship with while my sister comes out more broken and bruised.

I want to grab my Mom by her shoulders and shake her.  Asking her in a very loud voice why the heck she'd guess my sister is such a mess?  Could it be due to the fact we watched as our mother went first with one guy one night up the stairs of our home and then the next night with another guy?  Could it be all the constant screaming and yelling we heard as kids and teens?  Could it be that my Mom was never the Mom, but simply the person who paid the rent, utilities and provided a bit of food for us?

If you've read all of my many blogs, you are familliar with the dysfunction of my younger years.

And then I have my Mom eating through avocados and fresh fish and vegatables as if somehow the way I eat will peel away the years of bad living she carries around on her outside.  In the rare moments I trod down the steps to our basement, my Mom proceeds to go on and on about her sister, my Aunt (Cathy).  My Mom attributes all E-vale to Aunt Cathy.  She is thankless.

So I am living in a sort of mini-Hell.  Friday cannot come soon enough.

I don't know why so many things simply are.  I don't know why it is of some comfort to me that there are not enough pages in any blank journal to record the negativity that seeps out in the very air in my Mom's proximity.

As we were driving cross-town after going to view the film 'The Island', we were stopped at a traffic light.  Somewhere near a driver was laying on their car horn.  Over.  Again.  Blaring car horn. My mother was in the back seat sort of talking to herself and said:

"Oh blow that horn out your butt."

I flinched.

My husband sensed my flinch and took my hand.

Only in that moment did the world tilt back into some semblance of clarity for me. 

My head is scrambled like eggs frying in a cast iron skillet over a campfire.  It is messy and longing for the day when my moments aren't fumbling as this very moment I type has.

My Mom has been in the basement for virtually 3 days.  Sitting in front of the projection TeeVee screen watching all that crap TeeVee on the wall in a 4x6 foot box.  Loading her mind with the strife of low class minorities and white trash.

Am I revolted due to her lack of lust for life, or due to the fact I could have been her one day...

I don't know.

My head is clogged and I sit here struggling to accomplish a bit of paperwork and accounting...

Thanking my good sense and God's kind hand that I will never be my Mom and then fighting off pity for the woman with a mace and dagger...

 This is a hard post to put down. 

I am not sure will my fingers will lead me, I only know that a virtual diary can be very liberating and cleansing.

It went like this:

Last week my sister, who is an alcoholic, went about her nightly routine of phoning her live-in several times at his job.  By the forth call, his boss answered the phone telling my sister that her live-in could not come to the phone.  Boss wasn't trying to be fascetous; live-in was literally up to his elbows in fryer grease (he was working his second job in a supermarket deli).

I would wager along with her live-in that somewhere between calls 3-4 my sister began to drink herself silly.  She felt that her live-in was avoiding her and making plans to visit a niece of his without her. 

Upon being informed her live-in could not come to the phone my sister proceeded to call the police and report the illegal fireworks of her live-in.  The police arrived at their apartment to find my drunken sister wrecking the apartment and welding a knife.

She was then hauled off to the Mental Health unit of a local hospital.

When I recieved the call, I was asked by a doctor to drive to the hospital and commit my sister to a treatment program.  Having been involved with the fallout of my sister's alcoholism for well over 15 years coupled with the fact it was near 11 PM and I live 300 miles away, I declined the offer.

My sister was locked up tight for two days.

Now she is free again.  It appears, though I haven't heard directly, that her live-in is just fine with his little sweetie pie's antics resulting in his possible arrest and large and hefty fine, not to mention the necessity of his retaining a lawyer.

Now I might be missing something here, but I find it kinda funny and I find it kinda sad that my sister now has an attitude against my mother for not leaving the Jersey shore and rushing home to sit beside her and pat her hand while the psych ward probed her alcoholic brain.

My sister hasn't phoned me as of yet either.

I feel like she kicked me in the gut.

Excuse me but after all the support both emotionally and financially I've given her the least she could do is act like a mature 38 year old woman and phone her mother and sister to let us know what the hell is going on.

That is the least she could do.

If she really wanted to be human, she could put her ass back into AA and admit to her issues and deal with them before she harms herself or someone else.

Thank God she didn't take her latest drunken self-pity party on the road.

I feel at times she is on borrowed time when it comes to getting in her car during one of her alcoholic tantrums and killing some poor child or family.

I don't know if I feel better that finally the entire family knows about this crap so that I don't have to be put back with knowing about it only myself (besides her live-in and the married men she has been with) or if my heart is crying out for her.

I am just so angry with the way she treats our mother.  Take it out on me, on anyone- but not someone she wants little to do with but to use for a whipping boy.

Needless to say, the reason my 3 days at the Jersey shore were sort of wigged out was due to the fact my Aunt kept grilling me about my sister's mental health, my sister's relationship and my sister's alcoholism.  On the other side I had my mother trying not to feel burdened by this. 

Today, a bit more than a week after the latest bout of insanity on the maternal side of my family, I feel like mud when my sister comes to mind.

I knew this was coming, but I could never guess it would be so ugly and so bottomless in its own mire.

He and I came away with matching red shoulders from Live 8.

While biking home I learned he was at Live Aid in '85.

He learned that I was in the crowd, not far from him, at Live Aid in '85.

Once not knowing in a crowd, then later, holding hands and laughing, together...

The first time I though about getting ink I was 19 years old and stationed temporarily in Japan for a TDY assignment  (Air Force).  3 of my fellow Airmen got ink.  I stood around for over 7 hours with this adorable pair of women barking musical english in my ear:

"Flowah?"

"Rose?"

"Heart?"

I couldn't decide.

Then I found myself again at around 25 in a tattoo parlor.  Then at 32.  Then I moved to this city where you can have ink done while you wait for your plane if you wish.

I have been down on 4th Street a handful of times over the past 21 days.  Now my cycle is beginning again (riding the red river as they say) and I will be going back into fertility treatment and I will not have ink done this month.

I just can't decide what I want etched permanently into my flesh...

Bugger...

My favorite sugary candy is Good & Plenty.

The large 6 oz. box.

In the morning I rarely eat traditional American breakfast food.

I prefer a plate with sliced avocado sprinkled with seseme seeds, a few pickled beets and some type of broiled fish.  This is a meal I eat nearly every morning unless we are traveling or I am not in my home.

I drink at least 45 ounces of water per day.