<$Saturday, November 19, 2005$>
Cold Saturday
 The cold blue green flame of rage is burning in me today. The kind of cold anger that leads to poisonings, brake line cuttings, terrible pre-meditatied acts of violence that human beings are so good at performing on one another. The “trusted” financial advisor lost 40,000$ of my m others retirement money last year. Last month alone he lost 4000$ dollars. I have been wicked and vigilant too late. If I had gone to Florida last year and wretched an accounting out of him then…perhaps I could have avoided this disaster. The ass put a 77 year old woman’s money into a volatile market in tech stocks. For the love of Chirst! How can anyone play roulette with the money needed to keep an old lady off the street? And I, beloved daughter, missed it. I wasn’t there, paying close enough attention, fighting for mom’s rights. Now I sit here wearing the hair shirt. Moreover weariing the frown onf someone in immense pain or with a bad case of constipation at least! But it will do me no good to crease up my faceuntil Iget a headache between my temples. Not only have I missed a thief stealing my mother’s livelihood. I’ve been robbed too. My inheritance has been pissed away by some middle aged maile twerp with a crappy fake orange tan and a three o’clock tee time. GOD! Help me! I am not only seeing my mother in the fast lane for public assistance….I am loosing my chance at owning a home. Watching all my dreams and things I cherished flushing down the toilet. All of it because I wasn’t vigilant enough to stop some jackass white male from stealing it all away from us. Jackass white males have been stealing my birthright and stomping me into the dust since I was born. First my father vanishing into a cloud of dust with a Hi-Ho “You’ll never collect the child support!” Then my stepfather. Throwing monkey wrenches into my financial aid forms for college. State university for me…scholarships out of reach because the government thinks a step parent is going to pay one penny for a step child’s education. (Should I have been more militant right then? Should I have sued my father for the back child support? Could I get blood out of a turnip? Where is my Superwoman Cape?) After the bogus parental squad I was lucky enough to emerge in a society that still considered femail graduates from college “Good Bank Teller” material. The males they started out as loan officers. The white male asshole parade continued through employers and co-workers. At least until after 18 years in the tech field,. I’ve earned my chops. I have them by their tiny, atrophied, blue, little testicles. They can’t get another techie to do what I do for them. So they shut up and play nice. Now, here in my fourty-third year I find another fox in the hen house. But no, that is disparaging the fox. The fox is only eating what he needs to survive, not slaughtering the whole flock because he wants a new Porshce. Now…I am bereft of what should rightly be mine. What should rightly be my mother’s security and protection. We are in dire straights once again because of some stupid, horny, greedy man. Just like when father abandoned us, just like when stepfather abused us. Here we are victims again. And this time the only one I have to blame is myself. The only one I have to look in the face is me. But I should stop right here. Stop and call for help. Stop and call Denise. Stop and take of the Superwoman tights. In the last two years I have battled back from total breakdown. I have had all I could do to manage my own money. I didn’t realize my mother had lost her reason quite so much. I didn’t realize the advisor who had done so well had gone to pot. I didn’t know, I couldn’t know, I couldn’t realize. My Saturday afternoon Atlanta Bread Company lunch is sitting in my gullet like a rock. A cold frozen stone of shame and anger. My toffee cookie, is churning back up my esophagus in a rotten, sugary, projectile, looking for the opportunity to come spewing out of my mouth and sklarp all over the keyboard. I had thought that perhaps writing about this would release it but instead it has transformed it into a colder frozen burning pit of fear, anger, shame, distrust, despair, desperation. On into a downward spiral this threatens to throw me. I need to stop. Stop and get help. What is past is past……my next mission is to stop Kevin Wolfe from ever making another penny from screwing my family. If possible send a little retribution his way. But no, that would be wrong, more importantly that would be a waste of energy. I need my energy for living, for my life, to make myself thrive. Kevvie has incurred the bad karma of putting an old lady in dire straights. And that, my dear blog, is enough to manifest a lightening bolt on a clear blue day in a golf course parking lot. A lightening bolt that could fry a brand new Porsche. Or perhaps a dumbass male with his clubs on his back and a two o’clock tee time. |
<$Friday, November 18, 2005$>
Stalked Off
| Well, to add insult to injury, Night Stalker was cancelled. Not so much cancelled as wiped from the face of the earth like the Pharoh Akenaten. Two weeks ago Frank Spotnitz was talking about the show premiering at the highest spot in the slot in years. He was even talking about the show being picked up. Last week they started airing a two part episode. Last night there was a Hollywood Tattler report in the Night Stalker time spot. Today the web site for the show is gone. Completely gone. No "We've moved on" or anything else....that puppy is just gone from the face of the earth. So much for seeing Stuart Townsend on a weekly basis. So much for scarry, bump in the night tv. Worse yet we'll never know what the marks on Karl's wrists really meant. It's a shame really. I taped the first two shows. Goofed up and taped the last ten minutes of the third show. Taped the fourth show. Missed the fifth show and didn't have a tape for the 6th show. So I can't even go back and look at the creation at leisure and see if I agree with the decision of the network to disappear the film from the face of the earth. Or maybe I could figure out why I seem to be so different from everyone who's rating tv shows. If I like it, it's going, going, gone in short order. "The Lone Gunmen", "Lucky", "Nero Wolfe", are only a few examples. Maybe I'm just not into "Gross" enough or I don't like the "Screw Everything that's moving a few things that aren't" plotlines. Maybe I like the characters to use 3 syllable words. Who knows. A&E used to be Arts & Entertainment now it is the "Bounty Hunter" Channel. Bravo used to be arts, now it's the "Gay" channel. (That is after that regretable bout as the Cirque de Soleil Channel.) Discovery has turned into the "Gross Things That Stink & Motorbike Channel" Even PBS has turned into the "Old Hippie We still Want to Bash Everybody in the Head Until They Thik Like Us" Channel. Oh times are a changin' I am a agin' AND My Barne's & Nobel cards gettin' worn out. Ah Kolchak we barely knew ye!  |
<$Thursday, November 17, 2005$>
Capsized
 Today a friend of mine described "the blahs" as a sargasso sea. She talked about using finesse and force to navigate through the fronds in the water. I take my 'blahs', my 'stessed out' place as being capsized. Like I was sailing along the ocean in front of a wild wind and then lost the grip on a sail. The whole boat turns over and throws me into the sea. Sometimes I hang onto the overturned hull and wait for a calm sea to right the boat. Sometimes I'm more like "Jason Bourne" in the opening of the "Bourne Identity". I'm in a survival suit, floating on my back, unconscious, in the dark of midnight, on a sea blown full of white caps. I'm floating there a suvival beacon on my shoulder sending out a homing signal to an emergency sattellite, a bright white buoy light blinking on and off. Each blink of the tiny light casting energy out into the darkness, polling for an answer, sending out a prayer. The prayer alternates between, "Thank you Lord for my life." and "Help me Lord. I don't know what I need, please send me what I need." I float that way until I drift towards a place where I can pull myself out of the water, or get back into the boat, or until a rescue ship comes along. A rescue ship answering that cosmic homing beacon in my survival suit.....answering prayer. Whether they know it or now.....central navigation monitoring has picked up my distress signal and sent help along. In those dark hours between twilight and dawn, drifting in the dark, blinking out signals.....it's so very hard sometimes to hold hope...to hold faith. Some nights I just drift into unconscioussness with hope and faith foremost in my third eye. They blink their signal back into my brain....a glowing purple light of comfort and secuirty. A swaddling blanket holding me as I float in my survival suit on a stormy ocean. I know that what I'm going through now has got to be an answer my prayers to do what is right for my mother. To know what is correct to do, to accomplish what needs to be done. But tonight, even with a surity that I am drifting on the right course, I am tired and eager to see the rescue ship come. I'm eager to see the morning after the night.  |
<$Wednesday, November 16, 2005$>
 It is rumored that Ben Franklin said, "Beer is evidence that God wants man to be happy" The best I can tell Lexapro is evidence that God doesn't want us to kill our families. Our families, our coworkers, the jerk at the bank, the jerk from IBM, the last mechanic to work on my car, and just about everybody else who's been vexing me for the last 4 weeks. Car failures, work equipment failures, bank screw ups, getting slammed in the head by the car door, the dog going incontinent, like a wicked evil mad cap Jerry Lewis movie. More like a Stephen King novel. Something peppy about someone going slowly mad. I'm afraid to think what kind of ending Stevie would put on it. I shouldn't call him that...it could invoke some kind of strange writing warp. I do admit that for several months the CD player in my car held disks 6 and 7 of him reading "On Writing". His soft voice talked me through many a difficult traffic jam. A sonic life line, thin, tenuous, golden, hope. As I perch on the end of the sofa, too exhausted to make sense out of anything, I keep reminding myself of Stephen King sitting in the laundryroom of a trailer with a kiddie desk perched on his knees. By his own admission, he threw Carrie in the trash can. Only his wife saved it from the dump. Since I don't have a faithful wife, or any kind of wife or husband of any sort.....I'm being careful not to judge...only to write. Ok I'm lying...I'm juding every word of the way. But I'm giving myself permission to write the worst crap ever to hit the keyboard OR to write the best deathless prose to ever be squatted out into a blog. The endeavor is to be open, to keep moving, to trudge ownwards. My quote on the subject....."If you get off the camel in the middle of the desert, you don't make it to the oasis."  |
<$Tuesday, November 15, 2005$>
Such a lot of livin' to do!
| "Life's a ball if only you'd know it!" So Sammy Davis Jr.'s recorded voice warbles at me through the headphones this morning. Of course I am accutely aware that there's a lot of livin' to do. The car door hit me in the head last night and almost punched my ticket to the netherworld. The curved steel stilleto of the door corner wanged me right in the temple. This morning I have a purple bruise and a face ache. Oh yeah...there's a lof of living to do. Right now I feel like something has been giving me a good "livin'" all over. Much more living and it'll kill me! Last night I went to pick up my beloved car from a wheel balancing only to find it still dangling on the grease rack. Suspended in the air, wheels drooping down, hood up in a silent scream. There she was, totally unready for the commute home. And so it was. Apparently the "little wheel balancing and alignment" had blossomed into a major problem. The wheels were wonky because one of the struts had gone bad. Oh...and it took the power steering pump with it. Oh well, warranty coverage. All I owe for is 2 front tires. (The edges chewed off from the shimmy.) Now, of course I had the car in there less than 3000 miles ago for a shimmy. They aligned the front and did the breaks then. Somehow they missed a broken strut and a funky power steering pump? Well, kiss my pink fuzzy bum! Now I'm supposed to trust a front end rebuild from the same snuggly cuddlies? Well you know...they had promised me a loaner car and then told me they didn't have one. Then I stomped my little feet in the showroom and suggested they loan me one of the "Quality" used cars for the evening. I went home driving the QEII. The dainty little Grand Marquis is a real treat. It is quiet and rides nicely. However I can't reach the dashboard after I fasten the seat belt. I start the car, turn on the lights, turn on the radio, then buckle up. But...better than no loaner car at all. So the QEII's door caught in a breeze last night and smashed into my head. Oh yeah...there's such a lot of livin' to do! Put on your body armour, your helmet, and your elbow pads.  She's coming for you next. |
<$Monday, November 14, 2005$>
Slipping
| "Time keeps on slipping into the future."....the line from the Steve Miller song. (That song that has lately been mangled by the postal service as an advertising jingle.) That song was popular on the radio when my grandmother died. It played on the car radio as I was bundled intot he backseat. I rode through the fallow fields and snow fallen countryside to the town 2 hours away where grandmother lay in state. It was terrifying. My first up close view of the dead. The sight of the dead body of a loved one came so close on the heels of so many other losses. It seemed to mark the final grinding down of my soul. The last of my childhood was gone. I was only 15 at the time. I had lost so much, my home, my family, my life, my grandparents, my pets, my life....the life I had known. I had lost all hope, all confidence in myself. All faith that there might be anything but suffering and being abused my step parents. All that ever came along was the worst possible outcome. Time was slipping into the future like the Lusitania disappearing below the ocean's surface. The lights glimmered out, the ship growled and went below the churning Atlantic, life boats and struggling swimmers were picked up by passing boats or sank out of sight. When all was done, there was only the cold and empty sea, still splashing in the mooon and the sun. Still impassive and all encompassing. Still all prevalent. This morning that horrible song came back to me. I watch my mother loose her memory, I watch her be aware one moment and furious and confused the next. I feel my heart breaking. I had just begun to have some hope, some faith in the future, and now.....the last of the tiny ships from that time so long ago....if floundering on the open sea. Time keeps on slipping into the future. So it slips. First the grandparents, then the parents, and then me. The terror of the cold water, of the confusion, of the helplessness, the immuteable darkness of the future are all swirling around me. It is becoming impossible to keep the party lanterns buring on the deck of my own tiny vessel on the open churning greent Atlatic. But when I take my mind off of the calypso music of faith and optimism, when I take my eyes off the fanciful chart I've drawn out of myself, when I see where the future is slipping to.....I fall into tears. Today there seems no joy left, no joy available. Everything good seems like a lie. I feel as thought I am being subsumed by the thrashing waves, the cold water, the darkness of the depths, the inescapable murmur of the dark water of meaninglesss emptiness that denies that a ship ever sailed above it and if it had...it would have been of absolutely no import. |
<$Sunday, November 13, 2005$>
Inner Babe
| Ok, it's gonna be pretty hard to come up with a few words tonight. I'm exhausted. Overhauled kitchen, 2 bedrooms, went to laundry. It sounds boring, forgive me for mentioning it. My inner babe wants to go out and play. She wants to shake off the middle aged look and dance down to her skivvies. She remembers fun....she ought to write it down to remind me. Tomorrow awaits. Work, more errands, more phone calls, more wrangling. Lawyer hiring. Crappy software installation. Ugh. If I'd known then what I know now....inner babe would have jumped off a pier and gone out in a blaze of glory!  |