Winter, Early

I never got,
before...

that Demeter would be so...

angry.

Oh, I sensed the sorrow--
pain-- longing.
Fire burning from each hand as you search search
search.
The sometimes sweet sometimes tart taste of pomegranates on the tip
of your tongue.

The things they took away from her.

But now I know.
Oh, how I know in this too tired heart.

Sitting,
watching all the green
and flowers and things that smell like youth
shrivel in the frost.

And being

sort of

glad.

Virgin

all you've done is taken
something
that I had. before.


Never touched. perfect.

Now, all I can feel is bitter.
Like touching your tongue to a lemon
you thought, once, might be sweet.

And now, all I can see
is lemons
lemons,
lemons.

Their yellowness makes me want to
hurt
.

Drafts

Well. I just wrote a post about "things I've lost" in my life, inspired by the poem discussion yesterday. It turns out I'm not really ready to reveal some of those details, and the post was certainly much more maudlin than I meant it to be.

There was a time when I was pretty much fearless about blogging, that I would "confess" almost anything. There might come a time when I am again willing to discuss any of those details again.

Now is not that time, apparently.

BTW: clarification

I wanted to clarify, just in case anyone was wondering, that yesterday's post was NOT about anyone who actually reads this blog. So. And it wasn't really about hate but about pain. So there. Why someone causes me pain and why I obsess over it and therefore try to justify it by claiming to hate something I instead wish I could love.

And being a little emo. That's all.

Hating Poetry: An Emo Tale

This is dedicated to someone I am really learning to hate. My mom will say "You don't hate anyone" but that's something moms have to say. I probably will say it someday, myself. But I know the truth, the real, horrible kernel of the truth is that sometimes, you just can't like someone. And there's even something satisfying (and terrible) about the fact that they probably don't even know you are hating them. Like love, unrequited hate is powerful.

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

I hate this poem. It keeps following me around, and it just keeps getting truer. Dammit.

True story: when I was in Graduate School (ah that place of much losing) I had a disastrous paper about it. People who just didn't get my point, nor my sarcastic tone (I was doing it for a point, dammit, which was lost to the graders of my exam. And thus, failure.). I still shake my fist at those exam graders. Oh to be so misunderstood!

(But I really actually love the poem,) and I hate that a moment of breaking down, of crying like a complete idiot in a complete stranger's office as she told me "the bad news" (which wasn't ultimately that bad. I got over it. No one died). All because of this poem. (Well, that one and some other things, but I really, irrationally, blame this poem.)

I hate this poem the way you hate the truth that hurts you.

I think that poetry is one of those places that can truly grab those places in our souls where we are not always cheerful, where we don't respond to the Starbuck's clerk "Fine" but rather tell them how we really are today.

And yes, I agree that Shakespeare Hates Your Emo Poetry. So do I. But I even hate my OWN

Emo poetry. All emos hate their own poetry-- it's part of their very core.

Tell me why I tried.
I'm filled with disillusion
I am you are me
--Emo Haiku courtesy the Emo Haiku generator.

Hate is a good, strong emotion for poetry. It's almost as good as getting drunk. But the headache of hate is less physical.

Anyway. The point is this: I have no point which I can actually blog. But here is a blank space within the blog where I am focusing the energy of the point I would make if I could blog it:

See. There. Try to come back from THAT you person-who-I-was-thinking-of.

Tell Me--

If I feed my 3 year olds brownies with pink frosting for breakfast cause that's all the little monkeys will eat and it's SOMEthing,

does that make me bad?

Wait. Don't answer that.

Under New Management since 2003

There was a time, not so long ago, when I was freakin' HILarious. I would drive down the road, see a gust of leaves and in my mind I would be already writing the best damn blog post ever. And the time when I saw a made over hearse in the Borders bookstore parking lot, windows blacked out? Oh, my friends, those were the days. And they actually WERE funny! Clever posts! That didn't take me all day and make me feel like a poet writing a poem about writing poetry.

When you've been blogging as long as I have, you know these things come in stages. You are writing at first for just your mom, maybe, and a couple of friends. Then you have a few strangers stumble on your site. Some stranger than others. (ba dum bump) You build a following, you have some laughs, you think about going to one of those pre-rehab AA meetings-- I mean, blogger meetups, and you feel a bit like a rockstar. You notice you've had thousands of visitors. Sometimes in one day! You think about your blog friends as real people, who are really part of your life, and not just strangers typing and wearing pajamas in a room far away that you'll never meet. You tell your spouse "you know, George, the one with that blog about rocks? He said the other day that...."

Then something happens.

Maybe you upset some readers and they stop coming by. Maybe you just get boring. I've gotten over some blogs I used to follow religiously and just stopped going.

Or You might just have some big life changing event that makes you write constantly about something like baby poo and you find yourself reading other blogs about baby poo and suddenly all those hip, savvy, smart readers are gone cause who other than a mom cares about baby poo?

You think about quitting. Who wants to read your post, except the faithful mom out there, still.

You go anonymous, cause maybe you have a job you wouldn't want the world to see that you drank TWO glasses of wine last night and heaven forbid you admit that! But then the anonymity makes you bitter and crabby and all you're ever writing about is the negative.

Oh, this post could go on forever, but I gotta go get the baby poo factories up and drag them to daycare. Today is a day off of school for me and I've got a half a ton of Landlord work to do.

Blog phases are funny, my friends.... or should I say, "Right Mom?"

Mardi Gras weekend

this isn't a poem.

There was a parade today.
We didn't go.

People were happy with anticipation as we drove past.
They were hanging out on their lawns, coolers filled with cold beverages on an early Spring cool day. There were firepits and BBQ grills on the sidewalks. Children spun in circles, caught shiny beads, ate chocolate doubloons tossed by non-drag-queens wearing feathers & sequins.
Dogs ran loose. Sniffed things.

We drove past. Headed home. Took a nap. Chatted for a while as the babies napped.
Woke to go to
Bed, Bath and Beyond.

Geez am I old or what?

When the parade goes by and the trombones are blasting but you just. don't. care.
What does that mean?

Recycling: 2003

All the cool kids are doing it nowadays.

This is from my very, very old blog. Yes, it's still out there. It's just called something obscure and I don't ever write in it.

Temporarily Single Girl's Guide to Dining Out Alone

Here's a tip on what to do if you decide, cause you're a liberated woman dammit, and can go out to a nice restaurant alone if you want, to treat yourself, and you find yourself seated next to a self-centered young woman and her remarkably tolerant male companion. As she chatters incessantly about her relationships with men other than her companion (who must be a masochist of some sort, and who, amazingly, still pays for the entire meal without even an offer from her to chip in), thirty minutes of "so then I'm like... and he's like... and then she goes.... whatever"-- you, who still must insist on enjoying your glass of Chianti, and Italian herbal soup and blue cheese salad with walnuts, you must not appear to eavesdrop on their inane and tedious and largely one-sided conversation as fodder to place later in your blog.

Do not appear in the least bit interested. Heaven forbid your ears turn slightly towards the table as you write down the horrible conversation on your paper tablecloth. You must not let on that you want, desperately, and at a loss for the blog entry and future writing of evil dining-conversations you once heard, for said couple to either leave or spontaneously-self-combust.

That, my gentle reader, would be unsociable, spinster-aunt-like thinking. Instead, order that cappucino (which will come with a lovely froth and two entire biscottis just for you). Revel in the taped Sinatra-singing "whiskers on kittens" after they leave, yes. But do not throw your leftover crusty bread surreptiously at them in order to encourage said leaving any earlier. Also, don't watch the obviously gay but terrifyingly unfashionable couple in the booth across from you.

They are cute, yes, and having a much more interesting conversation, but you mustn't stare at either couple. They will notice you, a single (but not at all lonely) diner, if you do. And remember to leave a fabulously generous tip. You did just make the day of the tired waitress who commented to a fellow waiter that she hadn't eaten since breakfast at 6 am (dear reader, it's now 3:00, poor waitress) by boosting the hell out of her add-on sales at the end of the day. But your over 20% tip will make her day's end even better and you can then go home and grade student papers with a good feeling in your heart, like the Grinch when he finally understood.

You. Rock. On. My. Friend.

High School You?

I have "facebooked" a few folks from high school. I hadn't thought of doing it til I noticed my BFF, J, had the HS listed on her page. I browsed, saw some names & faces I recognized. One of my newest "friends" looks enough like herself from 20 years ago that I have to wonder if it's an old picture, or if she's just incredibly lucky. A lot of the people I've found on there still live in Florida, often very near where we went to High School. So I feel a little weird to have moved so much.

The whole thing is kind of weird, and it's gotten me thinking.

What would your high school self think of you today? I mean, if you could, a la Back to the Future, zap yourself backwards or forwards and actually meet yourself?

I imagine these are a few of the things my HS self would wonder about me:

• Why did it take you so long to get a degree you can't even get a job with?
• What was 1999 really like?
• Twins? Really? EEk! How does that work? (I still wonder that).
• Why didn't you spend longer in Paris?
• Where have you been all this time?

Things I might tell her:

• Weight loss isn't the most important thing in the world.
• When you really have so many things to do you can't do them all, sometimes procrastinating instead is better.
• Bad boys are really not worth the time. Or the effort. And it WILL be an effort.
• Your hair will not look as cute as Bettie Page's. No matter how many times you cut it like that.

I want to keep thinking about this. I figured I had a really meaningful post about this, but now it's just not coming. I think I'll make this a series of things to think about.

A Morning Whine-Fest

I cannot make a to-do list. It would be too depressing because there are way too many things to actually put on that list, and way too many things that are not actually getting done.

But I can sit here and feel bad about it all. I can also complain.

• My pool is literally a swamp. I expect gators to arrive with suitcases any day now. I think I need to hire someone to come clean it up/out because it's so bad now it would take me literally days to fix it. And my son likes to chuck branches into it, hurling them over the pool fence with quite a good arm. And toys. And whatever else he can find.
• I have about twelve baskets of laundry that my hubby washed but has no idea how to fold or put away. They're in the hall. My underwear is all somewhere lost within the mix.
• I have the eternal papers to grade and that hopeful look from students that I'll have them graded today. Fat chance. Wait til a weekend that isn't totally fried to happen first.
• I have paint all over my hands. I don't really mind the beige stuff but the black flecks of spray paint make my hands look creepy dirty. Ick. The tenants want to move into the house very soon, and there are many things to do still.
• I haven't had five minutes to myself that isn't spent in my work office waiting to go teach for weeks & weeks. & weeks.
• Grocery shopping? Hah!
• I have a meeting on Monday to discuss Sean's speech delay & possibly putting him into all day therapy. Something I've been dreading, but seems to be needed.
• I'm not sure if I am missing the eviction of tenants meeting today because husband has the paperwork & I am in the dark. I'm sure I'll catch hell if anything goes wrong there.
• The internet is still down at my house. Which means I need to call Comcast and complain cause there's something wrong that is not fixing itself as I had hoped.
• My TV room is a wreck with toys scattered everywhere.
• I don't like the pantyhose I'm wearing today, but it's cold & I didn't want bare legs.
• Time for personal "things" for me? HAH HAH!!!

Anyway. I could go on. I said I wasn't going to make a list but then I did and it's kind of pathetic. I am going to go teach now and try, really hard, to get all the work I have done actually moving. It's to the point now where the avalanche is getting so big that I won't get ANY of it done because the mountain is too big to move. Sigh.

My Week Ahead

Other than the fact that I have a stack of papers that need grading (a small stack) this will be an easy teaching week. But we have a house to get ready for new tenants who want to move in on the first, so it will actually also be a crazy week. This is why I can't teach anymore-- not being able to only focus on one thing is impossible for me.

I'll spend today painting a kitchen for someone else. We need to put down tile in that kitchen and also a few other touches throughout the house before it's ready for these new tenants. It's a cute little bungalow style house again-- hardwood floors, nice little touches like killer etched door knobs. Unlike a lot of the houses, these don't appear to have been ruined by being painted. I need to clean them nicely to make sure, but they're so cool! Beautiful real old-growth (it was built in the 30s) pine in the hallway & closets, which we will just finish off in polyurethane and enjoy the natural look of the wood.

Anyway. It just makes for a very busy life-- constantly remodeling houses + trying to keep up with my own + other duties/jobs hobbies. I'm not complaining. It's fun to do-- I like fixing up these old historic houses. Trying to make it so the touches aren't weirdly ahistoric but still look nice-- like in one house we looked at that had ultra modern looking tile in one area-- looked SO off.

Now to teach "A Raisin in the Sun", which seems oddly appropriate to this day.

Technology & Ch ch ch changes....

I use a lot of media in my teaching-- Power Points, YouTube videos, music, audio files of poems, etc. I think it's really important to access these things because students are used to more dynamic media and if we go in there with books and chalkboards, it's just kind of boring. Sure, they can figure it out, but it's not as interesting as all the shiny things out there.

But the problem with this is that it can take a RIDICULOUS amount of time. I just spent TOO TOO long trying to figure out how to load a DVD clip into a PowerPoint presentation. I want to show a clip from Disney's Enchanted, where she gets rained on, and goes "into the underworld" as symbolic of certain repeating themes in literature/movies. And I thought it would be cool if I could just pop it into the PowerPoint instead of having to navigate between several different programs. PowerPoint "Help" said there were programs that can do it, so I downloaded it. And had to do it again. And then remove some redundant programs. Then do it again. Then, the one I had wasn't the right version. And then, the "pro" version which supposedly would allow me to
"clip" exactly the scene I wanted (instead of playing the whole DVD-- not what I want to do) did not work. I think the DVD itself has a lock/copyright protector that doesn't let it clip the scene.

I know there are probably programs out there that let you do this. But dammit, I was prepared to pay for the program & use it under "Fair Use" copyrights etc. But it is REALLY really really annoying to have spent the last hour trying to get this technology to work for me and then have it crap out.

So. Now I'll just play the movie clip the boring way, opening multiple programs. Stupid gadgets. Wasting all my time. Why I oughta.....

Anyway, this plays into my "big changes" coming soon. This summer and beyond, I plan to start working on an Educational Courseware thing that I do a lot with. It will be cool, and I think really something that has the potential to be awesome. I plan to most likely NOT teach next Fall, also. There are budget cuts afoot which mean my job might not even be there anyway, plus I need to help with our Real Estate business (between my hubby & my investments & the investments we manage for my mother-in-law, we now have 11 rental properties in our home town alone (two more elsewhere). Most of them run smoothly, but on a day to day basis, it's very time-consuming. And we plan to get more. So. I am just too too busy to adjunct + mom + real estate Tycoon + web based small business plan + exercise + + +. Somethin's gotta give.

I'm kind of excited about it. If it all goes well, (business wise we continue to be successful) we are going to build a little office onto our garage for me to work in. Right now, I work in a closet in our TV room which the babies are constantly mucking about with. The office I envision is something out of a Pottery Barn catalogue, with lots of windows and flowering plants & music playing and and and......the nicest thing about it is that there will not be a kitty litter box anywhere NEAR it. (At this time, whenever my cat decides to "freshen up" the box is close enough that it is gas warfare.)

So. Those are the big changes that are afoot. I did not want to say anything until I had told my boss at work so he didn't think I was blowing off LSU. I really like teaching there, and would continue to do so if there were only 80 hours in a day. :) And/or if I had a tenure-track job-- but that isn't in the wings, either, so.

It's been making me very sad that I spent all this time getting my PhD and haven't, because of being locationally limited, been able to get a full-time position somewhere. And it felt like a failure. There just isn't a position in what I do here at LSU, and even though I adore teaching and would do it no matter what, I need to devote my attention to other things. And it doesn't feel at all like failure, just a re-assessment of goals & needs. I will miss my students, but maybe I can do a continuing ed class or go guest lecture for some of the folks who are still going to be there.

Anyway. Boy is this a long post. And it's time to get the kiddos and cook dinner and move away from the hour or so of "me time" (spent messing with this darn computer).

Confessions of a Band Geek

When I was in high school, I was a band member. We had an awesome marching band, and I played the clarinet. In fact, I played clarinet for something like ten years! It's sometimes amazing to me that I don't do it now. I always meant to pick it back up but just haven't yet. Next time I see a cool red one in a pawn shop (I did once. Dammit) I am buying it and making myself play.

I was just lurking on Facebook while waiting for my office hour to be up. Yes, there are more productive things I could do, but while looking at BFF's profile page, I noticed she had our high school listed, and it was linked. I clicked the link, found a couple of hundred people. Some of them I knew of, but didn't know. A few I sent "friend" requests to, with a clarification of what my name was back in "the day" (maiden name not included. I like my middle name too much). Then I looked at a year before and a year after my graduation.

It was kinda neat to see some of those names! Some of them I saw at the 10 year HS reunion I went to back 10 years ago. (I didn't go to the 20. Too busy!) Some of them made me cringe. (I actually saw one guy I kind of dated...ick! Why I'm glad I don't live near there!!) A couple of old friends. It will be neat if any of them accept my friend request. Maybe make me feel a little less "unconnected."

I have to admit I had wondered how people found all those former schoolmates. It didn't occur to me that there was a lable-y thing and people weren't all just searching for names. ::Chuckles at air-headed-ness. ::

Anyways. Now, I need to go downtown (hums the tune to the old song) and file paperwork to evict someone from our apartment. Fun for the whole family! Bring your friends! I meant to work on this Friday, but we had to give them a full five days, and then one can't do it on the weekend. So I wasted the trip downtown on Friday (ugh) and now get to do it again.

I have effectively wasted another good hour (as Click & Clack might say). Hooray!

What a difference

Having the kiddos actually take a nap can make. Momma needs some time alone every day and yesterday I was just TOO crabby. Feelin' better today. All that mysterious crap on the blog entry was just too much coffee too little free time.

Missing

I kind of miss my old "anonymous" blog where I could bitch and moan and snark when things weren't going my way and get sympathy from friends and total strangers. People who don't really know me so when they say a situation is f-d up I know I'm not just paranoid or being too sensitive. But it would be too much work to revive it. So, I'm lazy and depressed, so you gets nothin'.

Maybe ya'll can just give me sympathy without knowing why? It's for sucky things. That you would totaly go "aw man, that's lame."

Stuff I can share: Andrew's working this weekend, and babies have been HELLIONS. They refused to nap. They made a mess that I chose to ignore for a while until it became obvious that continuing to ignore the mess was going to cause said mess to get really really bad. Thank the Goddess that we have Madagascar 2 on DVD because that has made them contain their mess in the general area of the TV, although I really should go see what Sean is up to now. He sounds industrious, which is generally bad. Sigh.

What I Learned There

Stealing an idea and modifying it a little bit from the wonderful Jo(e) who wrote about what she learned in second grade, I thought I'd see if I can remember something I learned that was important in grade school. Hey, maybe this will turn into an annoying meme. (I doubt it. I don't have that many readers. Now if Jo(e) picked it up, maybe it would go viral because she's totally a rockstar.

Anyway:

• preschool: do not pull the decorative wax candle that looks like a foamy beer off the counter onto your head. It will hurt. You will lose your hair as your mother tries to pick all the dried wax out of your hair witha comb. You will scream when she comes near you with a comb for a long time.
• kindergarten: it feels good when your mom comes to get you after school. You can walk home in the warm Indian summer together, holding hands, while you tell her about your day.
• first grade: when it's the bicentennial and your school does all kinds of "Colonial" activities in honor, and your class makes real butter by shaking and shaking and shaking a jar filled with rich cream and then spreads the yellowish goo on saltines, that butter will be the best butter you'll probably taste in your whole life. Uber-butter.
• second grade: don't pull on the beak from your cool puppet of an ostritch. When your mom says she'll take it to Grandma's to get it fixed, you'll never see it again.
• third grade: mixing raw egg, vanilla, cinammon and bread in a bowl does not make French Toast, even though that appears to be how mom makes it. But the dog will LOVE it. And your love for cooking, for pleasing others with the food you prepare, will be born out of the preposterous mix.
• fourth grade: moving very far away to a new place where you don't know anyone kind of sucks.
• fourth grade, the second time: because you moved, your mom asks if you can be "held back a year." It sucks again.
• fifth grade: don't write "Kim Loves Vance" all over your notebook, even if you do. Because when someone else spots the heart with his name in it, you will be teased, unmercifully.
• sixth grade: moving sucks again. And when you kill a spider in the girls' bathroom & all the other girls swear you ate it, you'll figure out that you really don't like it in Louisiana.
• seventh grade: reading. reading. reading. the library. long long rides on your bike. horses. horses. horses. poetry. funny letters to your sister.
• eighth grade: when the much older slacker failed a lot of grades but looks-kinda-like James Dean or John (Cougar--at the time) bully on the bus picks on you and/or grabs your butt, and you try to fight back, even if you try to get him with your nails & purse, you will only end up losing the fight and getting a black eye. And no, putting raw meat on it does not help. Nor does putting makeup your mother got from the lady in the trailer next to you. Everyone will see your black eye anyway.
• ninth grade: this time, moving is kind of cool. Florida has beaches. You can actually get just a little bit of a tan if you go every single day. And lots of freckles. And go with your mom to the movie theater that sells beer (to her) and nachos and wear surfer shirts & have other kids not totally hate you.
• tenth grade: the hot air while you stand outside at night for marching band practice, combined with hormones, cute boys, stadium lights, dandelion seeds on the wind silhouetted against those lights is a heady mix. And the music is kinda cool too. You really like performing in band wearing the uniform that smells like dry cleaning solution, standing up so straight it makes your back hurt, playing your heart out on the clairinet. The thrill of competition. But really, it's those summerish nights and daydreams about the unobtainable boy of the moment that is the best part.
• eleventh grade: getting contact lenses and joining drama club really makes you feel normal. Even though you're still Not.
• twelfth grade: do not date that guy. That one. With the stupid blue paint in his hair last year. Ever. And, also: you're not going to listen to your older self when she tries to scream this back over the years at you at 4 in the morning.

Hmmm. I like how that came out. Feel inspired? Come on. You can do it. It actually got harder to remember specific things by school year as I got older, which is weird.

things that are bad for you

Since the babies were born (3 years-ish) I haven't really sat up all night for no reason. Yes, I've been up with sick babies, or back when they were teeny tiny to feed them every two hours (that was fun!) But early on, I learned that when you have twins, you can't risk them waking up and you not being rested. They'll double team you and you won't get any sleep, so you take it when you can. It's bad for you to be up all night, and I almost always regret it anymore. Gone, I guess, at least til the kiddos are teens, are the nights of staying up til 2 am reading or watching movies or whatever it was we used to do when we stayed up all night.

That habit has lasted me a while. I hardly ever have nights where I get up in the middle of them, not able to sleep. When I do, a lot of the time I even just lie there in bed, thinking, resting, making myself go back to sleep eventually.

But tonight, the combination of a brain full of fuzzy monkey-brain thoughts plus a sore shoulder (the remnants of the sore neck from last week) and an annoying cat have made me need to be up. I surfed a new graphics website to see if I wanted a new "profile" picture (maybe) and played around there. Ate too many pistachios (they're right next to the laptop). Am drinking a sparkling water. Listening to the cat's bell from his collar jingle as he roams, as restless as I am.

Change is afoot. Things will be happening in my "household" that make my life different. Not in a bad way, and in a good way in almost 90% of the change. But there is that lingering 10% that will make me sad. I'll think about whether I want to go completely public with my change. Again, it's just a thing that I'll be changing about something that has made me sad, with the major intent of making me feel better overall. So. It makes you think, and think, and need to get up at 3 am and write elusive blog posts that will have people saying WTF?

Hah! You know, that's bad for you.

Facing It

I just wrote & then deleted a whole post on how weird the "alternate universe" of being "friends" with people on Facebook can be and how it can send you careening back into Junior High.

Twice. And then deleted most of it. Twice. Sigh.

In other news-- I am not watching the Superbowl. But not because of and real objection to it. I was just busy. And even the allure of the commercials did not draw me away from a fire, a happy cat lying on the marble in front of it, grading pretty decent papers, and my yummy red beans & rice.

...... if you want to read the rest of this, and you think I might be willing to share privately, in which I give way too much in details, check with my Myspace page, email me, or call me. I just don't feel like it.

That is all. Thumper, be quiet.