The We,

I think that's why I suggested we stop blogging. I'm trying to release you from something I feel is an unpleasant burden and a key of a sort of resentment. Though you rally. Why keep insisting when you have no heart for it? And when I stopped doing that a few months ago, my very posts are the reminder, and the herald of unansweredness. I want to let you go from that. Please let me, let you go. And you can come back when and if you're ever ready. Let this be the last letter.


1. I remember when you first got Bender before I'd visited you off that Shelley Road and what a big deal it was to have taken that leap against certain outside objections, and gotten her and entered petdom in all its beautiful and painful glory. I remember meeting Scott just 3 weeks after you two met, and his friend Mike as I helped you move from out of that one Apartment to this new one.... your glassware, receipts, the strange black grit that coated everything. And the moss that hung from the trees in all its southerness. And feeling very clearly like I was your lady in waiting. Already how together you two seemed to be.


Dear sweet Bender. Now with a Bailey. I hope in her last days, her aging, as we are all dying, though she nears it close, be filled with love and peace. And care and patience. This is your first pet. She is and will always be a big deal. And she is beautiful.


2. I feel the same way about Clif Bars. And wish I didn't have so many good things to snack on at my fingertips sans away workplace. Must walk.


3. I watched the end of ProRun on Hu/u. And was like, hmm. Eh. Ok. I have avoided Downton. As the operatic highs and lows, i cannot take. Though I have finally set to watching all of Parks+Rec.


4. I haven't used my credit card in about 10months. Shoes are falling apart. Clothes are being pushed to the edge, but I'm doing it- with my mom's help of course. But trying to live in some very narrow parameters while I move my parents and myself, while I am in this particular space. And it is a newer non-fatalistic, taking for myself, and palms open up to what God might have in this. We shall see.


5. my mom did a listening prayer for you:


I got the same image of a gift to her, white small box with lavender ribbon that is a symbol of her being loved and deserving of good things.




m.

the where

Indeed I do think that's the better question, the where are we and how do we meet. I did have to take a day to think about that and return to it as for whatever reason yesterday morning I set about on the wrong foot with it and everything else really. Preschool teeming with full-moon driven children who threw toys and upended baskets for sport. The normally docile ones shoving each other and filling each other's clothes (even a diaper?!) with playground mulch, all admonishments falling on very deaf ears. More ear problems then plagued the afternoon with pulling the children from school early to visit the Expensive Specialist for KLo's persistent complaints. Although I liked the new nurse practitioner there, a ponytailed, vest-wearing, kind of mystical man? He left a lot of space between his thoughts, the effect of which was calming. But also was very amused by us, which in turn amused me back. The remaining KLo ear tube was removed, canals were vacuumed and KLo behaved like some rented child, hired to be angelic. Otherwise, results were inconclusive as to why she's having ear pain, aside from an extremely stuffed nose. So now she's theatrically downing Mucinex (tastes bad!) and taking it upon herself to administer nasal spray in a similarly theatrical manner. Except that she sort of enjoys the spray.

This moon (wolf?) is a very, very weird one.

We returned home post-appointment to find our yard spray painted to indicate utility/cable lines, as well as the neighbor-who-hates-us' yard - what. I imagined her constructing a barbed wire border between us to keep our infernal dogs off her property once and for ALL. And I was half overjoyed, half irritated at the prospect. Like at least tell us you're having work done if it involves our yard? Because that spray paint was pretty much on top of our house in the side yard. So I had to call her and ask and she had no idea. Then J.Lo found the work order in his systems (handy) and uncovered that the spray was for cable installation - at another address. duh. I do hope they figure that out before they start digging. Something else to prespire vaguely over.

Back to the question of our meeting place. What is the answer. In this season of life I admit that I don't miss writing or feel any level of commitment toward it. And I feel distantly like I should feel something about that but then I just shrug and continue plowing through the day. Creating is an important element, yes, and words might be the medium, but they don't have to be necessarily. It's like the way I, seemingly without any forethought, gave up twittering well over a year ago and then a few months ago, instagramming. Which was sporadic at best anyway. There was no why to it, it just suddenly wasn't. And all I've done is shrug over it. 

But I miss you. (duh!) Somehow we must renew our commitment to the conversation, I think. Or the narrative, or whatever we want to call it. Apparently the word writing causes me to flee like a scared, winged thing, but I'm not going to ponder that one too deeply. for now, anyway.

This morning (it's a day later that I'm finishing this, of course - yesterday I was pecking the draft out on my phone while inexplicably eating a Sonic breakfast sandwich in my car - I was that desperate for a moment alone before work? - and today I'm in the living room next to a puppy with Game Show Network on the background, oh the 70s...), an idea popped in my head. I don't know if it's a bad one and probably it's the result of coffee energy but sometimes some of those go somewhere! so they are worth having. Anyway, I was thinking about questions or lists. Kind of like those buzzfeed quizzes are so addictive, except as a side note, all of my recent quiz results have been bizarre: mental age, 24. The place I should live, Cape Town. the fuck? Because I'm the kind of person "who never sits still for a moment." Right. And then the Muppet version of me is the guy who throws fish? You know, the one kind of dressed like a clown. What the hell.

Questions, lists, snippets. How I love them so. And I like this idea of throwing them out to each other like a prompt. Like the "What's Making Me Happy this Week" segment on my favoritest podcast. Well maybe it's dumb, but -

From me, of late:
1. Biggest feat:
Finding a Very Lost Library book. In a place I looked five times already - book shelf in the two-year-old classroom. Literally I was losing sleep over this thing, this book with the happy bunny and his damn happy rainbow, because it's not so much the fine of being overdue (nominal), but the inability to take out new books while it's MIA. Unacceptable! And then the unfinished business of either replacing said book or paying some inflated, standardized replacement fee - bah.

2. I might have a problem with:
Larabars. They've been on sale at Target for at least two weeks now and I can't stop trying new flavors. While I have no interest in Blueberry Muffin, anything with peanut butter or chocolate chips can't be beat. Or cherries, that wasn't bad either. They're the best-lunch-ever when sitting down with a table of tiny people who need assistance at every turn. They're ugly enough that no child wants to steal a bite. They're filling enough that I'm not starving my face off half an hour later. And I really can't delight more in such a short, protein-packed ingredient list that eschews GMO things and supports fair trade.

3. I have the sads about:
my dying Bender. She really can't even run anymore, or shouldn't. We leave her inside while throwing ball for puppy and she cries for the length of this torture. The lumps and bumps grow, the limping and creakiness increase. Watching her lay down or attempt to stand is a cringe. Though we've made her more comfortable with some painmeds. Mental snapshot: Bender on Christmas morning, Giving Up in the midst of the chaos by collapsing in a pile of wrapping paper.

4. Most amazing discovery:
The sketchy-looking business near Food Lion isn't actually a human trafficking operation/illicit massage parlor, but an upstanding adult toy shop. (It's called "Shhh... !ntim@cy on a New Level.") Which actually has a ch@nge dot org petition associated with it, but to keep the place open, not shut it down for human trafficking. Apparently it's way too progressive for this community, to sell toys. Oh, the irony! But really, they ought to choose a better name. My mind ran in circles for months over it.

5. Favorite Downton moment:
Lord Grantham and Carson's faces over the prospect of dining with a singer. YES. What would they talk about, after all..

Your turn?
love,
pen

Dear Ether,

I wonder if it's not so much where communication is or isn't. The question is where we are. Where are, and how do we find, each other? And if that's important- to find each other and to keep looking for ways to find each other- and to communicate the story of our lives. But that was never agreed upon in the larger sense, but for me or us to keep writing was. Somewhere in there, what became significant for me was the narrative of us. And the only important thing was-- was that I was talking to you. And being ok as the threads become sparse in the weaving, and realizing they're still beautiful, but nervous of the delicate weft with not much for borders. I think that's really the thing. Because the unspoken really does matter as it builds and as time passes. The unsaid things. The things we chose to share-


Speaking of- this just happened- Ivy known by a different name who has a daughter who must be 8 1/2 by now whom I last heard from May 2012 before not hearing from her at all 6 months or more before that. Emailed me just now and said, I have so much to tell you!


Um.


Yes.


But then didn't tell me anything except that she has her daughter back. And I wonder who else she is seeking out and telling her story to. And how I am someone she's telling things to- the bad things all implied, observed, but the one good thing noted, and witnessed. Over all these years. And there is something to that. She chooses to tell me and that she thinks (and does) it matters to me that she's alive and still fighting, and would not have guessed this is the turn it would take... or has taken, is taking. But it is a OneWayStreet or I don't know what- what I am to her. And why do I matter as this constant she'll be there, she'll answer. I wonder if I always will. It's perhaps a little the way an oaktree can hardly relate to a songbird. But it cannot help but hear the song or be a resting place if just for a minute - It may be the same with us. As a dragon to a horse. But,


The said things, or I wanted to say- it's like that song "I'm waiting for my real life to begin." Scrubs. Right. Sigh. And how it's good that you're not wanting to do that. You're going to live in the present and not wait for perfect. It's like my floors. But about your healing I want you to remember, prayer is free. The cost of connecting to God's love immeasurable. And perhaps that might be something. Even if it's not with me.


Like Serendipity. Or Epiphany. Or Providence.


Calling out across the miles.


To remind you of your infinite and eternal value.
 

A,

In an upswing of energy, having thought most of the day of passing out in my chair and even still but now it doesn't count because it's actually bedtime. But I packed the 3 boxes of decorations I have, and cleaned the house of tree. If I want a bigger tree I'm going to have to add a 4th box and get more ornaments- because after the mom divide I have nary the supply I once did and my ornaments barely covered the 4ft thing I had. Theyre not in the attic yet but they're so close...I even had the energy to wipe down a few cabinets- while having a conversation with Kerry no less. Unrelated to that, but related to the rampant cleaning, I'm throwing Amy a tea on Sunday because it was her birthday and every day in my malaise I've picked something to do so the house is presentable- especially to new people. So that's helped me dole out the otherwise insurmountable projects- like laundry and sweeping and repotting a few things, which winded me on Thursday but am feeling better today though the submental node is still a small button presenting itself. We were <.> close to having it in Malibu. I don't know WHAT happened. As it is I got this amazing blue fabric from Marge but has this mothball stench I can't get rid of after maybe 3 or 4 washes...


But as I tried to move a few pots and gaze at the disarray the backyard is to me, I almost lost it again as I gazed at my crumbling patio. The braces separating. The supports decaying, the top bowing in. Ugh. And then you know- it's just not done and even though there is always something I have to have it look settled in order to be settled no matter how much needs to be done. It must be like the shoe situation you mentioned. Which I have no words for. Part of me though thinks- change, good. But then... it's all pretty impossible. But then I thought that about the doors but then again it took 16 years.


As a sidenote I bought, on managers special, this cheddar jalapeño bread- so good. I just had some toasted with butter. Man. That makes it all better. And all Amy cheekily wanted was Coke and Doritos... so I did buy that but I know that wouldn't go over well with any of the other ladies, or myself honestly. But I am going to do it up in a bow for her.


Anyway I should go to bed- I will say though I think the best... ok I don't know how there could even be just one... of the Hallmark Movies... so nevermind.


I finally also got twist to sleep on my lap- though if I move she'll panic and bolt right off- she is distressed as her victory for the chair was hard won against marley and she doesn't know what to do when I'm in it- she choses the rug on the floor in the laundry room over sharing the couch... poor thing.


k-

Confessions,

One of the interesting things about canceling cable besides the typical hard sell that almost gets you- the you can suspend it for 9 months, you can have two months to decide if you do cancel it and undo it, and here's a mailer about all the savings you could have if you came back, and here's a follow up call from an account manager talking it through just in case you weren't sure, or somehow misheard how great a deal they were going to offer you, or if you were really upset and how could he make it better...


HOLY CRAP they are the devil. I mean $70! a month of course down to 24.99 for 2 years... And yes there are lower packages but for what purpose. They really do have guys by a vice however- with the how will I live without sports- oh I don't know- go to a bar! or the news- I don't know - go online! Yes spend money on time wasting. By all means. Who knew I would turn against it. Someone suggested I even cancel Netflix. I'm not quite there yet... but close.


However, in between my tv working with Netflix and no internet downstairs, I turned the tv on out of habit and like a true Christmas miracle there were just a few channels remaining... enough to get me through to the New Year. And the only channel showing much of anything was the Hallmark Channel. I have never seen so many- as I prefer lifetime movies- but there was the Christmas Dance, Christmas Song, Hats off to Christmas, Help for the Holidays, Christmas Spirit, and a Princess for Christmas... I watched all of them. I can't say quite beginning to end but close- but what I learned was that with a little can-do attitude, compromise, and moral certainty I will find the love of my life, my dreams will come true, and I'll live happily ever after... oh and miracles do come true. They really do.


Watching all of that is probably why I got sick again right around the 1st anyway. My submental node swollen. Still actually there. I looked back to my last letter and it seems I was sick before that. The slip was somewhere right before.


But anyway I have more to say about everything but lets leave that till tomorrow. Including pondering which movie I most related to, which one was my favorite... you know the important stuff.

to tula

- and her missed presence, her web-spun perfection. The made-up but delightful word "carcai." To lost things and spring, may they one day be found again.

Is blogging, then, where the details live? I wonder. And it's a strong argument for returning full-fledged (me, you, us, everyone, the whole world even), though in the socially-networked, smartphoned-out world we've built up, we've managed to create a series of daylong energy zappers, or diverters, as the case may be. And so maybe it's quality, not quantity we should strive for, hence smaller lists of the close friends or whatever we choose to label them. But I find myself creeping back to the bigger list, the wider circle, for whatever reason. And then quickly becoming aggravated by the clutter, or bored with the excess of details I never wanted or asked for within this wider circle, and left wanting more and/or wondering when and if to give more to and from the smaller circle.

Blogging is better, I think it can be solidly concluded. But then Facebook is where everyone now lives. Ooo - sidenote - is personal blogging now effectively counter-cultural? Almost. Oh, how quickly this world, the vocabulary and the constructs, evolves!

It does present a conundrum of creative energy and social energy and how and where and when to spend it. Or is it not a conundrum and it's really a simple thing.

I do hate, as I mentioned to a friend (camping buddy) on our recent adventure, how everything is scattered across so many different platforms. Pictures, words, thoughts, memories, explanations. Tula would not approve of this way-tangled web. Our online lives' content is sprinkled and scattered and inconsistent and I wish there were a way to scrape it all together and keep it in one spot, at very minimum. At best, shape into something coherent, cohesive and tangible.

We spent New Year's in the woods, the sky super-clear and way more expressive even than what I see here, from our own front yard. This cabin camping trip was a good 'un and I think it will be replicated in the future. Good company, good food, good locale and good scotchy scotch scotch. One excruciating detail is the sole of my shoe, which I rested on the metal fire ring and effectively melted, shredded. I felt it happening but ignored it until we came home. And m, I can't even. Those shoes. My favorite, favorite shoes (Docs), which I wore everysingleday in the colder months. I buried them in the closet and won't even reexamine or document the damage in picture form. Literally it makes me shudder just thinking about their being wrecked.

The shoe repair place here is closed for whatever reason, and there's this online place that I called today for resoling estimate: $79. Plus $12 shipping. That's nearly the cost of a new pair! Which I could, but can't. I really can't justify that. So I've been looking around on ebay but then I accidentally bid on the wrong size and had to ask for bid retraction and consequently cut myself off from ebay for the rest of the night.

There's a few days left of break for myself and the children. Somehow every night I dream of work, either mundane events with the children - maybe my subconscious is worried about a few because FB tells me they've been sick? or sometimes it's weird events that make little sense. Last night on the other hand, a preschool dream evolved into one where J.Lo insisted that, given perfect sky conditions, he could and would fly me in a plane to closely observe the moon.

I'm resolving - no, readying - to conquer or at least surpass the winter's doldrums. I do love that about a school year, the predictable, traditional, month-by-month way it unfolds. And in teaching, how you become responsible for that unfolding, creating and carrying each month's meaning. It's kind of a beautiful anchor. January for my group is all about hibernating. Bear-hunting and such. (EEJ, your birthday party of yore is inspiring an entire classroom setup!)

There is always something to look forward to. Even in this natural time of loss-and-sorrow. (Man, I hate that Param died, right then.) This coming-down from the excitement and glory of Christmas.

There are children to teach, a K.Lo party to plan, walls to paint! And countless other good things.

My resolutions, if they exist, are as such: to create more. What, it does not matter - words, foods, crafts. Now that AA must have received her ninja(?), I can freely blog about how this Christmas season, my absolute favorite thing in the day-by-day madness was hand-making these felty bookmarks and ornaments. With stitching and all. The end results were quirky, personalized and from the penelope-heart. I feel like next year I could start even sooner, but this brings me to my second resolution which is -

to reconnect with serendipity. It's something I feel like the highly sophisticated and awesomely accessible intrawebs has somewhat destroyed, but no - it has simply evolved. Serendipity through FB allowed us in a single random thread to reconnect with old friends and set up that great camping trip. Serendipity through Pinterest landed me on those felty creations, however late in the season. Serendipity still exists, and I want to embrace it.

Also, not a resolution but a conclusion for 2013. Something I almost posted on the FBs and then retracted five thousand times in my mind, but will place here as A Detail: There is no "getting better." I'm done waiting for that, after nearly a year of having suspected LD, journeying to figure out WTF it was and attempting to treat it and then still having symptoms, everysingleday. Every single day, I will probably feel something wrong with me, the weak arm or the achy joints or the not remembering shit moment to moment. Mixing up word context and being only vaguely aware of it after the sentence has been spoken. And other weird or disconcerting randoms. But I can't let the excuse of it overwhelm me into lump-dom, into putting xyz off indefinitely. There is rest and self-caring, yes. But also continuing to live a life, and attempting to make it a good life.

I suppose this a stopping point for now. TBB (to be blogged) is a list of my random pet peeves, to which I couldn't manage to naturally segue here, including the recent trendy word and related phrase, "gut" and "gut health." And I look forward to the Hallmark Channel post.

love to you across the miles,
pen

Dear Ether,

I had a pet spider. When people saw it for the last couple months I would say, that’s my pet orange spider, Escher. Or Geronimo. I couldn’t ever decide. It was small and orange and he lived in the living room lamp.  I fed him a couple ants and watched him spin like a mad wizard blue flashing thread. At one point his web got messy and he’d remade the entire thing over night. It sparkled in symmetry, undulated slightly with my breath as I bent in to examine it. And then as time went he let it go and it got quite dirty with fuzz and cat hair – leaving carcai, dotted along its landscape,  everywhere, and then one day I saw him dangling a bit out of orbit and then he was gone. And he never came back. And as much as the lamp needs a good vacuuming and the web just reminds me that Tula the small orange spider isn’t there… there is a tunnel spider in the crook of 2 panes in the backdoor… but I cannot say it is quite the same.

I turn from that loss scratching my head and gazing at it occasionally, as if over an hour or two of Blades of Glory- a triumph for figure skating, Tula will reappear and everything will go on as it was. As it is, A Christmas Carol is playing and the web is desolate just like doorways of my house of a certain prescient cat or my tearing up over the sight of tomatoes.  Advent is all about waiting, and loss and sorrow, and more waiting upon deliverance, and expectancy, I could say, but I do not know if mine must be so entirely literal, or Christmas Carole still horrifically timeless. But there it is.

What else besides. Cancelling cable. Learning how to use a kilsaw. Cleaning out Marge’s garage...

This post was interrupted by ill-internet connections....  and of course the Hallmark Channel- deserves a post all its own- what I've learned as it was the only thing for days to watch- compromise, good cheer, perseverance- you always find love, come out ahead... together.

And now The new year is upon us. I was reminded to say we cannot know people through status updates. Especially infrequent ones – dispositions, moods, new haircuts, bit swaths of life- but not the details. Param died- I didn’t post. I didn’t feel I could compound FB with more suffering and loss within my orbit as it was. Poor Kevin. Poor Rachel his wife. That horror unfolding all through FB but via a blog was where the in betweens were all kept. And who is marge? And why am I cancelling cable? And why on earth am I telling trader joe’s people that I learned how to use a kilsaw? And that I felt very clever to use my fake eyeglasses and my kneepads from rollerblading and protective devices. Woeful I didn't get a photo. The great trench work of 2013 completed! Did you know we're banning plastic bags forever and charging people for paper ones in LA? And though tequila makes everything merry and bright photos still lie when I would call the gatherings soulless, even if mother and I are not. Though,

My rosebush Lagerfeld came back to life in very Christmastide like fashion. That’s something too. A sort of Christmas miracle. There’s still time for those- till the 6^th. I was very close to ripping it out of the ground as months have past and it seemed to just be dying or already dead- the greenish limbs a mocking illusion. But no just a couple days ago and poof- little bits of green hope all over it. And a surprise package from one AMRF with delicious lotions and a felty Jesus- spoke also of something distant and lost, and Spring. And just today my dad spent 5 hours trying to fix my internet, poor man. An oft not seen tenacity on my behalf- or technology. And my mom, with me and father, as an anchor of moral support... weeding and patching holes in the ceiling. Another great good gift. Oh and coffee. Taking her to all the lovely places.

I had more to say about subtext too and how my parents trained me for it, modeling silence and the unspoken- and here I thought it was my education- and feeling like we should quit the blog. Of a strain. Of the unsustainable. Unrelated to subtext, and would say it all except I'm watching Great Expectations. It is perhaps because I am tired.

Goodnight.

m.