OK, here's the deal...

I usually leave the political outrage to S.O. (see http://www.matthewfeath.blogspot.com/) but I just read an article about Hillary Clinton in Newsweek and they ask a couple of really stupid rhetorical questions (rhetorical because I can't really believe they don't know the answers, they just don't want to be the ones to say in print).

They wonder why, after 30 years in public life, people still seem to dislike Hillary Clinton. Duh, I think they answered their own question when they say the Clintons made a 'miscalculation' in in assuming that "America was ready for a new kind of empowered, ambitious political spouse..." (June 18, 2007 issue), except that they clearly misprinted (accidentally on purpose so as to remain PC) when they put in 'spouse' instead of 'wife'.

To steal some early Clinton rhetoric, "It's the gender stupid". Come on, if it walks like a duck... Can we just say it out loud. We, America, are not ready for a female president. We are just not. There are thousands of board rooms and conference rooms where women are leading the meeting as we speak that can attest to this fact. As long as they (the women leaders) are being nice and encouraging all the men in the room get that nice gushy feeling inside (and some might even be feeling so gushy they are also thinking, "I could do her") but the minute she-leader starts to exude some power, some influence, some dissatisfaction all the men and probably many of the women in the room are reduced to 4 year olds and their jockey shorts suddenly feel three sizes too small. Men hate this. Ladies, try it with your own husbands and see if you get laid later. It doesn't work.

We've so disconnected men from their feelings and so indoctrinated women to the religion of self loathing that we can't really get outside the 'traditional roles', particularly on a large scale, i.e. an election. Currently we, as a society, pretty much have women where we want them; Paris Hilton in jail (how many porn fantasies in how many guys' minds across the country is that illiciting! Can we say, sexy, dumb, rich and now totally controlled by men in uniforms?), women at work and still doing the bulk of the housework and childcare (yippee for men, Monday Night Football lives!), and a self-loathing so strong and entrenched that there is not really much hope of it ever going away (exhibit Vogue).

It's not that we don't think a woman can't do the job, I mean come on, seriously. And conservatives know that we are so precariously emotionally positioned as a society when it comes to women in power (can we remember Martha Stewart, speedy trial, did jail time; Enron broke 2001, Ken Lay wasn't found guilty until 2006) we can easily be tipped even on suspicions of misconduct or harpy-ism. (Remember the old jokes, "What happens to Russia if the (female) president is on her period?" hahahahahahahahaha) We just really don't want to get in trouble with mom.

Why do the conservatives still hate the Clintons. Uh, easy, because any conservative with half a brain (and I'm not saying that there are many) knows that 'liberal politics' such as those applied to the country during the Clinton administration actually work on a lot of levels for many kinds of Americans. Conservatism works only for the most wealthy, i.e. campaign contributors. If you gave a conservative some truth serum and started questioning them they'd tell you that they are actually pretty liberally minded and did pretty well in the 90s. We all are more liberal than we want to admit because you can't admit to being a caring human being and then vote for the dude you really want to have a beer with.

But my biggest beef with our inability to face the fact that we are not ready for a female president (I'm not even going to get into Barak Obama, seriously if we aren't yet comfortable with women in power...) is that means there is a chance Hillary will be on the Democratic ticket for '08. And you know what that means! Can we all sing "Hail to the Chief" for President Fred Thompson, and Vice President Ruddy Guliani? And you thought Ronald Regan and George Jr. were bad?

Tagged

OK, so if your name is at the end then you have been tagged and you have to do as I will do following. Seven random 'facts' about yourself and then you must tag seven people.

1. I have been married 3 times, never thought I would be married before I was 30 as a kid but actually was married 3 times by then... go figure (I also said I would never live in the desert so maybe I should be saying I'll never be successful and have tons of money too!)

2. I have bunions - they are not what you think, they are misdirected bone growth, not like corns and can't be treated any way but to cut the bone and reset it in place - my bunions hurt a lot less when I heard that! Seems a little unfair since I was never much of a highheel wearer.

3. I've never seen the Grand Canyon or most of the United States but have seen almost all of California.

4. Despite years of singing lessons I still can't sing a whole song without losing a note. Although my only singing audience - my kids - do not seem to mind.

5. I grew an inch and a half between the ages of 19 and 26. Although my military ID says I am an inch taller than I actually am.

6. This is hard... um... I went to 'junior college' before going to 'real' college and that is where I met some of the best friends I ever had (i.e. Demondoll, Tony) and had some of the best academic experiences I ever had (Religion as mythology class, ISLS course).

7. Ah... mmmm... having trouble thinking of one more... hmmm... well, I've never been arrested though that is surprising considering I have nearly been about 3 times - and not for innocuous civil disobedience either, nope, I was involved in some shenanigans in my youth that are best left for my autobiography!

OK, you are tagged:

Matt
Demondoll
Cynthia
Kate
Arianna
Whitney
Mommasita

Oh Merciful Flu

Two weeks ago on a Wednesday S.O.v.1 complained that his tummy hurt. He said it was because he ate too much lunch at school, but knowing him I thought that sounded fishy. Of course, being the skeptic and probably a little bit merciless mother I suspected candy overdose. But nope, 'round about bedtime he was looking pretty miserable. It is that particular sound in their voice when they yell "Mama" that you just know means serious ick. So he booted and then quickly fell asleep. He was up the next morning and pretty OK, except for a small appetite. One down.

Then the following Monday night my stomach felt a little wonkey. But I just chalked it up to too much comfort food (Rice-a-Roni counts, doesn't it?) which I am not used to eating. Then the sweats. Consequently I spent the night laying on the bathroom floor with a problem too gross to mention but which you can probably guess at. Finally at about 3:30 in the morning I booted. For hours before that I felt sure I would but having been historically a 'non-thrower-upper' my body has become accustomed to resisting. It goes back to all the binge drinking in college and the years immediately after (well and a few years immediately before too, to be honest), which of course we didn't call 'binge drinking', that sounds oh so judgemental. We just called it fun. But I always thought the puking afterwards was unseemly and lacking in a certain dignity so I forced myself to endure the room spining and racous hangovers for years. Between moving to the desert (which has the most gawd-awful flu bugs that no person, practiced or not, can withstand and keep it down) and before that living in the Bay Area - a span of about 8 or 9 years I had not thrown up. That last time was a particularly bad night of homemade pizza - which, don't get my wrong, was great, it wasn't the pizza's fault - the red wine, the real culprit I suspect, and a few starter gin martinis. I decided that I'd never do THAT again! (Not the drinking part silly, the barfing part)

But picture me at the porceline, you know whatever, last Monday begging my body to stop resisting and get it over with... for about 5 hours... then finally. Whew. Two down. I spent the next day in bed, feeling mostly fine but making up for the lost sleep.

Then that Thursday S.O.v.2 was not eating her rice. I should have immediately suspected something because she is, afterall, the Rice Baby. But I was silly, I didn't catch on until literally seconds before, even with the large hint of icky diaper. She was in bed and I was just about to move her to own bed (she usually falls asleep in big bed and then we move her to own bed) when she said "Mama I cold" and fussed. Then urp. Ick. Three down.

That was last week and we all seemed fine and recovered which I was thankful for as I had two shows to do on the weekend. But last night S.O. finally caught up. He now is fine but spending the day in bed making up for the lost sleep he spent instead... well you get the picture. Whew. Four down.

Let's hope for no relapse and be thankful it was a merciful 24 hour flu!

Ups and Downs

Let me just start with the down, ya know, just get it out of the way.

The day after a show is always a low energy, crabby day for me. Exhibit A: After spending the last month being calm and consciously letting little things go I snap at S.O. for some driving (in my irritable opinion) snafu. The little S.O.s were irritating me with their non-listening, non-compliance behavior too. On normal days I just deal with it and move on, but on crabby days it sticks with me till quiet time (i.e. nap). I was really tired too. I guess I didn't really realize how much energy I expend doing the show.

I was slightly disappointed that more of my friends did not come out to support the show. But I imagine they will come next month... or eventually.

Ups

I did two shows over the weekend of "4 at 40". Friday night the house was bought by a friend and colleague for a private party. They were a splendid audience, memorable. They were ready to laugh and be moved and it was really fun to perform for them. I met some wonderful people after - not all of whose names I can recall unfortunately! And got some wonderful comments. I cannot recall how many times I heard the word 'amazing'. It was the kind of performance that keeps you out at the cast party till way too late on an adrenaline high. Luckily I am the cast and so got home at a decent hour. S.O. was kind enough to retrieve the kids from the sitter so I could stay and schmooze for a bit at the reception after the show.

The Saturday audience were smaller and more subdued. You must work harder when they are a small audience, harder to get them absorbed and on board so they won't feel self-conscious and can just experience the play. I learned an interesting and valuable lesson about contrast in performance - and that you need to bring the audience with you but you have to be flexible enough to give them what they need, to respond to their energy and not just run away from them with the show.

On our 10 year anniversary last week S.O. and I got a call from the housing program we'd signed up for to purchase an affordable house in our town. We were set for a house in the 3rd Phase - hadn't been built yet, hadn't even laid the foundation yet, but we had our lot. So the call was a shock. "Do you want a house now?" she said. So, sometime soon we should know when the close of escrow is and we will be home owners. Yeah! Eeek! Wow! Yikes! What are we thinking! This is so great! and all those other emotions that go along with it... panic and joy living side by side.

I knock around work for one more week like a single marble in the trunk of your car. All that space and just a tiny object to fill it. All this time and just a few undoubtably crap scripts to read. Well, can't be busy always, especially not out here, unless it is busy of one's own making. But I should luxuriate in it nonetheless.

Added Performances of "4 at 40: Mothers' Letters to Their Daughters"

Blog-'o-land,

We've added dates for my show. Yippee!

PRESS RELEASE

"Daniela Ryan... she's definitely an actor that we're going to hear more from. She displays a great range of passionate emotion in both her acting and her writing"
- Jack Lyons of “The Desert Scene”, K-News Radio 1140AM

What: Live Theatre at the Gallery
"4 at 40: Mothers’ Letters to Their Daughters”

When: Friday, May 18, 2007 – SOLD OUT
Saturday, May 19, 2007 – 4:00 pm

Friday, June 22, 2007 – 7:30 pm
Saturday, June 23, 2007 – 7:30 pm
Tickets available at the door - $12.00

Further dates to be announced.

Where: Dezart One Gallery
2688 Cherokee Way
Palm Springs, CA 92264
(760) 328-1440


The story spans five generations of women in one California family, from the first settler to a modern day mother. Each mother desperately reaches out to her daughter through a family tradition. On the mother’s 40th birthday, she writes a letter to her daughter in an attempt to bridge the generation gap between them, passing on valued lessons learned from her journey in life. The family’s history is, in essence, California’s own, from stoic determination to take the land, to prosperity, to the comforts and uncertainties of modern day life. Each mother learns something about herself as she shares her story with her daughter. For those who have a mother and/or a sister or daughter, you will relate to the characters as they capture the intimate portrait of relationships between women and their daughters and the generational and historical influence on those bonds.

Daniela Ryan is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley with a degree in Theatre Arts. In addition, she has a Masters degree in Film and Television from San Diego State University. Ms. Ryan has worked in the film industry for the past 10 years. She began acting at the age of 7, performing in local and community theatre throughout California. In Los Angeles, she co-wrote and performed in Demeter Theatre’s acclaimed play “Speaking of Evil”, the story of an ambivalent Nazi, Kurt Gerstein. She is a writer and associate producer of film, working with a local independent film production company. A fourth generation Californian, Ms. Ryan resides in the desert with her husband and two children.

But It's A Good Tired

I have been thinking about what I would say about my show... I just don't have super extreme emotions about it... there were less people in the audience than there were seats. But my attitude is I do this performance for these people and don't worry about the ones who didn't show up. Those that came had the experience they were looking for I hope. That is, afterall, the goal.

My family made the trip which was such an honor. It is always great to have people that love you in the audience. I pretty much guaranteed that anyway though having S.O. be my show tech. But it was great that my Dad and his S.O. made the trip and that my Mom and my Sis and her S.O. made the trip as well. I felt supported and valued, which is what being a star is, really. So for a few days I was a star and by Sunday I was back to cleaning the toilet and clipping coupons. I suppose what goes wrong with 'stars' is that if you get too much of it it no longer feels good. But shockingly enough if you get to be a star for a bit then the cleaning the toilet part doesn't feel so bad. Everyone should get to be a star a couple times a month at least!

But mostly what I felt was home. I was nervous, excited, sure; worried I'd forget lines (there are 25 pages of dialogue in my show), I did; worried people wouldn't get it or wouldn't care - they did and they did. Many audience members stayed after to talk to me and that is always an honor. I know that many were moved and I was glad of that. It was almost like that feeling you get when you get to the end of your busy day and there is just enough time to slip into the hot tub for a few minutes - except instead of quieting my body, performing quiets my soul.

My Mom said when she left, "Thank you for performing again. Everyone feels better when you are performing because it really comes naturally to you, you were just born to do it" I think that perty much sums it up.

IT HAS GOT TO STOP NOW!

In just 24 hours I can go from feeling sublime to reewee reewee (as S.O.v.2 says) angee... we actually more like irritated.

OK, this whole password thing has just got to stop. Can we please? I mean, come on! Seriously! And don't write them down, what are you insane? How much time do I want to stay on hold with tech support!

You can no longer do anything 'online' oh so simple without setting up a descreet username and password! I've had it! Enough I say. Can we come up with a better solution please... you can't order a book anymore, register for an event that you will never ever in the history of you ever ever attend again without setting up a ^#(&$%)*#(&#@*&$@%%%% user bloody name and password!

OK smarty pants, I just use my mother's maiden name plus my cat's birthday for ALL mine, person! If you hadn't noticed that is not possible because sometimes they let you choose your own username - if it's not taken already so you have to be Yella167 or some such ridiculousness - and some want your email (then you have to remember which email you did it under, (for those of us that have work emails, family emails, etc.) then your password has to include at least one digit and be at least characters long and sometimes case sensitive and sometimes they won't let you use an ampersand and sometimes they only want 4 digits only, no letters and sometimes at least one letter HAS to be capitalized or they will eat your first born.

UUUUUUUUUUUUUGH! Had it!

The Orchid

My son was sad yesterday. He is 4, nearly 5 and he misses dearly his babysitter of 3 years who moved to the other side of the country last year about this time. We were playing his USA puzzle and when we came to South Carolina he started thinking about Abida. But this is nothing new. Sometimes he thinks of her out of the blue, without warning and a little melancholy comes to his face.

We often dismiss these subtle emotions in children I think. Because they are not entirely comfortable. They are not entirely solveable, which I think can cause parents to try and dismiss them. There is no real explanation for them either. It is just in the air or something brings to mind something that makes you sad or worried or fearful. Same happens with happiness and laughter - as in dreams, or rather watching a dreaming child as I did S.O.v.2 last night. She suddenly from peaceful countenance laughed. Then it was gone.

We forget that emotions themselves are not bad or grand or useful or good or anything at all except just a color of life to be experienced. Maybe because of their remembering their beloved babysitter (I miss her too, it's hard to describe the fondness you have for the person who lovingly cares for your children) or maybe mine came first but I was missing my grandparents and my uncle - who all passed away in the last 3 years (Abida is not gone, just moved to SC, to be clear!) - I was sad. It came in waves, like grief does....

But isn't it funny how we allow these little flits of emotions to touch us when 'something has happened', like grieving a loss or breaking up with a boyfriend, but when 'nothing is wrong' somehow we think we are supposed to be happy, up, smiley without fail? But that is often not the case, the world is a gloomy place today - because of the news, because of the weather, because of the war. But surely there is great joy blended in with all that sorrow. In the fleeting laugh of S.O.v.2 in her sleep last night my heart lept with glee, joy to be her mother. And in the next moment I shed a tear and a laugh myself as I remember how in my whole life my grandmother never pronounced my name correctly. I was her Da-nella and there was no changing that.

Life and emotions are often categorized as shades of gray. But it's not gray - it's colors, all blended together often in the same moment, like an impossibly colored orchid that is both brown and red and yellow at the same time in almost the same spot. Perhaps that is why my grandmother and uncle loved orchids so much, even as they could not express in words the impossible combinations of emotions of life, they could appreciate it in an orchid.

I have nothing to say

It's true. I don't. Odd really. I have just been tired... allergy-y, cold-y and then on Easter I burnt the hell out of my arm and leg with hot oil. Not recommended. Peeling now, reeeeeally not recommended. Probably should have gone to the Urgent Care but hey, there was a pork roast to finish.

I'm sitting here at work, at 10:45 pm waiting to call Dubai. My show's first performances are in two weeks and I am not really nervous but I am feeling a little like walking into the void. Strangly enough that is one of the themes of my play. I can see the future but I just don't know how it will all work.

Leave that up to the universe I guess they say in "The Secret". I have always had trouble letting go of dreams to the point where I can't sort out whether it is a real dream anymore or just a habit. Working on it...

Crushes and Crushing Headache

The strangest thing... I have started having crushes again! How weird is that... Is this some odd hormonal phenomenon, or perhaps some psychological response to nearing *gulp* perimenopause (I'm so thankful they created this starter menopause, get you used to the idea before you actually take off, sort of like a menopause tricycle). I haven't had a crush since I was in elementary school. I didn't 'do' crushes (of celebrity/notable/famous people) when I was in high school (only the more dangerous i.e. obtainable local boys - which, in retrospect I realize, can get you into a lot more trouble) because I was, yes, just that cool. I thought they were REEEDIC-U-LOUS! How pathetic, I thought to myself, spending so much emotion on someone you'll never have!

But now my perspective is slightly less obnoxious and stuck up. Now I just figure, oh what the hell, who'm I hurtin'? (Except maybe the feelings of S.O. just slightely, but he knows I only have eyes for him so... get over it babe - he reads the blog)

Celebrity Crush: Leonardo DiCaprio - now who would have thought? I would never stoop to a crush that everyone else had! How proletariat! (My crushes in elementary were the Monkees - yes, several years AFTER their series, not even contemporary, Sandy - Lemur, will remember that - sorry, inside joke) But he's gettin' some gravitas on him. Blood Diamond anyone?

Brain Crush: Craig Ferguson - now I know this sounds odd but I just read his first novel... I'd heard an interview with him on The Treatment (thank you podcasts) and was struck by how similar we thought about the world. I'd never heard anyone articulate so well how they think, and I just kept saying to myself, I think just like that! Although, if we ever had a conversation we might well bore each other to tears.

Bad Boy Crush: Denis Leary - I have always had this theory that liking the bad boy, for women, is never really about the bad boy - it is about how cool am I to be the one that he settles down with! But I like Denis Leary's bad boy image on his show Rescue Me because it is bad and also three dimensional - he plays the bad boy we all (those of us who have dabbled in the bad boy dating scheme) knew was there deep down inside but that they just couldn't articulate (and ok marrying, yes, marrying scheme too...).

Crushing Headache: Yesterday, I started in on a, what promises to be a 24 hour plus, migraine round about 2pm. I've seen The Secret - yes I have and I'll admit it! - (or as we say around our house in faux Australian accent Tha Sak-rut) and have been doing my affirmations and trying to look on the bright side and all that. And yes, naysayers, I do feel better about myself and my life and really, if nothing else like, say incredible prosperity, riches beyond my wildest dreams, etc. comes of it, isn't that really enough? Anyway, those negative voices just begin to get, as S.O.v.2 says when S.O.v.1 pisses her off "reeewee reewee an-gee!", and then they fight with the positive thinking you've been doing and oh the battle!

I blame that in-fighting for the migraine. But then when I looked in the mirror this morning and realized my skin is clearing up (see post several weeks back - means I've ovulating probably) I realized it was probably a migraine brought on by hormones. Or maybe my affirmation "I'm so grateful to have beautiful skin" is taking affect... who knows... it's all bigger than myself and I release control over it, over it all! I'm even sitting here slack jawed... well, that may just be because my head hurts less when I do that... My mother did tell me the other weekend that I am not letting go enough. And she is probably right. I do have a tendency to over think - and face it folks if you're thinking about it, you're trying to control it! This is why I have stopped trying to fix the movie Flags of Our Fathers - a passtime S.O. and I enjoy after seeing a bad or film that didn't quite work. Makes for interesting conversation... but right now... my head hurts...

PRESS RELEASE

What: “Live Theatre at the Gallery”
"4 at 40: Mothers’ Letters to Their Daughters”

When: April 26, 2007 - 7:30 pm Press Preview
April 27, 2007 - 7:30 pm - $12.00 Tickets at the door

Where: Dezart One Gallery
2688 Cherokee Way Palm Springs, CA 92264 (760) 328-1440

Dezart One Gallery proudly debuts "Live Theatre at the Gallery", with an original play written and performed by Daniela Ryan, “4 at 40: Mothers’ Letters to Their Daughters”. The story spans five generations of women in one California family, from the first settler, to a modern day mother. Each mother desperately reaches out to her daughter through a family tradition. On the mother’s 40th birthday, she writes a letter to her daughter in an attempt to bridge the generation gap between them, passing on valued lessons learned from her journey in life. The family’s history is, in essence, California’s own, from stoic determination to take the land, to prosperity, to the comforts and uncertainties of modern day life. Each mother learns something about herself as she shares her story with her daughter. For those who have a mother and/or a sister or daughter, you will relate to the characters as they capture the intimate portrait of relationships between women and their daughters and the generational and historical influence on those bonds.

Daniela Ryan is a graduate of U.C. Berkeley with a degree in Theatre Arts. In addition, she has a Masters degree in Film and Television from San Diego State University. Ms. Ryan has worked in the film industry for the past 10 years. She began acting at the age of 7, performing in local and community theatre throughout California. In Los Angeles, she co-wrote and performed in Demeter Theatre’s acclaimed play “Speaking of Evil”, the story of an ambivalent Nazi, Kurt Gerstein. She is a writer and associate producer of film, working with a local independent film production company. A fourth generation Californian, Ms. Ryan resides in the desert with her husband and two children.

Military Fatigue

I have had a persistant interest in the war in Iraq since 2003. I started working for a company called Basra Entertainment, yes named after the city in Iraq, in June of 2003, for an expat Iraqi. One of the first projects we took on was a documentary project about Iraqi women and their plight under Saddam Hussein and after (never realized because of the situation in Iraq). Being the Associate Producer of the company I dove into the research. What I learned was shocking - Saddam Hussein was as much of a monster as any dictator there has ever been. The case for deposing him, simply because of his cruelty towards his own people, was strong. I wondered why the Administration didn't pull out this argument along side the WMD bogus one. Perhaps they considered Americans more self interested than they actually are. Claim, that if we don't invade, there will be a mushroom cloud spouting from our soil imminently and this will convince them. But claim the moral authority to depose a despot and they think it won't fly.

Tell the American people after 9/11 that what they can meaningfully do to 'help' the country is to shop. Ask them to sacrifice, to contribute to the war effort - like the American public was asked to do during WWII - and the Administration thinks it won't fly. Oddly enough, I believe, that had they asked for some sort of sacrifice instead of asking for consummerism the war would be more popular now, no matter the outcome. I think we can safely surmise that Karl Rove knows politics but knows sadly little about human nature... makes one wonder if he actually is...

Last night we watched "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib". Painful to watch and embarassing to say the least. "Proud to be an American" just does not hum itself in one's head after watching that. I have watched a number of documentaries on Iraq to this point and more in my Netflix cue to come. Our current project is a screenplay following two pre-teen boys in their lives in Iraq from late 2003 to 2006. The writing is hard. It is not a pleasant experience, but something about it feels also important. It is a little message but one that if we can convey may make us all feel just a little bit like a contributor instead of simply an observer.

Which brings me to my title. In this war, I've no doubt like in any, it is difficult to even be an observer. There have even been some documentaries about conspiracy theories which I have stopped watching in the middle or refused to watch at all, much to S.O.'s disgust. (Think he thinks I am trying to hide my head in the sand) But as a mother I do have to draw my line in the sand at exactly the place whereby if I cross it I will go into despair. It is not my children's fault this war is happening and they should not have to pay the price of a destraught mother. We all have to put up the wall at the boundary just before where we can continue to function. I feel like I have a pretty wide boundary, but there was a long period of several months where neither myself nor the President of our company could really continue to talk about Iraq as we did regularly. This screenplay has forced me to return to immersion in the subject and I am feeling fatigued. It is that fatigue that the MPs in the "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib" speak of that once you get there you either break down or detach.

I don't blame anyone for not wanting to look at this war. Especially when we are stuck with an atrocious Administration who have usurped our Constitution in countless ways known and, certainly, unknown. It feels hopeless. The best we can do is hold our breath and wait for Nov. 2008 to roll around and then again for Jan. 2009. It is a long time to wait and we have to carry on. I have to continue to research, watch documentaries, write painful scenes of death and despair and hope that I can keep myself from slipping in so that I can continue to raise happy children.

Can any of us imagine ourselves in the place that families of wounded soldiers, Marines and sailors have found themselves in? Denial is a lifesaver for human beings. It most certainly has been for the families of military and the men and women during their service in Iraq and Afghanistan as well. But we must draw the line at institutional denial... and I think this is what we have seen for the past 6 years. Maybe now is the time for those who haven't yet, stand up and yell.

Why?

Why do I have to move to a Google account on blogger... why have I been tagged... oh, alright...

ABC's About Me- a Lesson in Survey Tagging
A=Available - Nope
B=Best friend - sister, mama, S.O.
C=Cake or Pie- Well, that all depends doesn't it, on mood, on the baker, on the season... one can't just make blanket statements like that! What if they never let you have the other because you expressed a preference for one?
D=Drink- coffee in the morning, white wine at night
E=Essential item you use everyday- eye glasses
F=Favorite color - violet
G=Google your name (first), my IMDb page
H=Hometown- Hayweird
I-Indulgences- chocolate, white wine
J=January or February - Feb. because then it really feels like the new year has started in earnest
K=Kids- two lovelies
L=Life- is not a platitude
M=Marriage date- May 10, 1997
N=Number of siblings- 1 sister
O=Opinion (state one)- Everyone is scared of something, we are not kind enough about that
P=Phobias or Fears- dying before my children no longer need me, snakes, saying what you want to happen out loud
Q=Quote- I can't think of any! How lame am I? No wait, my favorite, from "The Secret Garden" (movie) "All will come to pass"
R=Reason to smile- when S.O.v.2 says "Oh my goss"
S=Season- What's a season?
T=Tag 3 or 4 peeps- ? Sister, Kate, Kimbaya, Arianna, Jane...
U=Unknown fact about you- When I was 18 I committed a robbery
V=Vegetable you don't like- haven't met one yet
W=Worst habit- picking my face, not standing up for myself - which is probably at the heart of it the same thing
X=Xrays- teeth, have them all
Y=Youth (a memory)- Chasing my sister in anger down the hallway, she closing the door just as I haul out and punch her, putting my fist through the door and both of us immediately teaming up to figure out how to prevent my mom from finding out... she didn't till years later because we put a white sheet of paper over the door and painted it...
Z=Zodiac sign- Libra

Driven by Hormones

I am full of love today.

Which can only mean one thing (or maybe two: S.O.v.2 behaved very well this morning and that always starts the day out right!) - that tomorrow I will be an onery cuss. And being an onery cuss can only mean one thing - that I will be starting my period on the following day.

I realize how un-PC it is to admit that women have *gulp* hormones and that they *double gulp* influence how you feel and *yikes* behave, but I find it to be true. The older I get the more distinctly I can feel the daily hormonal shifts. Not all of them obviously. Or maybe it is having been pregnant that makes you more aware of your body. I dunno. But I do now notice patterns that I would have vehemently denied in younger incarnations of myself. Note above pattern.

Maybe it is my body saying "Hey you have only a few more years of this 'normal' hormone routine so you'd better appreciate it before the hot flashes come"... or maybe that was the pharmaceutical industry talking...

The one area where these patterns are most evident and irritating - literally, figuratively and any other kind of ly, is in my face. Just after the end of a cycle my face starts clearing up, softening up, gets nicer. Probably all those same hormones that made my skin so lovely when I was pregnant. I get a little glow, I'm a little sweet, a little cuddly. Then after ovulating and no fertilizing that angry egg sends a message to my face. "OK. Fine! You don't want to fertilize me. Look at this each morning for the next 2 1/2 weeks! Ha!" Unfertilized eggs are really mean.

And indeed my face becomes irritated. Itchy. Angry. Red. Breaking out. Throbbing mean pick at me zits.

And then it starts all over again... Sheesh!

Passing

My grandmother died on Thursday of last week. She was 91.

It doesn't seem to matter how old someone is when they go, it still hurts. I feel tremendously sad that I was unable to make my grandparents more proud of me and my accomplishments. There is so much that I wanted to impress them with. But in the end the things they were proud of are the things that define me more than any performance or award or publishing contract could have.

And my grandma did get to read some of my short stories and enjoyed them. She had been telling me since I was able to write what a good writer I am. I was glad that I was able to share with her something other than a personal letter, although those were probably the most enjoyable for her.

And I was glad that she was able to read a story I wrote just for her, an attempt to tell her how much she has meant to me and my growth as a person. That story follows if anyone is interested...


What I Learned From My Grandma


When I was a young girl, just starting junior college, and starting on the path to my adult life, though still living at home, my mother became sick. She contracted a rare form of leukemia. The kind children get. Most adults, when they get it, don’t survive. But she had total faith in her doctor and when he said to her, We are going to take you to the very brink of death and then bring you back, she said, OK.
Because I was not even 20 and my mother barely 20 years older than me it was a shock when she got sick. No one was prepared. She was too young to be so sick. My mother had chemotherapy treatments for almost a year. Few days of chemo, hospital stay, then several weeks of recovery only to do the whole thing all over again. And then remission. The whole thing lasted a year and a half before it was all deemed ‘over’. But it seemed like an eternity.
At the beginning of my mother’s illness my sister left to go to college at UC Berkeley, only 30 miles away from where we lived; and later my mother’s boyfriend left her. I was left to deal with daily living, paying bills, cooking, cleaning and seeing to all the little details that are requisite to a life. Whenever someone would come to visit it was like they were dazed. I remember my favorite uncle coming to visit while my mother was in the hospital and coming into my room late at night and just crying and crying. I was still at the point in youth when being alone with adults was uncomfortable and strange. Here I was in our house with my uncle whom I loved so much, and he was so bereft that all he wanted to do was hold someone, for me to give him a hug and yet I couldn’t do it.
It was an odd time for me. I couldn’t sleep for weeks on end and finally I went to some quack doctor in Castro Valley for a prescription for sleeping pills. It was the first and last time I ever tried them. I felt like a fuzzy cucumber in the morning, all stiff and cold and no focus. I broke up with a boyfriend whom I loved terribly because I was so distracted by my mother’s illness that intimacy was difficult. Relating to my friends seemed weird and inconsequential. Though one weekend, probably in desperation to do something that felt even slightly normal, I stole my mother’s boyfriend’s car with two friends and drove down to Hollywood over Easter break. Just for three days, pretending there were no such things as IVs or chemo or parents even felt wonderfully freeing. We saw Pierce Brosnan in the Thrifty’s on Easter Sunday buying his two young children Easter baskets. I always liked him after that because somehow it seemed so human and not star-like for him to have forgotten baskets until the morning of. We met some people who worked in a restaurant on Hollywood Blvd. and spent our last night there on the floor of the manager’s apartment up the street. He seemed nice enough but made me nervous. When we got home I found out why. He called me several times, saying how much he loved me and wanted to be with me and the fact that he was a good 20 years older than me made no difference to him. I was thankful I hadn’t given him my address.
And I regularly took the keys to my mother’s brown Porsche 944 and drove it around with some friend or other. The nurses had insisted we take away her keys when she checked in to the hospital. I got away with it actually. No one, except my sister, of course, realized that I had driven the thing and she was primarily jealous that she didn’t have the opportunity to drive it. I even went to my mother’s boat sometimes and just sat there on the bow or slept there overnight and then drove to the hospital in the morning. All these things added up to odd behavior and had someone been keeping a tally they would have worried about me. At the time these activities made me feel somewhat better.
It was just my way, I suppose, of dealing with the fact that my mother might be dead before I even turned 20. Strangely enough it was my mother who kept me on course. She insisted, in a drug addled stupor one of her first nights on chemotherapy, that I should continue school, continue plays and continue work. If I hadn’t gotten that message from her my odd behavior might have slipped into the realm of dangerous.
Finally, when my mother was declared to be in remission from the leukemia we all heaved a sigh of relief and everyone went back to life as normal. Except me. Probably it didn’t seem normal to my mother or my sister either. At the time, I was just finishing my junior college requirements and had just been accepted into UC Berkeley. My mother was now back home, but I still felt funny, at odds inside my skin. I couldn’t put it into words then and even now an exact description eludes me. I was, of course, as excited as any college student starting their first semester of university. I experienced all the hope and self confidence of any young student, yes, but underlying it all was stark panic and confusion. My mother had been gravely ill and now she was fine. I was just supposed to go on with life as if it had never happened. No one ever talked about it except to say things like, Oh good, and, Well, let’s hope she doesn’t relapse, and things like that. But nobody ever said anything about what affect it all had on me or anyone else for that matter. Maybe I am selfish to think that someone might have done so, and I certainly was too intimidated to reach out to anyone and say, Hey, I’m still struggling here, Can someone help me parse this out and figure out how I get on with life? So, I did what I suppose anyone does in those situations, I just moved awkwardly forward.
The first weeks of a new school year are a flurry. Classes to register for, student loans to apply for, books to buy and various other details to be sorted. And most importantly for me, auditions for the semester’s plays. Since we lived just a few cities away I decided that I would stay at home for at least the first semester. Thoughts of doing otherwise brought the panic I had felt during my mother’s illness back to the surface; and images of my mother lying dead on the bathroom floor, gathering flies, haunted my mind. When I told my mother I was planning on living at home for a while, I think she was grateful and relieved too. She had been lonely in the hospital and when she was home, in between treatments, it was just the two of us. When chemo made her lose all her hair, I had started to rub her head each night and we’d make up little chants for it to grow back curly and really blonde. Then when she started to lose muscle mass and be in pain all over I would massage her whole body. It made her sleep better, I think, and it made me feel better being able to do something that helped. When she was in the hospital, also, I brought her macrobiotic food, which I had just discovered, whenever I could. I would wake up early, cook her food for the day, drive to San Francisco to the hospital to be there before breakfast, leave all her food in the refrigerator with instructions for the nurses to give her that instead of the regular hospital food and then be to school for my morning classes or rehearsals or whatever. That made me feel better too.
Now that she was in remission yet not quite back to normal, my need to do something to make her feel better was no less. Sure, I wanted to go straight to the dorms like my sister had done. And I envied her that experience. But who else was going to stay with my mother if not I?
When I was cast in a good roll in a graduate student directed play that first semester I felt vindicated in a way. I felt this was a bigger pond than the one I had been feeding in. I had never had any problems getting cast in plays, managing to get a role in almost everything I tried out for but it was all high school and community theatre and small summer stock in my hometown. If I got a role at Berkeley I reasoned, that proved that I was a good actress. Back then my identity was almost 100% Actor and the thought of maybe someday having a professional career as such made me happier than anything ever had. The role, a middle-aged woman, with a child, held captive in Harold Pinter’s “One For The Road”, made me almost feel as if my future was assured. And at that point in my life I needed assurances.
At first it all seemed to go well. I would wake up early and take the BART to school, attend my classes, study and knock around campus until rehearsals and then take the last BART train home at night. I loved those first weeks, feeling probably for the first time, independent and almost adult. Reading and dozing near the bridge that led to the Theatre Department offices on the bank of Strawberry Creek was nearly sublime. My classes were stimulating and the coffee houses in Berkeley – before there was ever generic Starbucks – were always abuzz and endlessly fascinating with all kinds of people coming in and out. People watching alone I could waste three, four hours.
But after a few weeks of this schedule, and add to that working as a waitress on the weekends, I was beat. I also came very close to missing the last BART train out of the Berkeley station on several occasions. I would get out of rehearsals at around 10 or 10:30 p.m. and run my ass off, knapsack full of books and all, the twelve or so blocks from campus to the station, hurdle myself dangerously down the stairs and slip in through the closing doors, sweaty and exhausted. God help me if I needed to stop at the machine and get a ticket! If I missed the connecting train in Oakland, which did happen a couple of times, I would have to catch a bus the rest of the way home, making the normally one hour trip over two. This would put me home and in bed well after midnight and up again at 6am to do the whole thing all over again. Even at the age of 20 I couldn’t keep it up and something had to give.
In the summer before I started Berkeley I had performed in a musical on the campus of my junior college. “Over Here” it was called and I had a good role, lots of dancing and singing. My dancing partner hated me for some reason, maybe because I was fat or not pretty enough, or maybe because I had rebuffed his amorous advances a few times, but probably the former. Anyway, he thought he was too good. His bad behavior did endear me to others in the cast and I became fast friends with all the girls around my same age. Two of the girls, Amy and Eva, were also starting Berkeley in the Fall and we made plans to meet up. Walking across campus one day I ran into Eva. She had decided to give up theatre and go into the sciences so all her classes were on the other side of the campus so seeing her was a happy surprise. We laughed and bounced and screamed when we ran into each other, all the things that teen girls do. Over a latte – which, back then was quite cool and exotic – I found out that she was living in a house owned by her brother-in-law and was looking for roommates. This put a bug in my ear. We exchanged numbers. Later that night the last BART train was late getting into Berkeley station and caused me to miss my connecting train. As I sat on that bus, watching Oakland pass by, all I could think about were those banners you see on huge apartment buildings facing freeways and busy avenues, “If you lived here, you’d be home by now”. If I lived in Berkeley, I’d be home by now.
I didn’t want to tell my mom I had to move out. But I couldn’t figure how else I could go on. I worked up a fight in my head where my mother would tell me that I should quit the play. I would get indignant in this imaginary fight, as if she had just told me to stop breathing. But when the conversation actually happened what she did say was, If you move out then that’s it, you can never come back.
It wasn’t what I expected but it was a blow nonetheless. Of course, now, in hindsight and with an adult perspective I can see what she was really saying. She was telling me, in her way, that she didn’t want me to move out, maybe she wasn’t really ready after her illness to be left alone in the house. But she was also trying to convey to me the seriousness of my decision, that I was taking a step into adulthood and she wanted me to be sure I was ready. I didn’t get any of that message at the time though.
My rent was $200.00 a month. It seemed like so much at the time and I was to share the big room, which was really the living room, of the house. In college life every possible space is squeezed for accommodations to lower the rent for everyone. Or in this case, to make as much money for the landlord as possible. At first, I had the living room all to myself with my friend Eva in the ‘real’ bedroom, which was actually dining room, and another girl out in a little cottage in the back. Later in the year, in a relieving turn of events, my sister would move in and share the big room with me.
I kept my job, so, I was still home on the weekends mostly. But I felt that my mother was annoyed with my presence there. So, in short order, instead of taking the BART I started driving my car to and from Berkeley. Which, in Berkeley, meant having to move it every morning and night so that I wouldn’t get parking tickets. This was a huge hassle and the reason I hadn’t brought it with me to begin with. The first month went fine. I bought my books, paid my rent, bought food. But by the second month, things started to go wrong. I got several parking tickets at $25.00 a pop. Traffic enforcement has the whole town locked up so that getting them is really unavoidable if you spend much time there at all. Great earner for the city of Berkeley, but to a college student a distressful event. In subsequent years living in and around Berkeley I threw up my hands and simply began budgeting in parking tickets in my monthly expenses. If I ever got less than one a week it was like getting a bonus.
Then there was an additional book to buy for some class, though I don’t remember which. It was a doozy of a book at $50.00 and not knowing any better I went right out and bought it. Turned out I didn’t even need it until very late into the semester. But to my mind this was an urgent need. You didn’t get caught without a book in your fist semester at Berkeley! I was already struggling with ‘smart-issues’ as it was. My sister, who was also still attending Berkeley was always the smart one in the family. I was always the ‘creative one’ or worse, the ‘dramatic one’, which in my mind meant I was not very bright but somewhat entertaining. The idea of not having a book on the syllabus sent me into absolute idiot-panic. For sure, someone would suddenly notice me in the room, go back to my college application and realize a terrible, terrible mistake had been made in admitting me.
I was despairing one night at the hostess stand at the restaurant where I worked weekends, trying to surreptitiously beg for tables, (I didn’t even have enough self regard at that point to openly beg!) when one of the line cooks, Will, I think was his name, came up and joined the conversation. It was getting late and it still hadn’t picked up on a Friday night and I was lamenting the fact that I would probably not make any money. The conversation came around to my imminent rent and my skimpy bank account and Will offered to lend me the money. Really?, I said, overwhelmed with relief. I’ll pay you back in a month, I promised, and he whipped out the cash right there.
My rent was paid and I went back to stressing about all the normal college things, grades, boss, friends, etc. I paid Will back just as planned. Right after my play finished with rehearsals I picked up some extra shifts and actually made some extra money. I was feeling pretty good about myself. So when Will came to me and asked to borrow money, with some story that his little girl’s mother’s car broke down, or something, I said, Sure. I felt confident that since I had paid him back on time he would return the favor. But he did no such thing. I never saw a penny from him and, in fact, he disappeared. He just stopped showing up for work or answering his phone a couple weeks later and I was completely rooked. Humiliated, and embarrassed I dared not tell anyone about the whole business. But, here was the beginning of the month coming and rent due and once again I was short.
I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t think of what else to do. I called my mom. Too bad, I told you, you were on your own, she said and went on to change the subject like I had just called to chat. My sister didn’t have any money either and I couldn’t think of anyone else to call. So, I called my Grandma.
By the time I talked to her, I must have worked myself up into a frenzy. All I could imagine was me being kicked out of my room for not paying the rent. SInce I couldn’t stay with my sister, because she lived in the dorms, I pictured me banging on the front door of my childhood home, the locks having been changed, rain pouring down and my mother peeking through the curtains mouthing ‘go away’. This didn’t happen, of course, because my Grandma said of course she would send me money as long as I needed, till I could get my finances sorted out. We talked a little about how I had gotten into this situation. I don’t know if I confessed my bad loan, I may have, but I don’t remember. She talked to me a little about budgeting and advised that next semester I go to my professors to find out what books I might need right away and what others I might be able to get later. Just tell them you are on a tight budget and paying your own way through school, they’ll understand, she’d said.
My Grandma has always been a calming, happy influence in my life. My sister remembers distinctly my Grandma being a speed demon behind the wheel of a car. I don’t remember this, but certainly it was only because I trusted her completely and it would never have occurred to me that she could falter and crash the car. And she never got angry with me but once that I can remember. I was somewhere I wasn’t supposed to be, probably fiddling with something I wasn’t supposed to, and got caught. She raised her voice and for an hour I hid in my uncle’s room, sure that I would never feel good again.
My mother used to put my sister and I on a plane to Los Angeles to visit my grandparents over the summer. I cried the way down, already missing my mother, but I would sob and sob on the way home knowing that it would be months until I could see my Grandma and Grandpa again. When we would arrive at the house there would always be a little brass canister of pennies on the dresser. We would count up all the pennies and wrap them in paper. Sometimes there would be $2 or maybe $3 and we were allowed to keep this. On a couple of occasions Grandma took us in the bank to cash them in. That was my first lesson that if you save your pennies they really add up. I always considered very carefully how I would spend my special dollar.
Inevitably on these visits my Grandma would be sewing something, either for us or herself. Back then it really was more economical to sew yourself a new dress or skirt than to buy store bought. I learned the basics standing alongside her and her Singer humming away. She made it all seem so easy that I was emboldened to try. I sewed lots of things over the years; a prom dress, Halloween costumes, shirts and slacks. I even sewed matching outfits for myself, my sister and our ‘sister’ Angela, who was a foreign exchange student from Colombia in our high school come to live with us when her original host family had more ideas for her about house cleaning and babysitting than schooling. We wore those outfits over a long weekend sailing out to Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay. They were aqua-marine shirts and stripped white and blue pants. They didn’t last a summer of wear. But I still get a little slush of pride when I look at pictures of the three of us in those outfits.
I also watched my Grandma cook meal after meal when we visited. She made a good many holiday meals that were memorable too. Her food was pretty typical American cuisine but I always looked forward to her cooking. My mother herself was an OK cook but I think she looked at it rather as a burden than as a creative pursuit so sometimes we would have a bland ham steak with unsalted mashed potatoes or boiled ocre (though to her credit I think she only did that once, it was just that awful that I remember it so well). My mother, being a baby boomer and a working woman of keen intelligence felt undermined, I think, in some regard by the daily grind of preparing meals on top of having worked a full day. It certainly was not her most favorite thing to do. But I think I absorbed some of my Grandma’s love for cooking by osmosis if not by direct teaching. The whole house was her domain, of course, but the kitchen seemed to be her special place of peace and calm. Here, you came and went at her discretion, and I remember my uncles and Grandpa being shooed out on occasion. To me she seemed happiest in the kitchen, that is to say the activity of cooking made her focused and steady and there was an air of assurance about her that I longed for. I share that assurance in the kitchen now though I am not so deft at keeping my own children and husband out of it. My own mother did come around a few years after my sister and I left home, when cooking finally ceased being a necessary chore and could enter the realm of recreation. After some nearly 70 years of cooking, I think, my Grandma now looks at it less as fun and more as a necessary chore. The arthritis in her hands makes it difficult and no doubt the pain and lack of strength makes it a weary task for her.
One of the genuine treasures my Grandma gave me in the cooking arena is her cheesecake recipe. She claims to have gotten it originally out of some magazine or cookbook or other and not to have created it herself. But years of adjusting and transcribing the recipe from one soiled recipe card to another have made it uniquely hers. And to her credit has made me quite famous with my friends. I am a great lover of cheesecake and have tried all kinds but none quite like my Grandma’s recipe. I suspect its not so much the combination of ingredients as the preparation that makes it so delicious. Don’t completely blend the cream cheese mixture, its better when a little lumpy; It cooks better on a cool day; Leave it in the refrigerator two days before eating. I have myself doubled the recipe and added extra vanilla. But the accolades and smiles I have gotten from Grandma’s cheesecake are definitely due to her refinements, not mine.
My Grandma sent me $200 a month for three months that fall. Let me know when you are on your feet, she’d said. When I called her to tell her to stop sending the checks, that I was fine now, she practically insisted on continuing to send them, worried I suppose that I would falter again and trying to allay that possibility. I declined though and offered to pay her back at which she firmly pishawed me. Its not that those $200 made such a difference as such, though they did pay my rent during those months. It was a sort of culmination of all her lessons, those intentional and not; years of standing and watching my Grandma do her daily routine; and finally the unyielding kindness and gentleness with which she always dealt with me that finally put it all together for me. From that fall forward I was always able to make whatever I had go as far as it needed. I was able to spot a deal as well as figure out how to make it from scratch if that was going to be cheaper or better. And able to spot the moment when a splurge is in order, like a great huge slice of creamy cheesecake.
My natural frugality was enhanced by all of my Grandma’s lessons too, and has made me self reliant in a day and age of convenience foods, ready made drinks, store bought cheap clothes etc. It makes me confident that, if, say, I should be transported back in time 100 years somehow, I would not starve, nor be bored by my own food. I’d be able to make a dress and balance a budget. I also wouldn’t be afraid or intimidated by food or house and hearth. I know so many women who look at a recipe as a foreign language and carry it as a badge of honor that the only thing they can make is an espresso. Not to mention many, many men.
They may not seem much in cosmopolitan times, the domestic arts, despite the Food Channel and Martha Stuart influences, but it is as much a level of self reliance and confidence to be able to navigate a cookbook or a sewing machine as it is to be able to balance a checkbook or invest wisely. In either case, if you can’t do it yourself or at least figure out how it all works, you have necessarily beholdened yourself to the kindness and sincerity of others. That is not a bad thing if you can absolutely trust those who are taking care of your affairs and your needs just the way you like them. But as women’s lib moved women into the workplace it made the kitchen and the more domestic activities seem anathema to a liberated life.
But what my Grandma really gave me when she helped me that semester was a little perspective. And with perspective comes the ability to think ahead and plan. And that is really all cooking, cleaning, sewing, budgeting and all the other crafty pursuits that necessarily come along with having a life, need to do them well. We all have to do it and one way or the other we will. She gave me a little advice, a little skill, a little help and then a lot of love and faith and that soup made me more capable to take care of myself, come what may. Since college I have had times that have been flush and times that have been lean and in either case I have been able to cull together the lessons from my Grandma and get by and even treat myself. Because there really is nothing more comforting than a nice slice of cheesecake.

Dates

My play, "4 at 40" which I wrote and will perform, now has dates.

Thursday, April 26, 2007 7:30 pm Press Preview
Friday, April 27, 2007 7:30 pm Performance, Tickets $12.00 at the door.

Location:
Dezart One Gallery
2688 Cherokee Way
Palm Springs, CA 92264
(760) 328-1440

If these performances go well then we will add, probably two per month, for the next several months until summer - wherein it will be too hot and anyone with sense and/or money flees the desert.

Only A Moment Away

Oh, it's coming. It may seem like just a small thing but it will irritate you to no end. It already irritates me in its first incarnation I've heard.

And that is "blog about us!" Some I'm-so-clever Adman or woman will someday be saying this to Taco Bell executives and Fruit of the Loom marketing departments and retailers of all stripes... Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama are already half there. It is the new version of "tell your friends about it" that marketers have been attempting for years.

They and we know word of mouth is extremely rampant and always has been. I mean don't you find, "Oh yeah, I tried that burrito. It was great" more convincing than any way they can possibly photograph beans spilling from a tortilla. They say a picture tells a thousand words... how does that go? But your friends are way more convincing...

It will not be very much longer now till the marketing world is trying to convince you to extend your mouth to your keyboard and will be begging you to "blog about it". It's annoying already, isn't it?

Thank you KCRW for introducing me to this new slogan that I am sure I can look forward to ruining my day for years to come!

Passing of a President

I have held my keyboard tongue for a week and now I just have to blog about it.

Former President Gerald Ford died last week. A sad event, no doubt. He was a resident of our area and there was a service and he lay in the church up the street from our house to be recieved by the public for 24 hours. He was, by all accounts, a good man. And everyone has to appreciate that his position gave his wife, Betty Ford, the platform to bring drug abuse and, importantly, recovery to the fore for this nation like it never had before. For that alone we should all be grateful that he was president.

But what I kept hearing last week was that news agencies were having to search the archives for SOMETHING to say about his presidency and what they came up with was: the pardoning of Nixon.

Now, I had never really known what pardoning Nixon was or was not to have supposed to do until Ford's death last week. Afterall, I was a little kid during Watergate and the aftermath... even Chevy Chase's Ford impersonation was only caught by me in reruns of Saturday Night Live several years later. So, I was a little surprised when I heard Ford's explanation for pardoning Nixon was that 'the country would not have been able to focus on the President nor any other matter at hand if Nixon was being dragged from courtroom to courtroom'. OK. I get it.

Surprising though, was the UTTER lack of irony with which Republican and Republican-leaning newscasters and pundits explained this! No one dared reflect on the irony of Republicans prefering that one of their own - who'd been caught in the act - be pardoned so that 'the country could move on' when the instant the very next DEMOCRATIC President was elected into office, what did they do!? Impeach him!

Hypocracy seems to run rampant amongst the dogmatically Republican, neocon, conservative and religious right. All those people who shed tears of gratitude for what Ford saved the country from jumped right on the bandwagon, frothing at mouth, when a Republican Congress bullied the country into the very same, albeit unwarranted, mess! For nothing, to boot!

I wish someone last week had had the balls to at least say to the American people, "too bad the Republican Party didn't spare us the impeachment of an innocent President"... Well, I am saying it to the few Americans who read my blog, and perhaps a few foreigners among them.

And the more ironic, though I haven't actually heard anyone say it explicitly yet, is the notion that the current President Bush shouldn't be impeached for his lies and the many deaths they have caused simply to 'spare the nation' the pain it would cause to see the President impeached, and Oh the slow down of the workings of Congress. Why nothing would get done if Bush were to be impeached!

I suppose to be a Republican you have to believe that causing the country pain and bringing the goverment to a grinding halt is only worthwhile if it's not 'actual' pain but concocted out of malice.... Real pain, like admitting that our President has caused the loss of massive numbers of American and Iraqi lives, and changed lifes through disability and trauma beyond recognition, and also lost of Billions of dollars through mismanagement and fraud perpetrated by the Friends of the Administration and/or out of plain stupidity, which our children and their children will have to pay back, is just too... Oh, how you say? Painful? Oh, that damn reality. It's so harsh, isn't it?

Street Crud-ier

It's nice to have little ones. They care. Even if they are not exactly sure what that means, or the reason they care is because they need you to take care of them... still, it's nice.

I was up all night sick. S.O. got it, then S.O.v.1 got it, then S.O.v.2 got it... Sometimes I dodge the bullet but in this case, nope. But S.O.v.2 woke up with me several times as I rushed to the bathroom. When I said, "Mama is feeling sick". She just said "Oh" in her sweet little way and held my hand back to bed. When you're sick, you always want your mama... but when you're the mama sometimes it's good to have your baby.

Too Scary Ah Me

...as S.O.v.2 says when something scares her. Well, we watched "An Inconvenient Truth" last night and that's what I say!

Save our planet... I don't care if you take the pledge just that you do these things...
http://www.treasureourplanet.org/pledge_now.htm

Street Crud

I have been mildly sick for the past couple of weeks. What S.O. calls 'the crud'. It is very annoying and is only aggravated by things such as lame and slow computer repairmen that are holding up my edit; the utter lack of a suitable holiday party wardrobe and the necessity of *gulp* having to SHOP!; and mucky weather that will neither sunshine nor rain.

After hearing that my play is a go I had a head full of steam to edit. However, I have been slowed to an almost complete halt, except my brain which keeps editing and rehearsing all by itself. It's nice to know that my brain still works the same way. When I was regularly involved in plays (i.e. BC - before children) my brain would absorb the play and whether I be in math class, on the freeway, at work serving a shrimp cocktail to a wanna be pimp (I'm thinking of working in restaurants in Oakland... now there are wanna be pimps everywhere... and we used to be special), my brain was thinking how to deliver a line or trying to make connections between what other characters said about mine and what my motivation was, and what the meaning of the whole play was, etc. etc. Even in my dreams. I would often dream of rehearsing or performing, seeing myself performing the way I believed I could or discovering new ways to approach a scene. It was all very helpful... in the midst of rehearsals! Now that I am stimied it doesn't feel so much helpful as it does aggravating.

So, needless to say, despite the fact that I probably will not have my computer back yet and Christmas (i.e. shopping, wrapping, hiding presents from curious toddlers and baking) will be crunching upon me, I will start to rehearse anyway. I will just take what I have and mess around with it on my makeshift stage in my boss' back office and see what comes up.

And hopefully by then my 'crud' will be finished... blasted nose and sore throat!

Let Us Play

I had my presentation to the art gallery on Thursday of last week and have been basking in the potential for the past 24 hours. I got a message on my machine at work saying they want to pursue. I won't mention that they said they were "blown away" by my presentation, because I don't want to seem conceited... but that was my favorite part of the message.

I don't care what anyone says, a little validation is always good. And even though during my rehearsals for the presentation I knew I was doing good work I can't say as I felt totally 'on' during the performance. I was mostly relaxed but there is a portion of you that is just pretending to be relaxed when you perform. If you are too relaxed you run the risk of being boring, and/or missing what is going on. I felt like I could have done so much better, which makes the gallery's comments that much more validating. Oh just wait till they see me actually on!

But I am not resting on my laurels. By no means! I am ready now to get down and work on the play, parring it down to a manageable size. My self-imposed moratorium on working on the play has now been extended as our computer just went into Geek Squad for repair... and that'll take about a week! (They're so slow!) Then in January I start the work of rehearsal and producing. Yep, it's a one-woman show in more ways than one! Although they are providing the space, which is great, and a posting on their website and no doubt will help me in other ways as well, it is all up to me to bring in the audience! Marketing. Yikes! It doesn't feel so daunting though as I had always assumed. Or maybe I am just more confident now... that age thing helps sometimes!

But probably the best part about this whole experience so far is chosing material that I am just as thrilled about now as when I first had that 'aha' moment a few months ago. It makes the work a joy rather than a chore. Who knows where that sort of inspiration comes from. All I hope, at the moment, is that I continue to do good work and enjoy the process and that the audience that finds me/I find enjoys the play as much as I do!

Addendum to 8/29/06

S.O. has very graciously pointed out that I failed to mention this in my "Now it's time to stop" entry of 8/29/06 this one:

The OhMiBod personal vibrator that you hook up to your iPod... because you didn't know you needed it, did you?

http://www.ohmibod.com/overview.html

I would say "only in America" but can I just point out the iGallup? Only in America, or Japan...

Guug

It is one of those melancholy days... who knows why, although the Monday after a holiday, wherein fun was had, is always a bit of a let down.

Or maybe it's just my negative voices getting the better of me. I am trying to ignore them. I've made committments (only to myself, but those are the ones you beat yourself up for the most) to write/perform a play and to write a novel. Here is where my years in Hollywood-baby (S.O. taught S.O.v.1 to say "LA baby" while on our way there the other weekend) failures kick in... It is the same conversation that comes up in my head over and over. If you already failed at something what makes you think it will be any different this time? It is hard to get around all the 'no's. Nos for acting, nos for improv, nos for scripts - even to read them!, nos for gainful employment in the Industry, nos for 'gainful' employment in any industry (although I've always been wildly successful at getting those barely-scrapin'-by jobs) - someone at a temp agency once told me, "Ms. Ryan, you're really ONLY qualified to work in the entertainment industry so we can't really send you out on anything else" - because my BRAIN stops FUNCTIONING when I step into a doctor's office or real estate office of course!

So the negative voices in my head challange me with all this imperical evidence that has been logged for the past 20 years and all I have to combat it with when they say, "Why should you succeed in anything when you haven't so far?" is "'Cause I wanna. So there. Nana-na-nana". This is where some religion might come in handy, I suppose. But since I don't really want to take sides in the spiritual wars, nor do the research to find the one best suited to my disposition, or to just leap into the path of least resistance (i.e. the ones my family members practice/have practiced), I'm pretty much on my own. S.O. looks at me like a deer caught in headlights when I complain about this sort of thing (the inner voices thing, not the religion thing) and doesn't know what to say. I, frankly, wouldn't know what to say to myself either if I was complaining to me about my uncertainties - OK wait I am talking to me about... but I'm not... never mind.

The tacit impulse is to just crawl under a rock, or a corner and rock, or listen to loud rock... and weep, "I can't do it". But I have also made a committment to myself to not let my negative voices get the better of me.

On days like this it is dangerous to get back to work. As anyone who has tried to create something when you are having a bad day knows it can be a disaster. If I went to my writing today the negative voices would just start picking on specifics and that's never good. And then you make bad choices and screw things up that you just have to fix later... hell, it's not even a good idea to make dinner when you're in a bad mood.

Perhaps the only thing to do is to try and deflect. Work on something else, start a pretend project my negative voices can tell me I'll never succeed at, practice my guitar - 'cause I already KNOW I suck at that, go to the gym, get them to criticize my appearance! and then when they are on a roll I can work again... yeah, that's right negative voices, my thighs ARE abominably large!

I Love LA

I love LA like you love an ex-boyfriend, maybe even like a bad ex-boyfriend. You broke up for a damn good reason, but everytime you see each other again, you just can't remember why. Face it, you know that even entertaining the idea of getting back together is probably not good for you, good for your loved ones... You've changed but really, has he? You know that jumping back into that old relationship will screw up everything you have now... but still... you just can't stop yourself from wondering.

And LA feels like home still. Not that here doesn't. It's just that LA is more like the 'life' you see on TV (is it any wonder) - full of interesting things to do, interesting people, interesting possibilities. In LA you know that life could change at any moment - for better or worse. It is like perpetually holding a lottery ticket that only 100 other people bought into. If you met the right people, got the right job, the planets aligned just so.

Life in a suburb is essentially the antithisis of this. It is predictable, secure, safe(r). And our suburb in particular, because it is a vacation destination and retirement town - read: the company business is waiting to relax and waiting to die, which for some people may be the same thing - so it is not just teaming with possibilities. Face it, nothing spectacular or unexpected is likely to happen here. The population just doesn't want it to. But the payoff is time. Time to relax, time to contemplate, time to create. Less time in the car certainly.

But still... he does look really good in those jeans....

Really Modified Mat

Some days you just want to knock around the house, do some laundry, hang with the kids... you know, NOT drive a car... and especially wrangle children, scratch that, toddlers around public spaces. There were plenty of things we could have done and in fact I had sort of suggested a visit to the park's playground last night. So instead we played outside, freesbie and took some indoor toys outside for fun. But after naptime I was feeling a little bit guilty for not going to the gym.

So Mama says "Who wants to go inside and do pilates with me?" Of course, all takers so off we go, lay the mats in the living room in front of the TV and turn on the DVD.

Except S.O.v.2 who is now 2 1/2 and probably close to 30lbs decides that I am not allowed to be on HER mat. There are only two so, S.O.v.1 and his sister each get one and I end up on the carpet. Not three moves in S.O.v.2 decides that she wants to do pilates with me. Not on her mat - ON ME. So now my "powa-haus" is much heavier and bulkier... I bet there's not a DVD for that. But what's worse we are not allowed to do the ex-a-ciz-ess (in my DVD the chicky's giving the class are Australian) ON her mat! So I remain on the carpet, toddler on me... Where is the photographer when you need them?

Must Be Genetic

I have observed in my own little significant others that some behaviors seem to be just... well, genetic. We know that boys are different from girls, of course, in the obvious physical ways. They have an entirely different way of concentrating and thinking and working things out as we know from our own relationships. But I have noticed a disturbing trend...

S.O.v.1 was heard the other day in his room with his sister to say "You go ask Mama for moie wader". That being bad enough, she did it! She is a love and a sweet little girl, but she is no pushover, ooooohoohoo no! She has her own mind and she will exercise it by whatever means possible. But when it comes to doing things for her brother she just... does it! What gets me, more than her compliance, is his lack of chagrin in asking.

Many a time when I have been picking up toys I have tried to bribe, cajoll, entice, force him to pick up toys. Most of the time he won't do much, if anything at all. But when he says, "No tanks, Mama. You do it" my blood nearly boils! Those are the moments when you want to run out of the house screaming "There's no hope!"

We women have been accused for years of remaining willfully ignorant to tasks we wished to avoid; lawn mowing, tire changing, checkbook balancing. But I propose men do this too. My S.O. is befuddled by toilet cleaning, cooking and organizing and putting away child clothing. And why is that, when he is a champion diaper changer, dishwasher and laundry doer (without the actual putting away of the clean clothes), because he does not want to do these things. He perceives these things as tasks he would not like to accomplish, that he would find no scrap of pleasure in, that he would not be allowed to become so absorbed in (like dishwashing) that we would all leave him alone for a time.

So, is S.O.v.1 just following Daddy's example? Not that S.O. actually has ever said to me "No thanks, hon. You can do it" for obvious reasons. And is S.O.v.2 just following Mama's lead in picking up because if she doesn't it will be there tomorrow, and next week, and next month? Except she doesn't roll her eyes and sigh in exasperation.

The other day - we've been on the go for the past several weeks with a visit from S.O.'s mom, a vacation to Big Bear, a conference weekend for me and a camping weekend - first for the kids actually - and so, routines being disrupted many tasks fall by the wayside. I was scrubbing the tub needless to say why, the other day, and I found it strangely satisfying. It was a relief to be back in our routine but it was not just that. Dare I say, lest this come back to haunt me someday which is probably will, it was enjoyable a task in and of itself. I understand why some women find pleasure in housekeeping, over and above the pleasure one finds in a task accomplished. There was something simple and fundamental, maybe even nurturing, in making it nice for myself and my family. That was Thursday. By Sunday I was ready to get back to work and out of the house. I am a liberal and a feminist you know, just 'cause I like a clean bathroom doesn't make me Phyllis Schlafly! (Why didn't anyone every make fun of her name anyway?)

American Marketing: Finding Exciting New Ways to Give You Less For More!

Now I know you have all heard about and probably so far experienced Starbucks price hike. The company said it would be no big deal "just a nickle" what harm could that do, right? And Stephen Colbert belittled the discontented murmur on The Colbert Report, teasing that the increase will cost him all of a nominal $8.00 over the course of the year.

Price increase, smice increase I say. Why? My standard order, Mocha Frappacino Tall no whip, went up to $3.15. OK, fine, I say. I want it anyway. But when I got the cup holding that delicious cooling wakeup juice what did I behold but the cup is smaller! Ever so slightly so you might not notice. Which is most likely the objective. And if you were a w/ whip person rather than a sans whip like myself you really would not notice.

But I did! I have slugged a good many into my car's cup holder and continued on my driving around town errands for work. Normally the cup, condensation and all, fit nice and snug. Now I know my car is deteriorating, ever so slowly, and who isn't frankly. But not so that a cup would now have room to spare! I picked up the cup to take that first sip at the next stoplight and it felt different even. I took a good long look at the cup, looked back to my sense memory of the last Mocha Frappacino no whip I'd had and the cup is shorter and slightly skinnier.

Not that anyone in America really needs the few extra calories you'll now miss in your smaller more expensive Starbucks. I certainly don't. It's just a little underhanded and unseemly. Remember the Andy Rooney segment on 60 Minutes where he complains that the volumn in a can of coffee is ever shrinking? Well, they do it to us at every turn and at the same time announce "New and Improved!".

Despite the enthusiastic protestations of the Founder and CEO of Starbucks claiming love of the product and committment to quality, and health insurance to his employees, it seems he also has a healthy dose of committment his bottom line as well. More fleecing... oi.

Long

I wish I had read the memo (the one I wish someone had written me about 20 years ago) that said "Happiness does not mean the absence of longing".

I long for somethings that are, probably, completely out of reach, and for some that are possible with hard work, maybe.

I long for a career as an actor. A pursuit tried and not won. Not everyone can be the king...

I long to perform and I long to be on stage. Oddly, I feel most myself when I am performing. I feel all the vital parts of me come to the surface and my doubts subside. There is nothing I do better, in my own estimation. But, like space travel, it's a skill I rarely use... I'm sure Buzz Aldridge can relate.

I long for more laughing and fun in my relationship. It is the thing that brings you close together. Now that the 'season' of work has started for S.O. we are like ships that pass, "See ya round the other side of the world".

I long for my writing to find a home, an audience, readers, viewers, to be acknowledged.

I long to direct, to create an experience like the ones I so love. I directed three films in grad school, each one challanging and exhilarating, each taxed me in every way. But I loved it.

I long for the community of my friends, in the flesh. I have this community only electronically now, except for short visits here and there, one way or the other. The upside of an electronic community is that you can create new friends in places you might never physically get to. I have now new friends in Iraq and Romania. It's amazing when you think about it. And I continue to bridge the gap via emails with old friends in England, Pennsylvania, Washington, New York... My community is now a spiderweb across the globe.

I long for all these things and yet I am happy. I will remember in about 16 years to write a memo to my kids, to make sure they know not to put off being happy just because your heart wants more.

Pockets of Peace

There are really far too many things to worry about these days. And like most worriesome things they are largely out of our control. Modern life is clearly full of too much information, too many goods and services, too much technology and time-saving products to be completely comfortable anymore. Ironically most of these 'modern' conveniences are supposed to make us more comfortable.

We travelled to the mountains this past weekend for a four day family vacation. Just the four of us, no visiting friends, no visiting family, just relaxing in the woods, feeding the ducks on the lake. On the drive I got a lot of time to think, as you do... I noticed I did a lot more thinking on the way there than on the way back. Funny that. But it means the 'vacation' part worked. For a few days I got to not feel guilty or take sides, donate money or worry about what was going wrong in the country, and in the world.

In my think on the way to I thought a lot about my father. Not my real father (i.e. my dad, stepfather who chose to be our dad) but my biological father. He has been absent from my and my Genetic Twin's (sister) lives since I was about S.O.v.1's age and she was five. I thought mostly about what his absence means. Not that I particularly miss him - I never knew him really - but I used to feel that there was a hole of sorts, a chunk of something gone. I thought about what it means to me now, to not have his presence in my life or even know anything significant about him. The Female Parental Unit (mom) doesn't talk about him so we have very little information. When I see some of S.O. in our kids and even get little glimpses of myself in them it sometimes makes me wonder what I have of him.

My GT and I used to occasionally muse about finding him, but haven't for years. At this point, I have sealed up that hole. I don't really want to go in the hatch. I don't necessarily consider it part of my destiny (come on people, "Lost" anyone?) and believe that it would bring possibly only grievance or at best indifference if we were to 'find him', or find out anything about him even. So, I let it go. I moved on and deal with the present. The past may have created the who I am now but it won't control me.

But the past does control many people. Worse it controls whole populations of people. Part of the struggles of the Middle East, no doubt, are past-ridden. To look back and find something about who you are, as a human being, or as a culture, as a country is to be respectful and have reverence for those who have gone before. But to look to the past for how to manage the present is insanity. To do that is to not recognize that you can't change the past or even make up for what has been lost. What is gone is gone is gone is gone and there ain't no getting it back, no how. But yet the past is invoked time and again to justify present actions. We were supposed to have moved beyond that behavior when we advanced to the 7th grade, weren't we? "Well he stole my cookie from my lunch tray so I took his milk"... "and vengence is MINE!" Come on! We know psychologically speaking that if, say, I continued to try and 'make up' for the loss of a father year after year after year I would be spinning my wheels, being self destructive and miserable. Because you cannot get back what is no longer there. So any substitute, be it a fatherly boyfriend, or reunification with your ancesteral home will not put your psyche together again. It might be nifty for a time, but you will go right back to vengeful behavior if you keep looking backwards. Notice how it's not called "Look Now in Anger"?

So, after four days of unscheduled time, a couple of hikes and time with The Adorables I had very little brain action on the drive home. I had, for a time, a little pocket of peace. I had it because for those four days I was not trying to finish anything or start anything or create anything or destroy anything. I was only experiencing the present. And I discovered that in the here and now the past doesn't feel so uncomfortable. And the future doesn't seem so daunting. The people before you are just as wonderful, if not more, when you are peaceful inside yourself enough to see and hear them clearly.

Random Thoughts

The problem with random thoughts is that you never know where to start...

I had had cause to think about something I'd believed for a long time recently; that every woman marries below her. That is not to say men are bad, just that women are smarter, more able to multi-task, more compassionate, more expressive, more patient and the whole package makes it just easier for us to run a life which we all must do on one level or another. Even if you are single with no kids you are still running your own life and keeping your toilet fairly clean (except for the odd woman who revels in being laise fair about housecleaning, fine if only she has to live in it). But any woman who has children and/or is married is running more than one and that becomes difficult.

Men have an uncanny ability to focus on one thing for long periods of time, which is why we have disciplines like engineering and science and space travel. When they are using their powers for good instead of evil they are in that regard better than women. But doing one thing alone well does not exactly make one able to run a life successfully. And hey, if you are a single guy, who cares if your toilet is clean. When men are 'envolved' with other human beings they must strive to use their powers not for evil to, say, focus on figuring out how to do the least amount of work possible or how to use their powers of concentration to effectively ignore their people, but for good, as in focusing on how to contribute or be more compassionate.

S.O. and I have had many a skirmish over the subject of 'running the life' of our family. Our finally conclusion of the matter of running the life was to conclude that he is not, or we should not say, he's 'helping me' get the various chores done. That is condescending and I think implies that the whole kit and kaboodle is MY responsibility and mine alone and somehow he is doing me a favor by doing dishes or putting his shoes away instead of leaving them in the middle of the living room for me to pick up. So, women's lib did what again? Made it possible for women to have two jobs and men to continue to sit on the sofa and watch their shows while we take care of the kids?

I saw a young woman bopping along, coming out of the local college, this morning, talking on her cell phone. She had a lovely look on her face, one vaguely familiar and melancholy to me. It's that expression you see only on very young women and very old - but well balanced and grateful - women. It is the look of running only your own life and doing as you please. It is the look of being carefree. My perspective now makes all my worries as a young woman, even as a young married woman without children seem petty. Not that that young woman has no worries or troubles. It just strikes me how much easier troubles are when they are only your very own. As psychologists and wanna be therapists like to say to us over and over again from their TV pulpits, you can only change yourself. Great concept in theory, except it ignores the reality of most women who are managing someone else's life including their own. Sure, you can't theoretically control someone else but if you are running their life it is decidely more difficult to do if you aren't also controlling what they do... and thus why marriage is so difficult!

It is so easy to be empassioned with something new; new love, new school, new baby, new job. And doesn't society and talk show hosts tell us all the time that we should recapture our 'inner child' - that enthusiasm, that discovery, that passion for life. But doing something for the first time or having something new is always easy and exciting. I'm a little sick of this whole idea of 'finding your passion' because, frankly, it is not the way the world or a life works. It is great when someone is enthusiastic about something new, you love to hear about it. And we run to our loved one's side when they are feeling down or in need. But all the mediocre stuff in between is where life really lies. Why is it not ok to just be ok with how things are going? Why does every morning have to have the sparkle of potential? Isn't not expecting something to happen, i.e. expecting a regular day, and it turning out spectacular just the best? But if you are every day living your passion, grabbing, eating life, consumming with passion... when the hell do you rest? Besides unrealistic it sounds just tiring to me. I am happy with making methodical progress forward and not knowing when the spectacular may happen. Besides, isn't all this 'passion stuff' just starting to smack plasticy?

We are heading up to the mountains for a few days tomorrow. Our first family vacation that is not also a visit friends and family vacation. As much as I love my friends and family it's just not the same. I realize that we are lucky. Many do not ever get a family vacation and as much as I am compelled to complain that this is essentially the first since having our children, that thought keeps popping into my head. Many get outrageous vacations where they don't life a finger, except maybe to purchase expensive gifts for themselves or to haul themselves on to the massage table, and get to have an exceptional relaxing time. We fall somewhere on the lower end of that scale just into the priveledged enough to get a vacation at all section. For that I am grateful. But it will not be totally relaxing because there are still responsibilities that will follow me up the mountain - diapering, bathing, clothing, feeding, cooking, organizing... but maybe if I am really nice to him (wink wink) S.O. will allow me to sleep a couple times.

A Moment

There are moments when the exiquisite beauty and pain of being a parent appears before you. It flies away before you can grasp it completely. Maybe if you really knew what it meant to have the honor of being the mother of these little perfect people it would just be too much... too much to handle... too much to comprehend... to much to be able to move forward with... Maybe that is what love is....