blogging

The Stuff of Memories


I apologize for the tardiness of this post. I know that many of you catch me first thing in the morning or not at all.  Although I have been assured that punctuality and daily posts aren’t necessary, I am a writer and this blog is part of my discipline and I have been slacking.

Slacking has been the theme of August.  Rob pointed it out to me the other day and he’s right.  I haven’t pushed myself overly hard where any of my writing is concerned.  In part because it’s hard to lose myself in a project when Dee is around.  She can be wonderful one day – not needing me much at all – and then turn around and be at my elbow every 5 minutes the next. Not knowing makes it hard to plan and execute, and our lack of schedule once swimming and camps ended just added to the jumbled feel of the day to day.

I have a plan for the school year.  Funny, this is my third year away from the classroom and I still think in terms of the school calendar, making it the basis for my planning and personal schedule. 

The annual summer purge has been unsettling but on a lower level than in the past.  Summer, for some reason, always finds us foraging through the boxes of our past and imposing change on the immediate landscape.  By the end of September – if the weather holds – the exterior of the house and the yard in general will be dramatically different than when Dee and I first moved here.  The interior – upstairs mostly – will be nearly overhauled.  It has its emotional impact.

Dee has been on the edge of tears several times over the last week as we have been going through her toys.  Rob and I didn’t have the stomach for purging her possessions when she and I moved up here.  I probably divested myself of things I needed in order to accommodate what amounted to junk in an effort to keep the trauma level to a dull roar for her.  Consequently, I have been engaged in a near constant war of attrition with Dee for over two years now.  At seven she is finally old enough to understand that much of what she was holding onto was not really all that important and that I have never tried to force her to give away anything with true meaning attached to it.

Except for the chair.

The chair is a brown Lazy Boy recliner my mother bought for Will when he went into the nursing home so he could watch television in his own room. But as he was unable to sit – the dorsal nerves in his lower back were quite damaged by then – and he was nearly blind, the gesture was just that.  The chair ended up being co-opted by his mother though Dee doesn’t remember that and which explains our differing opinions on the importance of the thing.

She sees it as something tangible of her Dad’s that she rocked, sat and used as a jungle gym after I brought it back from the nursing home when Will went into hospice.  I see it as something he didn’t use and that made it easier for his mother to perch night after night in his room, feeling sorry for herself and feeding him the sugar that eventually rotted the enamel off his teeth.

The chair, however, has once again survived a round of purging.  It will not survive a major move.  There is no way we are paying to ship that thing to the UK or even Texas if that ends up being the case.

It surprises me still that the most insignificant things drip with the past.  It’s like slime, clinging and oozing all over. Even when I don’t feel as though it is obviously affecting me, it does.

Rob received an email inquiry from his former boss today asking for an update on his project status.  This is a good sign. It means there is still need and Rob is still the man they want.  But, it means things are going to happen and happen quickly.  By March in all likelihood.  It colors things.

I have been half-heartedly applying for jobs.  I am torn between sorta wanting to work and knowing that work will hamper my writing, be a juggling act where Dee is concerned, and won’t really be fair to any employer because I know I won’t be around in nine or ten months.  The definition of “part-time”  seems more like practically full-time as well.

“What would you do if something happened to me?” Rob asked after a discussion about part-time work.

He’s already observed, aloud, that I have fairly willingly abandoned many management issues because he is around to  do them.

“I would assess my financial picture and take steps accordingly,” I said.  I did not add that I have spent time thinking about this very thing because that is a given.*

The truth is that I would stay put as long as possible, tie up any loose ends and stabilize as much as possible before looking for teaching jobs in Iowa – which is where I would move back to.  I would teach, write and mother until Dee was off to university and then I would search for new opportunities which would not include remarriage.  Though Rob thinks I should consider that because in his opinion I “do better” in a loving relationship – and he’s right – I doubt I would have the stomach for a possible third widowhood.  It’s like being burned down to the bone and I am sure I could do it one more time, if it turns out to be me again, but anything more would be too much – even for an Amazon like me.

Wow, I got off track.  Forgive my digression.

So, purging in preparation for the hamlet-wide garage sale on Saturday and preparing for the school year that begins on Monday.  Dance class registration was yesterday and yoga registration is tonight.  I have a few classes at the university to sign up for and my quarterly calendar to pencil.  And a disgusting bathroom to finish up before Dee’s hair cut this afternoon, so I need to end this.

#fridayflash will be an attempt to continue last week’s story. If you have a moment or two, stop by.

 

*Cheery discussions like these are not new to me. I have always been a “what if” contingency planner. Side-effect of teaching, where the good/successful teacher is the one who spends time imagining what could go wrong with every lesson plan or class and cuts off routes to chaos in advance. Worst case scenario daydreaming is just part of who I am.  I can’t remember not being a worrier.

A Big Dump


When in purge mode we make dump runs. Sunday we hauled the remains of cement forms and more cast-offs from early reno dreams to the Cloverbar sanitary landfill which lies between The Fort and Edmonton off Yellowhead. We had Dee and her bff in the back seat happily gorging on Dairy Queen and the good fortune to be sent to the transfer station instead of up Mount Garbage.

The transfer station is where “clean garbage” and recyclable stuff is tossed. Mount Garbage is an ever expanding tower of dirt over crap that  no one wants but is too lazy to donate before it becomes worthless.

While Rob was tossing old wood and windows beyond reclamation into our assigned dumpster, a youngish appearing couple backed in next to us and proceeded to offload a truck bed plus a back seat’s worth of children’s stuff. Toys and clothes by the bag full and in decent condition, a serious collection of Disney movies on vhs and dvd and a hodge-podge of what might have been the accessories of a little girl’s bedroom.

Dee and her friend watched with horror as the women carelessly flung a jewelry box with nary a blemish that was quickly smashed to bits by a back hoe as it attempted to make more room in the dumpsters by squashing the contents.

One of the accessories the couple tossed was a beautiful wood framed full length mirror. The back hoe made short work of it.

The couple had unloaded without much conversation and were quickly back in their truck and gone as the sanitation worker directing traffic, Rob and our two little females in the back seat watched with interest that kept falling off the edge of disbelief.

Why would people throw away nice stuff? Why not donate it?

My mind fell to some horribly tragic scenario of  loss and indescribable pain. But that’s just me.

The old guy driving the back hoe parked and climbed up to get a peek at what we were all gawking at and shook his head.

“I never throw anything away,” he said. “My wife’s always at me about it, but I have a basement full of stuff I won’t get rid of.”

It’s the Oprah Intervention People who will survive the coming Apocalypse while the rest of us are staring blankly at our dark screens: computers, televisions and iPhones, they will be rummaging through their stash of ancient, but useful stuff, that doesn’t need a grid or even batteries.

The couple drove off. Him rather stony-faced and her all business. I still wonder about the little girl who is missing her stuff.

The Bloggess Vs. Captain Kirk: The Tribble with Tweeting


The Bloggess is the web persona of a Texas blogger named Jenny Lawson. Her posts run the gamut of oddball humor which her readers respond to in kind via comments. Everyone’s tongue planted firmly in cheek, The Bloggess is the kind of naughty, gross and irreverent humor we engage in as teens and young adults and sometimes, it’s fun to lose the adult outer layer and revel in that again.

Jenny has parlayed her Bloggessing into a popular Twitter feed, a gig as an advice columnist and various other kinds of web fame. Good for her. She doesn’t take herself too seriously – also good for her – but others do. Others who don’t seem to get the joke, or maybe they don’t appreciate being the joke.

Recently Willam Shatner found his Twitter feed was the repeated tagline on a Bloggess  stream of consciousness ramble for which she is well-known. The Shat, who has a gazillion followers* – though not as many as Ashton Kutcher  – did not appreciate the attention. Maybe it was the hookers? Regardless, he blocked The Bloggess. Which only gave her more material because the best way to cut a comic off is not handing them more ways to goon you.

The followers of The Bloggess, which number thousands more than mine but still less than Ashton Kutcher’s, being game and having too much time on their hands took to the hashtags and what was just a little joke at Mr. Shatner’s expense exploded on the twitsphere into an “on-going incident”.

Social media is interesting. Right now, Americans are in real danger of having Obama’s health care “reforms’ neutered into being a moot point and what inspires people to arms on the Internet is a “feud” between an Internet humorist and an aging celebrity.

Wow. Life in the lower 48 must be worse than the news up here makes it look, and they make it look bad.

 

*Unsurprisingly Shatner is on Twitter simply to self-promote because he follows only 9 people and one of those 9 is himself.