Sneak Peeks by Louise Yeiser

Getting Ready

Ken left yesterday, so he missed the scene outside my window.  The mirror-smooth ocean rustles and sighs as it leaves behind the bubbles that the sandpipers scour for food, while a crowd of gulls watches and waits.  The water is so clear I can see the layers of sandbars that stretch out and finally disappear into the light blue-green.  Sail boats and early morning swimmers.  Every day I think the buoy is something else, like a man in a kayak or a floating pelican who never strays from one spot.  But it isn’t.  It’s just a buoy that sometimes stands up straights and sometimes tips sideways.

I suppose I am looking forward to flying home this afternoon to dive into my Christmas tasks and parties.  But for the moment, for the tranquil right now, where I sit, looking out my window, peering around the palm trees that lean toward the Gulf, the holidays seem like dots on the horizon.

Lost

As the nurse led me toward the examining room, the overhead fluorescent lights cast blue over us, even though the hallway was stark white over a white-and-maroon flecked tile floor.  Exam Room 1 the label on the wall said.  I sat in the chair tucked in the corner and wondered whose x-ray was clipped onto the light-box. Whose spinal cord was it that hooked at the ends and bowed in the middle?

I was answering the nurse’s questions, when Dr. Al rushed in, slid around her, charged over to the small desk, picked up a pen, plopped it into his front lab-coat pocket and hesitated slightly before accelerating back toward the door.

“Good morning, Dr. Al,” I said as he passed by.

“I’m not ready for you yet,” he said, his back disappearing around the corner. 

“Good morning anyway,” I said.

The nurse never looked up.

MRI, MD and Misconception

It took me a whole hour to get there.  When I finally hobbled into the pain management office, I understood that I had moderate scoliosis and stenosis of the spine and that I needed a steroid shot to trick me into not hurting.  Not yet tricked, but open to the possibility, I emerged from the building, still hobbling, with the two conditions I already knew about.  Plus a few more.  My surprise bonuses included two bulging disks, a third bulging disk that was herniated, two spinal cysts, multiple bone spurs, other conditions I pretended to understand, and the need for two additional steroid shots because one wasn’t enough.  I felt ridiculous repeating “What?” ad nauseum, and asking Dr. No, the pain management anesthesiologist, to repeat his answer, slower this time.  Of course, once it was over, shot and all, and I sat in the car, gripping the steering wheel and staring out at the grey and rusty fall day, I burst into tears.

Why hadn’t my neurosurgeon, Dr. Al, gone over these details with me, explaining what a sagittal image was and spondylosis and facet arthropathy and foraminal stenosis and ligamentous thickening?  What is a perineural cyst, and why do I have two?  Are they benign?

The week before, during my neurosurgeon's appointment in which I provided him a brand new x-ray, I barely sat down in the waiting room before being spirited away to Exam Room 1.  Then, with my MRI report flapping in his hand, Dr. Al burst into the room, whooshed over to the x-ray on the wall, clipped to a light-box, paused, made two red circles in a couple of places and blew back out again.  He had more to say to the nurse than to me.  I assumed there was nothing to talk about, rather than assume my doctor was a Tazmanian devil with ADD, boosted by a coffee high and zooming through a triple-booked appointment schedule as fast as his legs could carry him, so he would be on time for his afternoon appointment with his personal trainer followed by a quick visit home to shower and take the wife out to dinner.  Or maybe talking to patients isn't his thing.

Regardless, today I have a general idea of my spine and its issues, although I still don’t know what every piece of the report means.  How can I?  Its medical terms threaten to crush me with their deadly four syllables, osis's and pathy's.  So I’ve solved the language barrier by clicking into my impatient, quick-fix mindset that has given me this plan: get out the hammer, bolts, steel rods, super-sized exacto knives, saw, nails and all the needles you want, put me out, and clean up this mess before it gets worse. Yeah.  That’s what I want.

I hope your weekend brings you what you want and is filled with happy surprises, not the kind that make you cry.

From Louise

In the Bag

My “reBag,” shown at left, is a palatable replacement for those nasty, little grocery-store bags that are so flimsy they cannot hold a dozen eggs, a small box of laundry detergent and a bottle of cranberry juice without splitting up the side, creating an embarrassing, jagged mess either on the sidewalk outside the grocery store, in its parking lot, in my driveway or on my kitchen floor.  I bought four reBags, used a permanent, black marker to print my last name legibly across their tops above the dark outline of a tree, and tied an appropriate green raffia bow around one of the bag handles for easy identification.  By using these at the grocery store checkout, I am not only saving myself the trouble of having to deal with those nasty, little grocery-store bags, but I am saving the Planet Earth from having to deal with those nasty, little grocery-store bags.  Therefore, my little green reBags are of cataclysmic importance in the grand scheme of things, so I have strategically placed them neatly across the passenger seat of my station wagon, where they are poised and ready to march inside the grocery store with me to valiantly deliver the earth from ruin. With all this careful effort, why is it that my reBags do not move from their perch, while I grab my purse, hobble out of the car (a back problem creates this hobble) go inside, claim my grocery cart, carefully choosing one that rolls in a straight line and doesn’t squeak, execute my grocery list with laser-like precision, go to the check-out line, and watch the check-out people load my groceries into those demonic, little, plastic bags.  Only then do I realize that I left my reBags in the car.  But it is too late.  I am too embarrassed and too achy (from the same back problem that created the hobble earlier) to rush back to my car, grab my reBags and return in time to save Mother Earth, while the check out lady and everyone in line beam their hearty approval.  Instead, I wait, humbled, and feel my cheeks warm and turn crimson, while I watch my groceries disappear, one by one, into those horrible, white bags.  I imagine my reBags, sitting in the car, comfy and cozy and completely inactive, while I destroy the planet despite my good intentions.  I will do better.  I have to do better.  I know I do.  I just don’t know when it will become second nature to grab the reBags on the way out the door, or when I will be free of this awful hobble so I can sprint to and fro, and make up for my proclivity to destroy the earth.  Hm.  It would seem that the end to this story is up in the air and not in the bag.  Not in the bag at all.  Oh, well.  While I may forget my reBags, at least I will remember to vote today.  Of that much I am certain.  And so will you.  Get out and vote!

The Top Four Chakra Colors

Green: the heart chakra, the seat of love.  Kermit the Frog may sing about how hard it is being green, but I have noticed the trees do just fine with it, even though the first signs of spring actually arrive with the color red.  Once the trees' winter nakedness becomes more than I can bear, I am on the hunt for spring, which is about the time I notice that the trees are wearing tiny, red buds on the ends of their branches, like tiny red mittens.  These buds triumphantly lead the procession into spring's baby green, a sparkling kelly green, which waits for just the right moment to make its grand entrance.  As spring turns into summer, so does the green, becoming deeper, richer and more grown-up, until the leaves start to wither a bit, making them look old and tired.  Finally, fall sweetly surrounds us with oranges, cranberries and lemons, the trees' last hurrah before the confetti-like shedding that introduces us once again to winter.

Blue: throat, communication.  Even though this chakra is associated with the throat, I wish it was in my hands.  Blue could warm my arthritic fingers, so they would fly across the keyboard, making the cursor dance, magically turning my words into publishable material.

Indigo: the third eye, the color of the gloaming, the ability to see beyond the veil of our physical understanding and grasp the spiritual.  The sky of the gloaming isn't blue and it isn't purple, but is somewhere in between.  During this indigo pause, day and night merge and switch places, thus creating a twilight magic, a symphony of mystery and transformation.

Violet: the crown chakra, connectedness to/with God.  I automatically think of Ingeborg's African violets.  Once, when we were grocery shopping together, she bought me a 4" pot of profusely-blooming, miniature African violets that were violet instead of the deep purple I'm used to.  I groaned inwardly.  Another plant for me to kill, I thought.  "Don't throw them away when they stop blooming," Ingeborg instructed.  "Just remove the brown and keep watering them.  They'll come back."  She always says this and it never works.  Oh, man, I thought.  But when they stopped blooming, I followed directions.  I cut off the brown and placed the violets in my plant hospital, a sunny counter-top next to my mudroom sink.  Sometimes a two-week retreat to my plant hospital is all my plants need to recover and come back from the dead.  Two years have passed and Ingeborg's African violets not only got well, but they look just as profuse and lovely as they did on the day she gave them to me.

Have a colorful, tasty autumn weekend!

From Louise

Tis the Season

We are half-way through October and the holidays have already begun.  All of them.  At the same time.  One minute my pool was closing for the summer, and the next, Halloween had arrived, dragging Thanksgiving and Christmas along behind it.

This happens every year around the first week in October, when some secret signal blares, marking the moment retailers, who are the only ones who can hear it, know that we, the unsuspecting consumers, are ripe for the picking.  We have been cooked to perfection, and are ready to be conquored by the holiday storm-shopping season, the season that lures us into stores for essential holiday items that we must purchase for our homes, inside and out, and for our loved ones, inside and out.  Bags and bags of Halloween candy, Christmas-colored Hersey kisses, Thanksgiving pilgrims, Christmas wreaths, costumes, plastic Santas, skeletons that sing and dance, straw cornucopias, ceramic jack-o-lanterns with lights inside, felt stockings, Indians, stuffed reindeer, turkeys, crèches, stand-alone graves with RIP written across the tops, cranberry, pumpkin and/or fir scented orange, black, green, red and/or ivory candles, and trinkets and toys of all kinds, many of which will end up in Goodwill stores by Valentine's Day.  And this is only a partial list.  The sky's the limit when it comes to seasonal shopping.

Whether we like it or not, the holidays have arrived en masse, and if we don’t stop what we're doing and rush to the mall, we’ll miss out on something!  I'm not sure know what, but I know it's something.

On that note, I wish you a merry Friday and a happy boo Fall!

From Louise

The First Three Chakra Colors

Do chakras really exist or are they just another piece of New Age brouhaha?  Frankly, I don't see why seven spinning wheels of energy, starting at the base of my spine and extending to the top of my head, are any more outlandish than my two eyes that see or my ears that hear or my stomach that breaks down food and uses it to keep me alive and well.  Each chakra corresponds to different body parts, has its own set of functions and is associated with its own musical note.  And, of course, they each have a color―red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet―the same colors as prisms and rainbows, and I definitely believe in prisms and rainbows. 

Red: rooted to the earth 

Poppies.  Dorothy, Scarecrow, Lion, Tin Man and Toto were running through a glorious field of red poppies with the Emerald City glittering hope in the distance.  Sleep! the poppies whispered seductively, as instructed by the Wicked Witch of the West.  Sleep!  Our gang was unable to resist, so down they went.  (Toto too?  Yes, Toto too.)  Only the power of Glinda the Good Witch could save them from their afternoon nap.

Orange: the seat of emotion, creativity and sexuality

Oranges, juicy oranges.  Sunkist, Del Monte.  I hope the ones I bring home from the grocery store are harvested in America so I can do my part to support American business.  Maybe that will make up for the Subaru station wagon parked in my driveway.

Yellow: personal power, self-definition and reason

Daffodils, my favorite flower, the flower narcissus.  When I was a little girl, I liked to go outside, charge down the hill, carefully step across the stones in the creek at the bottom, race along the trail though the woods and climb up another hill, to emerge into a brilliantly yellow, sun-spun meadow.  While it was probably filled with long weeds, I remember it as a rapturous field of daffodils who were always delighted to see me.  I danced and twirled among them, my arms outstretched, my eyes open wide, so they wouldn't lull me to sleep the way those weak, spell-bound poppies did in The Wizard of Oz. 

 

And that's enough out of me this week.  Have a rapturous, rainbow weekend!

From Louise

France in Sewickley

When I'm in the mood for an exotic, foreign-country getaway, which really does happen from time to time, I put on my pretend-beret, grab a pack of pretend-cigarettes, smear smoky gray shadows around my eyes, drape myself in black and go to Sewickley's Café des Amis on Division Street, where I relax, drink hot coffee and listen to the owners chatter in French.  Actually, men don't chatter, do they?  Rather, they spew out language like machine guns splaying bullets in every direction.  The taller man with hollow, high cheekbones and thinning hair, pours a thick batter into a black cast-iron skillet.  The other man, who has wavy, brown hair and a matching mustache that curls up at the ends, cuts fruit on a large butcher block island in front of the stove that almost touches the ceiling.  When he is finished, he sets down his knife, places the fruit in a tidy pile on a white plate, picks up a small, steel mixing bowl and pours golden sauce, which sparkles in the morning light streaming through the window, into another larger mixing bowl.  While he adds milk from an open carton, I notice his whisk lying nearby, impatient to jump in and get to work.  It sighs contentedly when he picks it up.  The two men are young and handsome, well, at least they are by my standards, and they zip around their kitchen as fast as they talk, making me wonder if I should flee for my life before one of their stray words strikes me accidentally and drops me to the floor.  The other customers are too engrossed in their own conversations to share my alarm, even though they're closer to the action.  My table is tucked behind an awkward corner, with its hand-painted ceramic salt-and-pepper shakers on a red-and-white-checked tablecloth.  As long as I stay put, observing, writing in my notebook and sipping coffee, I'm a serious writer pursuing adventure somewhere in the south of France instead of just a silly woman who loves to pretend.

Closing Up the Cottage

Writing.  Again.  Deleting.  Again.  Ground zero.  Again.  I needed 1,000 words and I had them.  Trouble was, they were all wrong.  I took my very first 3-minute reading that produced raves during my Ireland residency two summers ago and rewrote it, trying my best to be even more clever and brilliant, but I failed miserably.  Somehow I managed to ruin the entire thing.  How did I do it?  First, I altered a scene.  It didn’t work.  Then I changed the intro.  It didn’t work.  Finally, I changed the setting, rearranged the background and the props on the story’s stage.  That didn’t work either.  Fighting off a well-deserved panic, I was ready to scrap three hours of eye-straining effort to start all over again.  My mouse picked up the document and carried it to within millimeters of the computer's trash can, but I couldn't drop it in, I just couldn't.  Maybe it was time for a break.  I pondered closing up my computer, going downstairs and grabbing my boyfriend, whom I heard moving about in the kitchen, rattling his grandmother’s silver drawer and softly thudding the cabinet door closed.  I knew I could talk him into joining me for a walk under the orange and faded, green damp of a Michigan autumn day.  Well armed with sweatshirts and windbreakers (and I was sure there was an umbrella around there somewhere), we would breath in Bay View's briskness, when we weren't busy hopping over soggy, leaf-laden puddles whose tops were ruffled by windpuffs.  I liked that idea.  I knew I'd get back to my rewrite sooner or later, but apparently then was not the time.  Fall beckoned, and everybody knows it's not polite to keep a young season waiting.

October Song

Listen! the wind is rising,
and the air is wild with leaves,
We have had our summer evenings,
now for October eves!

~  Humbert Wolfe

B Stands for Hockey

Last week I went to my first major league baseball game in years.  I was so moved by the Pittsburgh Pirates' 18th straight loss, this time to the Chicago Cubs, that I drove right home from PNC Park, went straight to the computer, keyed into the Stub Hub ticket purchase webpage and bought tickets for the first two pre-season home games of the Pittsburgh Penguins.  What a relief.  I can laugh again.

Belinda, who invited me to join her that night, wasn't interested in baseball either, but was in the mood to attend a game, eat stadium hotdogs and popcorn, stretch at the 7th inning, sing and sway to "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and catch up.  We did all all of that, but mostly, we laughed.  We laughed at the men in front of us, who probably went home to their wives to complain about the obnoxious women sitting behind them, who never shut up the entire game.  We laughed at the man across the aisle who kept nodding off, while he clutched his open Cracker Jack box tightly to his chest.  We laughed at PNC Park's inability to provide any decent beer anywhere on its premises.  According to Belinda, Bud Lite, the Park's standard fare, was simply the Mon River scooped up and canned, while Coors Light (the alternative) was the Ohio.  Blech.  I don't think she ever reconciled herself to her beer because every time she took a sip, she looked at her plastic cup and scowled; but, being the good sport she was, she drank it, just the same.

As I made my way back to my Subaru, which was closer to Heinz Field than to PNC Park, I thought of the Steelers, who kicked off NFL football last week.  I congratulate them on their win over the Titans.  Except Hines Ward.  I still feel his pain.

With my nod to the Steelers out of the way, I can finally turn my attention to my true loves, the Pittsburgh Penguins, with their pre-season opener scheduled tonight, and the regular season starting Oct 2.  Belinda and I will be there for both, with or without the hotdogs and singing, but armed with cell phones to locate one another on opposite sides of the ice.  We will wave and text occasionally, and cheer ourselves hoarse.  My son, Nicholas, and I will keep constant contact during the game, as usual; so, as a mom, I owe the Penguins an eternal debt of gratitude.

The Pirates are winding down (thank God), the Steelers are cranking up and the Pens are practicing for the start of the real season.  All is well in my Pittsburgh sports world.  Let the fall fun begin!

Part 2: Never You Mind

I wrote a Part 2, really I did.  The trouble was that I didn't like it: too dark, too dreary, too much of a bummer.  Plus, it just didn't work.  Not my best piece of writing.  So, I'm deferring Part 2 until a later date.  It's all for the best, you know, because I still haven't figured out the space thing.  Have you?   

Have a terrific weekend!

From Louise

Part 1: Space Exploration

If the four words that people dread the most are, We need to talk, then surely, a close second is, I need more space.  When those words slammed into my ears and skidded to a halt inside my head not too long ago, I was stunned by my automatic reaction: You think YOU need space?  I can’t get away from you fast enough!  Somehow I managed to keep silent, noting that I felt the same as I did when I was ten years old and secretly sticking my tongue out at one of my friends by rolling it into the inside of my cheek.

My biggest problem was that I didn't know what the word space meant.  Did he want me to leave the room?  Leave the state?  Date other men?  Go away, jump off a bridge and die?  Being the insecure person I admit that I am, I assumed the latter, which, of course, lent itself to a certain amount of angst; so I decided to let the conflict air out for a bit, until I could settle down, mull it over and revisit it later, when I was rational, always a challenge for this sensitive, oh-my-God-don't-panic-when-things-get-weird!-type of thinker.  But I knew I couldn't let it sit too long because once I need more space is out and swirling over everyone’s head like a smelly, bomb of a funnel cloud, it has the same shelf life as a glass of milk sitting un-covered on a kitchen counter in an un-airconditioned house during the month of August.  To further complicate matters, ten pounds of dead worry attached themselves to my arms and legs, as part of the emotional drama/upheaval package deal, that I had to lug around with me wherever I went, which lent itself to a certain amount of exhaustion.  Clearly, working out space issues is a load, while timing is of the essence―treacherous territory even under the best of circumstances.

Stay tuned for Part 2 on Friday....

Summer's End

6 or a Half Dozen

This is how it looked on my blog: click here. 

This is how it looked in my journal:

"I like you," he said.  "You have energy that just comes out.  Even more important, you have moxie."

I tried not to squirm in my seat, but instead, willed a smile to my lips over my glass of diet coke, while he sipped his merlot with a dopey grin on his face.

Later, in my pj's at my computer, I looked up "moxie" in Wikipedia.  I laughed.  Don't people know I spend half my time hiding my face in the folds of my mastiffs' wrinkly necks?

Bits and Pieces of No Relevance Whatsoever

Thank you to Unconscious Mutterings, Week no. 342, for the prompts.

Delayed :: Reaction

This is my normal state.  For example, after flying all day from LA to Pittsburgh, veering off course to stop in Atlanta, my boyfriend, Ken, called.  “You must be exhausted,” he said.  “Nope,” I said.  “I’m ready to unpack, change the mastiffs' bedding, do the laundry, check the mail and pay any bills that came in while I was gone.”  The next day, I was exactly the same—Woohoo! into this and Yahoo! into that.  However, it was the day after that when I could barely bribe myself out of bed.  I tried coffee, cinnamon toast, fruit and a fried egg, sunny side up, with a half-pat of butter and just the right amount of salt and pepper.  The only thing that worked was simply running out of time.

Irresponsible :: The inner child

I never understood why people encourage their inner children.  My adult self spends an inordinate amount of time trying to calm down the screaming, panicky child inside.  When will that kid figure out that bumps in the road aren’t going to tear her into a zillion pieces and fling them around, like the Flying Monkeys did to the Scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz?  Part of him was over here and part of him was over there.  I wonder if anyone would be able to stuff me back together.

Stupendous :: Beyond fabulous

What exactly qualifies as stupendous?  Maybe an act of heroism or strength, whereby the goal attained looked absolutely impossible from the start.  Rushing to fling a child out of the way of a speeding car, or a strong man lifting a ton of weight over his head at the state fair.  Personally, I prefer the heroism.  When was the last time I did something stupendous?  This morning.  I got out of bed.

Barcelona :: Company

Where ya goin?  Barcelona.  Oh.  Don’t get up.  Do ya have to?  Yes, I have to.  Oh.  Don't get up.  Stephen Sondheim.  The foolish woman in the song gave up her overseas trip to stay with a man who confused her name, April, with June.  Well, at least both months are warm, unless, of course, you live somewhere where they aren't.

Solution :: Mixture

I’m going to Hollander’s School in Ann Arbor for a class in bookmaking.  I know from a past class that the school provides a pure PVA glue for gluing paper, which is too thick and too fast-drying for paper, in my opinion.  This time, I’m sneaking in my own mixture of one part homemade cake-flour paste to one part PVA.   The result will be the perfect consistency for gluing paper with the added bonus of getting an extra minute for repositioning, which I almost always need. 

Simplify :: My life

If I can break those detailed, complex, big pictures into manageable pieces, things go well for me.  When I am overwhelmed, my sanity and life screech to an unstable halt.  Ken is calm and steady.  So are many of my family members, friends and my mastiffs, past and present.  I don’t know how any of them do that.

Crumble :: Cave

They say the best parents are consistent parents.  Lay down the rules and stick to them, they advise sanctimoniously.  Consistency never was my forté.  As a single mom, blasted with the combined energy of two teenaged boys, who worked together like a highly trained Special Forces unit to drive me absolutely nuts, crumbling was too familiar a sensation.  And yet, we all survived.

May you survive a great weekend!

From Louise

Looking Back in a Weird Sort of Way

From now on, I must remember not to look at my reflection in my Subaru's rear-view mirror.  I would see deep rivers etched around my nose and under my eyes, startling sun spots I never noticed before and pores so enlarged they look like the moon's surface.  Just as the moon distorts my backyard with a ghostly gray, my Subaru's rear-view mirror magnifies my defects and swathes me in pea-green, the same color as motion sickness.

L is for...

Lost

Scouring my 2006 journal for snippets to load onto my blog, I asked myself why I didn’t just write something new.  The answer came, loud and clear.  I’ve been feeling sad and it's starting to get to me.  I came to California to spend time with my boys, one of the best occasions for any mom whose grown sons are well and happy and productive and making their own decisions responsibly.  Even so, I’m still sad.  There is a dissatisfaction, a dissonance inside me that I can’t shake off, as if something ended, but nobody told me what it was.  But I feel it anyway.  It sits in my stomach, pressed hard into a knot and reminds me every minute that it is there.

L.A.

Too big, too crowded, too nutty, too noisy, too polluted, too plastic.  And yet, here I am.  Last night, one son slept on my couch.  The other took me down the street to grab a snack before bed.  On the way back, a man with glassy, sparkly eyes that were half-closed, stopped Jeffrey with a handshake and acted like they were the best of friends.  “Who was that?” I asked Jeffrey, as we slid by and he held the door for me.  He shrugged.  In the elevator, Jeffrey said, “I meet someone like that every day.”  “Someone like what?” I asked.  “Someone who thinks they know you, but they don’t?”  “No.  Someone who’s whacked out and dying to talk.”  “Oh,” I said, stepping out onto the third floor.

Laughter

I've been here less than 24 hours and we’ve already had several bouts of hysterical laughter about nothing.  Well, that’s an exaggeration.  Each bout, of course, was about something, just not something anyone else would necessarily find funny.  The running gag became honking horns in LA.  "Out of my way!"  Honk.  “Turn left!”  Honk.  “I bought a new TV today!”  Honk.  “My wife had a baby!”  Honk.  I’ve got to hand it to Nicholas and Jeffrey, both of them are irresistibly funny with impeccable timing.  And both of them can imitate my laugh so perfectly, it’s embarrassing.

Loveliness:  Hope your weekend is filled with it!

From Louise

Stampede

You wouldn’t realize this, since my blog gets posted at a normal hour, but as I type this, it is 4:45 am and I have been tossing and turning for hours.  It all began when I went to bed last night, to discover that my 200-lb mastiff, Charlie, had made himself comfy on the other side of the bed, shunning his normal blanket-covered pad on the floor.  At the time, I thought this was adorable, and made sure my 165-lb puppy, Webster, settled on the same side with Charlie, near my feet, giving me plenty of room to sleep comfortably.

The trouble came when Charlie had a nightmare.  He barked and woke me, but before I could turn around to pet him awake, he leapt to his feet, trampled my legs and charged off the bed, landing in the middle of the floor, where he stood for a few minutes, looking around the room.  But forget Charlie.  I was more concerned with my legs, which I determined were fine.  Even so, obviously this is a great way to break both legs, or arms, or ribs, or anything else standing in the path of Charlie’s beeline to the floor, but I had never considered this scenario in my daily decision, unpopular with many people who don’t want huge, horsey animals in bed with them, to allow a mastiff to sleep with me.

I have spent the nights safely with one to three mastiffs in bed with me for twelve years.  However, Charlie’s nocturnal escapade, coupled with two-and-a-half more hours of sleeplessness, has encouraged me to rethink our arrangement.

Housekeeping Haiku

 

 

Trying to clean house

Waylaid by my computer

Facebook wins again.

Week in Review

What I Could Do

Smile, stick it out, swim in Lake Michigan, find my way home, shampoo two adult male mastiffs, deodorize the house, make notecards from my first batch of handmade paper, manage arthritis pain, lift weights, call my friends, breathe the deep green of late summer, start writing again.

 

What I Couldn’t Do

Smile, relax, drive the speed limit, use my EZ-Pass to pay the Ohio Turnpike toll, eat, fight the sadness, successfully fib about it to Eleanor, keep the house neat and tidy, get refunds on flights and hotel for my canceled class in New York that was supposed to be this weekend, ignore the full moon, focus on any one thing for any given amount of time, stay down-in-the-dumps for very long.  

 

How about you?  How are you doing?  I hope you have an upbeat, fun weekend.

 

From Louise

Change Like the Pittsburgh Weather

 

I quite imagine that one more blog about the weather is tiresome at best, and unbearably boring at worst; but nevertheless, here it is.  The sun doesn't quite shine, the rain doesn't quite fall and those long weeks of unwavering heat never quite kicked in.  The usual soupy unbearability of Ohio River Valley Augusts is nowhere to be seen.  Instead, the weather hangs overhead, cool, moist and changing every moment, laughing at us, making us wonder what we should wear when we get up in the morning, jeans or shorts, short-sleeves or long?  A jacket or a sweater is a must against the attacks of central ice in restaurants, theaters, offices and stores.  That said, I suppose if these are the most pressing concerns of my day, then my life is pretty damned wonderful, amazing, fortunate, and all the rest.  I think I'll finish my coffee and jump back into it, looking for the place where I was before.

This Explains Much

 

Soul simply does not allow me to excel at things that move my life in the wrong direction.

-Collette Caron, The Spirit of Writing

Mid-Summer Day's Dream

Clouds swirled above him, purples churning to menacing grays.  Bright and dark steel shadows changed shape, hovering and broiling like witch's brew.  He closed his eyes and felt the gusts rail against his face, flinging his hair, crunching his body flat against the tree that cradled him, a safe crook.  A thunder slice, a shot of rain; the back door flew open.

"Kenny!" his grandmother shouted.  "Come out of that tree this instant!"  She shook her head and struggled to hold the door open.  "Honestly, that's the worst place to be in a storm," she said, while Kenny wiggled out of his haven.

"No, it's the best," he thought, as he dropped to the ground and fled the fury whose force he longed to taste.

Found at the Fair

Yesterday I spent three hours rewriting a scene, pulling my family and myself out of a horse show, eliminating the horses, the riders, the ring, the stands and the stables, and placing us into an Ohio State Fair parking lot to cluster around our station wagon that served as a picnic table, fort, bed and couch, depending on who was where and doing what.

This morning, I settled in front of my computer, took a sip of hot coffee, yawned, stretched and started clicking.  The document sprang up in front of me like it always does, so I jumped right in.  It took only a few moments.

Ew, I said to myself.  This doesn’t work at all.

In the scene, I was an upset ten-year-old, trying to shut out the world and retreat into a still place.  Hiding in the car behind a book wasn’t half as compelling as fleeing to the stables to wedge myself, curled into a tight ball, between two bales of hay, where I spent the afternoon comforted by occasional stomping, the swish of a tail, snorts and chortles, lazy chewing noises, a quiet whinny and the rustling of hay, which sounded like leaves in the wind.  Add to these a symphony of smells―the hay, oats, fresh manure, treated leather, saddle soap and hamburgers on a grill somewhere nearby.

When I wander too far from personal experience, I make everything up, which is exactly how my work reads.  Not only does it sound contrived, but my characters lose their clarity.  The narrator's voice changes, and not in a good way.  Surely in these circumstances, it’s best to stick with the facts, however laden they are with daydreams, wishes, wanderings, misunderstandings, imaginings, forgetfulness and conjecture, qualities that make it difficult for me to call my work nonfiction, even though it technically is.

So, it looks like I will spend three hours today extracting my family and me from the Ohio State Fair parking lot and plopping us back into a horse show, where we should have been all along.  Even now, I believe that if I could just hang out with animals, I could have my temporary retreat from the world without ever being lonely.

O Unhappy, Happy Day

There was nothing wrong with me today; really, there wasn’t.  It’s just that I heard some rather unsettling news about one very best friend that I wanted to discuss with another very best friend, so I could figure out how to best respond to the first very best friend, but the other very best friend was busy working, unable to be disturbed, which is what happens when people are working.  So I spent the day not phoning him, texting him or emailing him, while spending the rest of the day trying not to cry.  All this effort was sandwiched in between unpacking, a doctor's appointment, classes I’m researching on the internet, plans for presents to make, dog shampooing, kennel cleaning, laundry, bill paying, cooking wheat paste for paper, rewriting an essay to find places to submit to, and so on.  I should have been too busy for mush and tears.  What did I have to cry about, anyway?  I just came back from a wonderful vacation and discovered my home intact, my mastiffs happy and my family well; so I’m not really sure what the problem was, one more thing I wanted to discuss with him (the other very best friend, not the first one).  So, while there was nothing wrong with me today; really, there wasn’t, that didn't prevent me from feeling like there was.

Sweet

Just in time, words that rhyme, well bless your soul.
Now I'll fill your hands with kisses and a Tootsie Roll.

--from Art Gartfunkel's "Disney Girls", Breakaway album

June is Bustin' Out All Over

Make a Smilebox slideshow

From Louise

Driftwood

A girl sits cross-legged in her bed, leaning sideways from her pillow, with books, prayers, pen and journal strewn about her, to gaze out the window at brown branches, smothered in green, and the vivid blue sky of drifting hotcake-clouds, fluffy and sweet.  She daydreams about something elusive.  What is it exactly?  Zooming out, she looks back at her face, peering through the glass pane, shrinking to a pinprick lost in a sea of beauty and trouble.  She wonders.  Does anyone even know she is there?

Proud to be a Pittsburgher