The Most Wonderful Weekend Ever June 23, 2008

OK that last picture makes me laugh. I don’t know what got into me and no - no - no, Britt. Put down the knife or whatever. I’m very obviously not pregnant.

But I am - I remain - funny as hell.

I had the flu on Thursday. I haven’t had the flu since I was pregnant with Britt - and that was like, wow, 29 years ago. The sit-on-the-toilet-with-the-garbage-can-in-your-hands kind of flu. I thought I was going to die. I prayed I would die.

And I was all better for my birthday. And I got the three best birthday presents ever.

And then Saturday. I don’t have the words. It was sweet and informal and very very us.

And Saturday night about 65 friends and neighbors showed up and we grilled and sat around the fire ring on the patio and played with babies and told more funny stories. It was relaxing and fun and we both felt so freaking grateful we could hardly express it.

On Sunday we got up, cleaned up the backyard, hauled tables and chairs back to the fire station where we had borrowed them, and went golfing.

I really suck at golfing. I particularly suck at chipping, or pitching, or whatever they call it. To make a long story short I tried to chip and actually got under it for once - and damn near knocked out my new husband’s - uh - family jewels.

Hehehehehehehehehehehe

And then we went for what I was envisioning as a romantic stroll around Pine Lake. Except that he is 6′4″ - almost a full foot taller than me - and would have to be almost comatose to be strolling at my pace.

So we set off on this enduance hike, went further on this trail than I had ever gone, and then, seeing my distress, uttered those fateful words that should make every woman weep…

“Look, honey. I’m pretty sure that’s a short cut.”

Again. Long story short. We made it back to our cars - some people even offered to give us a ride back on their golf cart - yeah, we wandered onto another golf course in our adventure.

And it was the best best best best weekend ever.

Going back to work today was like when I lived in Mexico as a teenager and had to come back to the United States. I was glad to be home, but it felt like another planet.

No woman on earth is more fortunate than me.

Whaddya Know? Does This Make It A “Destination Wedding”? June 12, 2008

Ahhhhh. What little girl hasn’t dreamed of a “destination wedding”? Somewhere ocean side or lakeside - sun setting dramatically on the water, blah blah blah.

Besides me, I mean. I think I was the only little girl who never once planned her wedding as a little kid. I was going to be a world class war correspondent capturing the horrors of war and its effects on women and children so brilliantly that the world would wake up and go “Whoaaaaa - we have to stop this.”

Or a circus clown.

But I digress. (And I wasn’t kidding. About either.)

So we were going to get married on July 12, because that was going to be our first day off together. We, of the schedules-written-in-stone-that-can’t-be-changed.

And then his boss changed his schedule. Out of the blue.

My response. “Are you freaking kidding me?”

No. Apparently he wasn’t.

So after some schedule swapping around, our first day off together is now going to be Saturday, June 21. So my darling accosted his friend-who-happens-to-be-a-judge at home grilling in his backyard, and the date is set. 10 am on our deck that morning with just our kids present - minus that little Florida one - er - what’s her name? heh

And grilling out in our backyard that evening with whoever shows up.

Except that the weather does not stop here!

Two and a half inches of rain again last night. Darling is out right now doing traffic for what he refers to as “the city boys” who are pumping water on Main Street. Basements are flooding everywhere, and this ain’t shit.

Yesterday he went to a fire (he’s also a fireman) started by a sump pump that self immolated in the basement of an accounting office.

The entire freaking state has become lakeside property. My little pharamcy delivery guy came in last night, white faced from trying to reach us. His dad’s house is gone. Foundation crumbled, windows blown out.

They have taken, I hear, to preemptively flooding some basements all the way up to the top of the foundation in the path of the flood waters because at least that will keep the water pressure - uh - the same? So it doesn’t rush through and crumble the foundations with it.

Because unlike tornado damage, which is covered by insurance, flood damage is not.

Which means everything you see on TV washing away, and everything you don’t - furnaces dead, water heaters, cracked foundations, blown out windows, everything ruined - well, kids, that’s just tough cookies. Act of God and all that.

Another goddamn tornado hit a Boy Scout camp last night in western Iowa, killing four teenage boys and wounding 30-40 more that we’ve heard about now.

And somewhere around midnight the page went out and Darling (see how stringently I’m avoiding the term “my man”? Hmmm?) hopped up, jumped into his clothes and headed out the door to do “spotting”. This time, with me on his heels.

“What are you doing?” he says to me.

“I’m going with you.” He gives me a strange look and I say, “I’m never going through another two hours searching for you like I did in Parkersburg.”

So I sat in the front of that fire truck with two fireman, scanning the horizon, trying to see funnel clouds whenever lightning lit the sky enough to see something through the rain. My teeth clenched. Silent as a stone. When I get nervous, I chatter. When I get really scared, I clam up.

“Hey honey,” he says to me, trying to lighten the mood. “You can talk. you know.”

I look sideways at him and say, “Remember you said that.”

hahahahahahahahahahaha

Seriously. Is God mad at us all?

The Antidote June 11, 2008

I’ve been going through something lately.

The tornado and its aftermath that I can’t escape - the flooding two weeks later…

I don’t know if it’s given me a heightened sensitivity to tragedy and pain or what.

But I’ve just been bone crushingly…not sad. Just very very aware of all the pain and shit around us.

There was a guy on Oprah yesterday who’s dying of cancer. And there was a guy in his late 40’s that our ambulance crew responded for - massive heart attack.

I think it’s stuff that’s always around us, but ever since the tornado it seems to me that that’s all I see and hear.

It makes me feel helpless and vulnerable and almost hopeless.

I was talking to Britt about it this morning, telling her I needed to find some balance between being open to other people’s pain and empathetic - and letting it crush me.

Wondering how to get back to that sunny optimism I usually feel.

I want to keep the gratitude and humility, without the heavy weight of despair on my shoulders.

Then this morning my fiance and I went flower shopping.

See, flowers and gardening have always been one of my things, and last summer our yard was downright lush with pots and plots and stuff.

This year of course, as I mentioned before, it’s been bare. Not only did I not live here for two months in the spring, but since then, there’s been no time for such frivolity.

Ah, but this morning I came home with two delicious hanging baskets spilling over with some kind of gardenias. And wave petunias - yes, wave petunias! in two big pots that I sat in the cormers of the patio around our fire ring.

A shepherd’s hook and a hanging pot of New Guinea impatiens with their dark waxy leaves and their neon bright flowers. Hard to kill those babies.

And several assorted little bedding plants - regular petunias, lobelia, sweet potato vines and impudent pansies.

And when I came home and set those pots out and around, I was cheered.

And I realized that the antidote is HOME. As they say on my favorite TV channel, HGTV, Start At Home.

Home is where I can feel safe and nurtured and relaxed. Where I do the little caring rituals that I’ve always done, cooking and doing laundry. Where everything is familiar and cozy. Where I can dream - and daydream.

Yes, “home”, as in a building and its possessions can all disappear in the blink of an eye.

But as of right now, I have my family. My fiance. My puppies. And my loving them and caring for them and laughing with them doesn’t dishonor anyone else’s pain and tragedy. In fact, I think it honors it.

It embodies hope.

At least it makes me feel more balanced.

And boy you should see my pretty flowers!

Getting Back to “Normal” June 9, 2008

I must be getting back to some kind of normal - whatever “normal” is.

Because as I look out over my backyard at my neighbor’s yard - a neighbor known for the most beautiful gardens, I find myself turning an unbecoming shade of green.

My friends, I have petunia envy.

Specifically, “wave petunias” - which apparently are all the rage and have been all the rage, only I just discovered them last summer. In said backyard neighbor’s backyard.

Look at these beauties - and no this is NOT my yard. My yard is bare of flowers - in the back anyway.

Last summer I had hanging baskets and big square planters and clever little half moon plots leading into my vegetable garden.

This year - nada.

But I get paid tomorrow……

I’m Sorry June 2, 2008

…but I just don’t know what to say.

The ability of word craftsmanship has completely left me, at least for the moment.

Honestly, no one can say it better than my daughter has.

I have never seen a more beautiful and precious face than hers - tear stained, exhausted, strained, her little chin stuck out in determination and frustration.

Boys from the high school football team dug graves by hand with shovels for the first two residents of the town - a husband and wife - to be buried. That sticks in my head. Who ever thinks their teenage kid will be called upon to dig a grave?

Britt’s right. The spirit rises. And there is laughter amidst the tears. On Saturday the Iowa State football team was in town working on a site - clearing away the rubble. They asked a girl to take their photo together - not knowing it was our own rabid University of Iowa fan Molly, who said, “OK everybody, everybody say…HAWKEYES!” Hehehehehehe

My friend Betty came back in to work. I said, “Why are you using that walkie talkie, I thought you had your own? Where’s yours?”

With a perfectly straight face she looks at me and says “I don’t know. Wisconsin maybe?”

Life is so so good. So precious.

And a good huge percentage of the bullshit around which I have whirled most of my adult life is nothing but crap.

I’m talking about the shit in my head. The mental gymnastics.

I’ve been seeking some Zen kind of “meaning of life”? I found it. In the rubble, racing around town on a Gator trying to get to people who are getting hurt afterwards, trying to clean up.

In the face of my child, and her husband. And my neighbors.

The meaning of life is to live. To get up every day and attend to the task at hand - and in the meantime to encourage the person God puts in front of you at that time.

To hug the babies, because I’ve seen that a baby can lose their whole house, and they could care less, as long as someone still picks them up and plays with them and gives them their full attention.

I haven’t slept in my proud little tipi since the tornado. Not at all because I’m afraid to, but because I’m afraid to spend one unnecessary minute away from the man I ran away from two months ago.

I can’t imagine what I’ll write about in the future. Although I know that I will. I write as I breathe, like Britt does, like Selma does. Like so many of you do.

Time to go to work. Because that’s what I do. And darlings, that is so much more than enough for me.

Nerves Are Frayed May 30, 2008

Yesterday was my day off of work. Which was amazing, actually, considering the number of co-workers who aren’t coming in to work right now, having lost their homes. I expected to be called in. But I wasn’t.

So I spent the day with The Man manning the First Aid Station in Parkersburg. You may wonder, as I did, “WTF? Why do they need a first aid station now?”

Because people are picking up debris and cutting stuff down and - whatever. They step on nails and whack themselves in the head with pieces of lumber and steel.

Because people get chest pain, or break open stitches and staples from a few nights before.

And because until sometime yesterday there was no potable water in town, so one of our duties was to run around town on golf carts and gators handing out water.

Some genius at Incident Command (I kid you not, they use that term), at 10 am, decided to test the tornado siren yesterday at 10 am, once it was hooked back up. Without warning anyone. And yesterday was a day of rain and thunder and black skies again.

People freaked.

And last night there were more storms. Tornado watches and suddenly a small something blew into Aplington, Parkersburg’s sister town 4 miles to the west where my little domicile is. Knocking over trees, one house, one barn and one shed. Knocking out power.

There is no grocery store for 20 miles now.

There is a junk car graveyard set up on the east edge of town where they’ve been hauling the mangled wrecks. There are lots more still scattered all over the town.

I know I’m not conveying anything well here.

I think in bullets.

The Man was out all night in Parkersburg patrolling with a deputy from Benton County. They’re taking cops from all over the state because - well, I hate to even tell you this. But there’s been looting. And also, of course, to keep people out of dangerous areas after dark.

Where I work - we’re full as of yesterday. There are elderly coming out of the hospital with injuries with nowhere to go - their families have nowhere to take them either.

So they come to me. The ones who were a little confused to begin with - how do I even tell you? One man asks me fifty times a day, “Tell me again what happened. Why am I here? These aren’t my clothes.”

Thank you so much, guys.

Thank you so so so much.

I’m Fine May 28, 2008

Thank you everyone.

I’m fine.

And Britt, Jared, and the kids made it here safely, thank God. I haven’t seen them yet because, rightfully so, their focus is on helping their Jared’s parents and Jared’s brother and sister-in-law and their babies.

I can tell you that everything is changed. Nothing is the same, and I don’t know that it ever will be again.

That I have seen horror and heroism I have never seen the likes of before - and never want to again.

That the photos and videos you see don’t begin to capture what it’s like.

That it’s like walking on the face of the moon. You can’t tell where you are in a town where all your kids grew up - a town you know every inch of - because all the landmarks are gone.

And that I have come to the humbling realization that most of the shit upon which I have been spending my precious time, energy, and thoughts - just doesn’t mean shit.

Whether or not someone likes me, how someone should act or respond to me, or think, or speak, or dress.

The man I ran away from at the end of March - when he heard a tornado was on its way toward me and Creed and he couldn’t get me on the phone - he jumped in his car and headed right into it to get to me to make sure I was safe. Luckily, all he hit was the debris, and made it into Parkersburg minutes after the 15 second toranado took everything. He stayed there because there were bodies everywhere, and he is trained to handle those things. And with phone service out all he could do was attend to the task at hand, and pray for me.

I have heard a lot of songs and read a lot of books and magazine articles about what love is, and I could have told you very clearly on Sunday afternoon what I believe love is.

A few hours later I knew it in my bones.

Being a nurse, as soon as I was assured that I was OK and my residents were OK, I raced into the same war zone and spent the rest of the day helping people I’ve known most of my adult life,

And searching for him. Asking every fireman I saw where his crew was. Asking every familiar face if they’d seen him.

And then I found him.

And I got down on my knees in the rubble and the rain and with the shell shocked people wandering around me and asked him to forgive me for my self indulgence, my arrogance, my holier-than-thou bullshit.

This morning is the first morning that we had more than a few hours’ worth of sleep at a time. I will go back to work here in a few hours because the most productive thing I can do is to calm the fears of those I am resposible for, many of whom lost their homes, or their families did, and can’t comfort them.

And work for co-workers who have lost everything and don’t know when they will be able to come in again.

Everyone has been touched and I know, more than anything, that I am blessed beryond measure. None of mine went to the hospital while the rest of us searched for them. There was one terrifying moment on Sunday night when the man and I searched frantically for Creed, who had spent the day pulling people out from under destruction, carrying food and water from one staging area to the next and had given his cell phone without a thought to a woman trying frantically to reach her family.

Running from place to place, asking everyone “Have you seen Creed? Have you seen my son?” And the mud stained, bleak faces of my friends and neighbors, shaking their heads. “He was here a while ago.”

I could give a shit now about karaoke or - gosh. Anything.

Except my children and grandchildren. And collecting underwear for people, and diapers and formula. And holding the hands of the elderly refugees who have come to us, bandaged, fractured, lacerated and sutured, who ask over and over again, “Tell me again what happened. I don’t understand what happened.”

Hug your children and grandchildren.

What Comes From Too Much Freedom May 24, 2008

Hooray for long weekends!

And in my case a long weekend is a TWO day weekend. In four years at my current job - policy of working “every other holiday” notwithstanding - I have never ever had Memorial Day off.

And I don’t care. Because I am NOT picking up extra hours this weekend, and I have TWO whole days off in a row for the first time in over a month!

I came home last night, fended off friends’ text messages to go out with them, welcomed home my baby boy from college, and sat down at the computer and carved up my paycheck into my bills. And with what’s left over I ordered four brand spanking new windows from my favorite supplier. They’re no frills, but they’re perfect for what I need - their prices are good and - even better - their customer service is terrific!

So I sit here on a cloudy, windy day-off morning wondering: what to do? What to do?

I can’t go shopping. Last night’s online ordering spree took care of that.

Right now I’m in the “not so fun and oh so expensive” part of re-feathering my nest. The “I have to get the walls, windows, and floors sound before I can put anything pretty inside” part.

So all the drooling over design websites is just mental gymnastics - kind of like Avi and porn. Hehehehehehe. The budget, she is shot for another 2-1/2 weeks. Turn on HGTV.

I have been invited here and there, but man, I find it harder and harder to leave my little nest, after being away from it so much and so long.

I love Home. Even as shabby and oddly dysfunctional as it is - and I mean that in a structural sense - for once.

I rescued a homemade bird feeder from the neighbor who made it and was going to throw it away because “it’s summer now and the birds can fend for themselves”. Silly man. Like winter won’t come again.

And that sets me to daydreaming about the “losethelawn” area I envision to the east side of my home - a narrow little strip between my house and the neighbors. I’m not a bland expanse of green grass type person. I see winding walkways and flowers and plants selected for their color and height and texture and fragrance.

I see odd little reclaimed treasures tucked here and there - like this homemade bird feeder that uses a license plate bent as the roof. I want to mount it on a pole and sit by the window and watch the little ones come and breakfast while I do.

I want to curl up on my second hand couch, bare feet tucked under me. When you’re on your feet working as much as I am, the shoes come off when the time clock clicks, not to appear again until it’s time to punch in again. Flip flops, sandals, and bare feet are the order of the day.

I want to take my puppies “bye bye”, even if it’s just a run to the convenience store for cigarettes and a fountain pop. “Home”, in my head, extends to my big old cruiser.

I don’t want to “give” to anyone today - not after several days of not feeling well and a month of giving the best I can manage at work.

I want to cook something. I want to nap. I want to go to the library and get new books. I wonder if libraries have shortened hours for Memorial Day?

I wonder if this post is just mindless rambling - and then I wonder if, if so, what the hell is wrong with that?

Panic Ensues! No Internet Connection! May 21, 2008

Sometime around 10 am yesterday I was at the computer (agaaaaaiiiiiin) and noticed I couldn’t connect. No big deal, right? Go to the bathroom, have a cigarette, come back.

Nothing.

I will telescope what could be a fun (or boring) story to tell you that I had NO Internet service for about 24 hours. First, there was a widespread outage. Apparently that ended last night. Then today I still had nothing and had to resort to calling tech support.

Which is always a study in personality at the best of times. Frustrated customer vs. human-being-with-no-people-skills-and-that’s-why-they’re-in-tech-support.

I will be the talk around that water cooler today, I’m sure, because after all of my homemade gyrations involving unplugging this, that, and everything remotely wired to my computer and cable modem, it seems all I had to do was push one button for a “quick reset” and - voila!

Smug bastards.

But at least I’m among the land of the living again. “Real world” afficionados, go away.

See, it was my day off yesterday. And see, I am deep into my total cult-like immersion into all things design - as in looking and looking and looking and searching and thinking and so on, on the Internet, for design-for-small-spaces ideas and how-to information.

Throw in a few sidestrips looking for really fun things like “ashtrays that are also artwork” and you have my down-time pursuits right now.

I couldn’t do that yesterday. And that was what I really wanted to do. And I responded about like a two year old - very un-Zen-like.

I was pissy. I was roiling in self pity. I took a three hour nap to get away from myself. I was crabby with the puppies.

Well, obviously, I’m fixed now. Er - my Internet connection is fixed.

I’m chagrined at how un-hippie-like of me it is to be so crazed about not having Internet connection for a brief time.

And tomorrow I will tell you all the fabulous ideas I have now for ripping out a ridiculously ugly and non-functional hall closet/pantry behemoth - and creating a wall of shelving storage on the half wall that separates living from kitchen. Complete with fold down desk for the computer stuff.

But for now I’m just going to google google google.

And giggle.

Wish you were here!

Ode to the Inner Bitch May 19, 2008

I have said the same sentence so many times to my baby. “Honey - release your inner bitch.” If you’ve read or met Britt at all, you know she has some very strong and well thought out opinions on a lot of things.

But like her mother before her who taught her - and like a lot of women I know - there are times we feel justified in expressing those strong opinions - strongly. And times when we sit back and mewl like kittens, all in the name of “being nice”.

“Release your inner bitch.” I became so enamored of phrase I coined that I started using it with other women I talk to. Mothers whose teenage kids talk to them with disrespect. Wives and girlfriends whose men do something we wouldn’t tolerate in a girlfriend.

And I am all about live-and-let-live. And compassion, and everybody has a reality from their own perspective. And listening. And letting it roll off my back. I’m a hippie, remember?

But there are times, damn it, when it’s time to draw the line in the sand, bare one’s teeth, and dare some stupid ass to cross it.

Everybody has their own triggers.

I have two.

One is to insinuate, or say outright, that I lie. Because I don’t. I think it’s childish - what are you going to do if you don’t like my truth? Spank me? Ground me?

I also don’t have the attention span to lie because then I would have to remember what story I told you, in order to perpetuate it.

And foremost, I hate having to try to have any kind of a relationship with someone who lies, because I’m building my half of the sand castle leaning against yours - and if you lie, there is no support on your side for the castle - er- relationship.

I taught my kids when they were little that the two worst things they could do in the world were to lie and be mean to people. All three of them, plus various other kids who I “mothered” over the years” can repeat that phrase by rote.

So don’t fucking ever say to me that I lie. Or sunny sweet Nanna will turn into rabid nasty Nanna with a vocabulary arsenal that will cut you to shreds.

The inner bitch is released.

That happened to me this weekend. Someone knowing my aversion to lying, in an attempt to get my goat, implied that I was a liar. And the needle buried itself in the red zone in less than a second.

I let loose and said all (no, most) of the things I’ve always bit my tongue from saying before because, typically, women have brakes on their tongues. You can fight and argue and say hurtful things but there are always those things that are never brought up. The deepest insecurities. The most putrid wounds.

But damn it, you asked for it.

And afterward I felt a little ashamed of myself because I really do try to be a “good person”.

And then today I thought to myself, nope.

There are times when you have to let people know that here is the boundary. You may trespass this close and no farther. Because if you do, I will fuck up your world. I will remind you that I took the time to get to know you, and I know where your skeletons are buried.

My number two trigger is to threaten me. Not so much with bodily harm because, seriously, I’ve had my ass beat before, and lived through it. At this point in my life, someone who raises a hand to me is going to have a scrap on their hands, because I’m not at all afraid.

But don’t ever threaten my ability to take care of myself, to support myself. I’m paycheck to paycheck as it is, and will be for a couple more years yet (or longer, if I join the cultural trend), and I lay awake sometimes at night trying to figure out how to gracefully make it to payday.

So don’t freaking ever threaten my income.

I will come barrelling out the door with the zeal of every peasant woman who ever brandished a broom to protect her home.

Except that my broom is my mouth - and it has spikes on it.

Today, instead of having that anger hangover that I dreaded, I feel finally more centered. As if I took hold of the leash someone had been yanking me around with and yanked it back into my own two little hands.

This is my life. My best advice to anyone who has a problem with my life is to stay the hell out of it. Find your Zen elsewhere, if I’m so damn upsetting. This is my dance space, and yours is way the hell over there.

I don’t get headaches, baby. I give them.

I’m almost 48 years old, and I don’t need another parent figure. I don’t need a moral compass. I don’t need teenage relationship drama.

What I need - and what I can create for my own self, thank you very much - is peaceful surroundings splashed with beauty.

I need stimulating conversation about things that matter to me - my kids and their kids, the environment, the upcoming election, the sad decline of Christianity into the Pharisaic mentality that my Lord died to free me from.

Stuff like that.

You can clutter my life with whining and moaning and a list of “should’s” for me for so long. But when you cross that line, look out.

I will release my inner bitch.

And I promise you. You will come away remembering her.