The Hell With Cars! April 15, 2008

Nope, I didn’t get my car.

The people I am/was buying it from were busy this weekend, and didn’t get a chance to install the fuel pump it needs. So I spent the weekend in a funk of self-pity.

Until I got tired of myself.

I really hate cars right now. Obviously, being a big hippie, I have a problem with Hummers and the like and even my beloved Jeep has “sold out” and produced a line of soccer-mom Jeep wannabe’s for people who will never break a damn nail, let alone actually go “off road”.

Er, sorry. That’s sure to piss someone off.

For the past year and a half I haven’t had my own car anyway, having signed mine over to my sons, who needed them, because “you can drive mine” - and then had it held over my head that I wouldn’t be able to drive it if I misbehaved.

Bleh.

I live 7 blocks from work, and can certainly walk - but it’s hard to walk carrying a full 2 liter bottle of Diet Pepsi. Or a borrowed drill. Or groceries. I need a backpack or something.

The Dollar General, ice cream store, real grocery store etc are in the town 4 miles east. Certainly not all that far - but too far for this chubby, smoking woman to go.

And I hate hate hate hate hate asking people for rides - or to use their car.

So I have ascended to new heights of weirdness.

I bought an electric bike!

Well, it’s a hybrid, meaning both pedal and electric power - which means I can get to work without being all sweaty and in the early stages of cardiac arrest. And believe me, from what I’ve read (and of course I read exhaustively on the subject before hitting “click here” on the order button) electric bicycles are quite the movement, with some stuff getting up into the thousands of dollars.

Since I didn’t know if I’d like it as well as I think I will, I bought a cheapie. If I do like it, I will be able to upgrade to something bigger and more powerful at some point because I will not be paying for:

* GAS!!

* registration and licensing fees

* insurance

* all the shit that inevitably breaks down when you buy a cheap, old car, which I would have to do

* car payments. I just don’t want to do that right now. I really really need to allow myself some wiggle room.

I go “into town”, meaning the one 30 miles away, maybe twice a month anyway. It irritates me to spend the time and money to do so anyway, car or no, so I buy locally whenever I can.

I shop online, for the same reasons, whenever I can, and figure the shipping costs are a fair trade off for said money and time.

If I have to carry something big, like lumber, I couldn’t do that anyway unless I had a truck, which I wouldn’t, so I’d be back at the old “borrow a truck” place. Which ain’t hard.

I’ll get a car at some point, when my house is in a little better shape and I’m not pouring every nickel into it.

But for now, heh, I have become my kids’ greatest nightmare.

Except, seriously, it is thanks to my daughter that I actually pulled the trigger and bought it.

I loved the whole idea, myself. The only thing that gave me pause was wondering how queer and eccentric people would think I had finally become. Which normally I don’t give two shits about, but my kids are another story.

Jay, my hippie son, will laugh and think it’s cool. He hasn’t had a car in months - the one I gave him broke, and he had no clue how to fix it. Ah well, I bought that one for $500 too and got a good two years out of it.

Creed, my “to-the-manor-born” baby, will drop dead of an embarrassed heart attack. Or maybe not. He llikes me much better and tolerates my foolishness with much more grace since he has gone off to college.

But Britt - she is my ultimate arbiter of all things cool. Britt, as we all know, is Cool on the Hoof.

So I kind of tiptoed around the subject with her yesterday during our daily ritual phone call, and to my surprise and delight she jumped all over it! She thought it would be a “great way to get excercise” and she, of course, is feeling the pangs at the gas pump right now, with her long commute and her temporary grounding to the Trailblazer.

She did say, “You probably won’t get laid, riding that thing around” and “You know, people talk about people anyway, whatever they do.” I don’t care about getting laid - in fact, have a repulsive aversion to the whole idea right now, so her words were golden to me.

So I did it! I ordered it! Online, of course, and got it for $100 less than I could have gotten one even “in town”. With free shipping to boot!

What I really want, at some point, is one of those whomping gas powered mopeds that go like 65 miles an hour, and cost more than I will pay right now.

But this will be perfect right now!

Go ahead - tell me what a weirdo I am!

The Voice of An Angel Warrior April 14, 2008

Well, shit. I don’t have access to a digital camera right now, and I don’t know how to upload pictures from my camera phone, so I can’t share with you photos or video from Friday night. And there’s no way I can adequately describe the situation in words. But I’m going to try.

Friday night was the long awaited night for me to go to a kind of alternative rock club in Cedar Falls - a college town about 20 miles away - and hear my son in his newly reorganized band. I took the night off work unpaid - something I never ever do - and I drove my friend crazy to “Come on! Come on! I want to get there early!”

And oh - kids - my heart is still quivery.

The thing is, quite obviously, I’ve heard this boy sing at home almost from the day he was born. And I’ve heard him sing publicly at school sponsored events.

But this was different. This was just him, lead vocals, mike in hand, eyes closed sometimes as he completely immersed himself in the magic of the music.

He absolutely wailed - with a voice as strong and powerful and passionate as a warrior angel.

This was him, singing his own original songs, and the floor in front of the stage packed with people reaching out to him and responding, and him with his cockeyed grin playing to the audience. I could feel the waves of energy surging first from him, then toward him, then back again.

This was him, now a 22 year old man, beautiful and poetic and magical, holding them in the palms of his hand, yet boyish enough to have his little face flushed with excitement and accomplishment at the crowd’s response to his cockeyed grin and his soul-bearing performance.

Ah, kids, heaven came close again.

This was pure Jay, on tap and flowing, and it was a privilege beyond words to see him, to hear him, to feel him.

His last song was even a song he had written for me, unfortunately an angry song he had written earlier about how I had to get out, about how he was worried that something bad was going to happen and he was going to have to step in to protect me.

He had been worried, he told me the next day, that I would hear the song and be offended.

Whatever, son. First of all, I didn’t listen to the words - didn’t hear the words. Sorry - I know you put a lot of work into crafting them. I was too caught up in the experience of your soul having voice. You could have been singing Swahili for all I knew.

And secondly, your words were universal. Anyone could relate to them, not just me. His first song was a song he had written for an evil girlfriend he had had at one time. Even I, knowing the whole story and the destruction she had wrought on his tender little first-time-in-love-soul at the time, could understand that anyone could relate to the whole message of being determined to dwell not on the bad but on the good times, if only for one’s own sanity.

So, um, yeah. I was right down on that packed floor, shoving my way to the front, a-glow.

And I talked to his brother that night afterward and gave him the blow by blow and shared his excitement and pride. And his sister called me bright and early the next morning to get the details. That “sharing” part rounded out the whole experience and made it doubly, triply wonderful.

Here’s to you, my Warrior Poet Son. Here’s to giving voice to your soul.

“I Don’t Want To Be Like You!” April 12, 2008

I wasn’t going to post today but something has come into my head that I need to write OUT. Last night I took the night off to go see my beloved son Jay sing for the very first time, with his band, at this rock club “in town”. Very very cool and I will ooh and ahh and bore you all to death with that tomorrow.

I rode with a girlfriend of mine, not having a car yet, and Jay not being her son, she wanted to leave as soon as he was done, which was fine.

So we came back “to town” and went to the bar where she likes to hang out, where I basically ensconced myself at the end with two women I knew, drank Diet Pepsi, and hid out from the idiots, waiting to go home. I was tired - my big thrill of the evening was done - whatever.

On the way home we were talking about relationships, etc. Her divorce was final just this week, and a more vile and abusive man I have never met. I hate him, and have told him so, with some eloquence if I do say so myself. He, obviously, hates me too. But that’s not the point.

Being so newly single, she is scared to death of being alone. And I remember that feeling from when I was divorced five years ago. At the time, all you have known for decades is couplehood, as bad as it may have been, and what you yearn for is a return to its “safety” and “normalcy”.

She’s 11 years younger than me, and said, “I don’t want to end up ten years from now - you know - like you.” And then I had to laugh because she looked like she realized what she said and damn near died of guilt and trying to take it back, etc.

She wants to “grow old” with someone. She wants the fantasy, the white picket fence, the front porch swing, blah blah blah.

It was not the time to point out that, statistically, a woman is far more likely to “grow old” alone anyway, with our men dying off younger. Even my beloved mom, who thought she was being so smart marrying a man 13 years younger, outlived him and had to go through that whole thing.

The poor thing. She said, “I mean, you know what I mean. I don’t want more failed relationships. Not that, you know, you thought those relationships would fail…”

Poor kid.

Because I honestly really like being me right now.

I honestly don’t think a relationship is a success just because it’s still intact. “Intact”, I should say. I also don’t think a relationship has “failed” because it has ended, or changed form, really.

I work every day with women whose husbands died 20-30 years earlier. I also remember a woman who was married for 50+ years to a man who beat the shit out of her on a regular basis, and when dementia kicked in, she relived that horror daily in her mind. It was a tragedy to live through with her. She never, ever, ever felt safe.

I am not afraid. I’m really not. I have amazing kids, as we have discussed so many times - and incredible grandkids - and a career I love and friends I love and things I really want to do just this summer alone, including rehabbing my little home, going fishing, etc.

I went through that stage of “needing to be with someone” to feel normal, and I don’t think one can realize how strong that feeling can be unless you’ve been in that situation.

But I am 100% not in that stage now.

My needs for “companionship” are filled without being gender-specific. My need for time to myself, I would not be able to fulfill were I to pursue another relationship - or rather, to allow myself to be pursued.

For the last five years since my divorce, I lived through two relationships that were not good for me simply because I thought that a middle aged small town white woman like myself was “supposed” to be part of a couple.

I learned a lot from both of them but I also caused myself and my family a lot of pain and unnecessary inconvenience and deprivation through them.

I am content, now, knowing that it is perfectly acceptable - and I am not a man-hating “Feminazi” (GOD I hate Rush Limbaugh and the term he coined) - to be just a normal middle aged small town white woman who works full time, oohs and ahhs over my family, crochets, builds stuff, goes fishing, or does whatever - without a male-partner appendage.

It bugs me that my friend said that - not because I accept her view of my life - but because I hate knowing what she will go through - and the lengths she will go to (as have most of us) - to avoid what she sees as a fate worse than death.

I hate to see women - or anyone - seeing themselves as so small. So incomplete.

And knowing that nothing I can say will change that. Only time and experience.

So…tomorrow I will tell you how incredible and amazing my son was singing. Holy Mary Mother of God, I fell head over heels with him and his powerful voice all over again! And also titillate you with funny stories about how goofy it was to find myself in the room with not one but two ex-husbands. Hehehehehehehehehe

But for today I will enjoy my single life, car-less though it may be for the moment.

Goofy New Kitchen Idea? April 11, 2008

So, OK, my stove is dead.

Rather, the stove that was in my little fixer-upper is dead. After I cleaned and scrubbed and degreased for an entire day, because the man who turned on my gas utilities said I should clean it and then have the appliance man come out and clean out the jets and then it would work.

I can’t remember what mumbo jumbo the appliance man told me other than “It’s not worth it to fix it - even if I could get the part.”

Bite me, appliance boy. I remember when your first child was born, and she’s getting dangerously close to teenage-hood terrorism now. Remember that when you dash somebody’s dreams.

So, oh well. I went running to my girlfriends/co-workers, who said, “No problem, Nanna!” (OK, they didn’t really call me Nanna but then again they call me lots of stuff.) “It’s usually just you anyway, so get an electric skillet and a toaster oven and - combined with the microwave and crock pot you already have - you’ll be fine.” And, amazingly, an electric skillet appeared on my counter by the time I got home. (Thanks, DD!)

So, NOW I’m thinking, well, since the damn thing doesn’t work anyway, I think I will just haul it out (reserve your spot here for that funny moment!) and put some shelving in that spot. To hold the replacement small appliances, natch! And also because it will make it sooo much easier to do the kitchen cabinet refacing I am going to do. As in, sanding, priming and painting with some Miracle Product.

Isn’t that a smart idea? And don’t you think it will give my kitchen that edgy industrial-but-it-was-meant-to-be look?

I have three days off and somehow - somehow - I’ll make it to Menard’s/Home Depot/Lowe’s and get floor tiles and paint.

Happy weekend!

Things you Should Know About Me February 21, 2008

I Don’t Give A Shit About “Stuff”
You know, as in big houses, fancy cars. I am thrilled beyond belief that my daughter and her hubby were able to buy a beautiful house, and a cute little car that suits her right down to the ground. But honestly? I can’t be lured. My all time favorite fantasy is to live in a teepee and drive an old Jeep Wrangler.

I’m Not Big on Dieting
because all it does is make me think about food. And because, at 47, I don’t think I need to have a “hardbody” anymore. And because if what you love about me is my face, my body, etc. - boy, are you ever missing out on the best parts of me.

I Follow, As Much as I Can, a Vegan Diet
because it makes sense to me health wise and environmentally. And because, damn it, it’s my own personal stand against cruelty of every brand and color and ilk. And I don’t really care if “it doesn’t really do any good in the big picture”. I’m reminded of the story of the little kid who was throwing stranded starfish back into the water, and the idiot who said, “There are thousands - you can’t get them all.” Her response? She throws one more back and says “Made a difference to that one, didn’t I?”

People Interest Me -
- the way they think, the way they live, and the journey they’ve taken to arrive at this particular spot in their lives and opinions and beliefs. I don’t agree with all of them - Osama bin Laden, for instance. Not at all. But they intrigue me. If I were to take myself and my three kids to a movie, the happiest outcome would be for my daughter and the baby boy to go in and watch the movie, and leave my oldest son and myself out in the food court watching the people around us. We would all four end the day mesmerized by the stories we’d seen.

I Had the Two Best Fathers in the World
My birth father died of cancer when I was 25 and pregnant with my middle son, skidding into the grave with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other after a lifetime of curiosity and laughter and shenanigans - and he loved me so deeply that he innoculated me against hatred for the rest of my life. My Poppi was my hero, a gentleman’s gentleman in the truest sense of the world, who taught me first hand about gentle honor and dignity and selfless love. They are two of the things I am most grateful for in my whole life.

I Have a Million Kids
Much to my “real kids’” disgust - most of their closest friends became my kids too over the years. Like my little Kristin, and my stepsons, who will always be my sons, regardless of the fact that their dad and I are no longer married and regardless of the fact that they do the stupidest things sometimes.

I’ve Done Missions Work In Another Country
and by that I mean, the kind where you actually go out and feed people who don’t have food. People who live around a big garbage dumb and derive their sustenance from whatever they can scroungs. And I loved it. I felt more alive during those days than I do in any given week, and I would kill to go back there again. I would have joined the Peace Corps when I was younger but at the time, I didn’t have any usable skills.

I Write.
I write - and therefore I blog - because I need a voice. I need to put out there what I think, what I feel. The whole world is full of people who need a voice - and I think one of the coolest things we can do is to listen, and read, and get to know other people and what their lives are like.