Announcing Drawing 101

I'm pleased to announce that Drawing 101, a basic drawing skills course that I'm doing for Not Your Average Homeschoolers, is up and available for your drawing pleasure.

I'm shooting for a new lesson every week, so bookmark this link Drawing 101, and check back often.

Mother on my mind

Woke up this morning thinking about my mother and wishing she felt better.

I told Steve last night that the worst thing about watching your parents decline is that it makes you re-think everything you thought you knew about them. He said, "Not me," and then he said, "Wait. Yeah, it does."

I guess that's not as tragic as I think it is. I mean, I spend most of my life re-thinking what I think I know about something or someone. Why should it be any different with my mother?

Tried to call her last night and this time someone who answered passed the request along to someone who knew who she was and that person went to find her and then came back with the message that Mom would call me back. She wasn't feeling well.

So, maybe she thought it was Mary, because Mary calls more often than I do, or maybe she thought it was me, thinking that I was overdue for a phone call, or maybe she thought it was me the same way that I thought it was time to give her a call. Some people are just connected to each other that way.

I don't like to think about her there. At the psyche unit, on the 8th floor. Joe told me that there are more nurses and doctors running around there than there are patients.

If she'd only. If I'd only.

I spend a lot of time thinking about four years ago (or was it five?) when I found her in her room, stretched out on the bed, hands folded on her chest, like she was laid out for a wake. I stared at her and she opened her eyes and looked at me. "Marie? I tried to kill myself last night." And all I could think to say was, "It didn't work."

If I had said, "Let me give you another opportunity at it, shall I? I'll be back in an hour," then maybe this would all be done. Betty would have gone out when she wanted to.

Instead, there is all this wriggling on the end of a hook going on.

I know she's crazy because a sane woman wouldn't put her kids through this. But how crazy is she?

Because, I think that craziness must be on a continuum, like autism and diabetes and pregnancy. I think you can be a little bit crazy, or only crazy in one aspect of your life. Mom seems to be crazy by turns. Like, she's normal, or at least, placid, for a few months, and then, she's nuts, and wants to die.

I envy my friend's grandmother, who still lives alone. I think it'd be easier to die, or at least, to quit living, if you lived alone.

Mom's wish to quit living is being carried out in front of a live audience, and it's an audience that wishes to have a vote.

Is this being very cynical to wish that she could just get on with dying?

If only she'd taken pills other than blood pressure medication. But that was only because she wanted to show her doctor who was boss.

I remember thinking that it was the most clear sign yet that she was damaged. Because who in their right mind would take blood pressure pills to try to kill themselves, especially if they had sleeping pills right there?

Someone who just needed attention?

But I seem to be incapable of giving that attention to someone. I hoard it, dole it out in bits and pieces. I think Mom needed more love from me than I had to give her.

I wonder if my lack of demonstrative loving made her want to do something to get my attention and the doctor's attention. Made her want to do something like threaten suicide but not actually do it.

I think, What is it you want? and it's like I'm screaming into a big wide dark hole. I don't think there is any answer coming out of it.

But I think that I must know what it is that she wants already and I can't give it to her.

I can stop whenever I want

I used the blue cup today for my coffee. Sometimes the blue cup is dirty and I have to use the white cup with the black handle. The white cup used to have a picture from Alice in Wonderland on it, and the Cheshire Cat disappeared (all except for his grin, of course) whenever you poured hot liquid in it, but I put it in the dishwasher one day and the whole thing just flaked off, so now it's just a plain white cup with a black handle. Shame, too, because it wasn't my cup, it was my daughter's cup, but she says I'm forgiven so I guess it's okay. Now I just like to use that cup because it's at least as big as the blue one.

I am not addicted to coffee. That's a good one. Hah! I only have one cup a day.

Unless my neighbor calls and invites me over for a cup of coffee at her house, in which case it's only polite to accept, and I never have more than one cup of coffee there (in a plain white cup, that's probably close to the same size as my own blue cup or the white cup with the black handle), sometimes going as far as two cups, but only if she's really bothered about something like her troglodyte son who is almost fifty years old and won't get a job and who drinks Natural Light and burns crap in the back yard all day. I mean, it's ridiculous. That lying hussy left him almost twenty years ago, and anyway, that's no excuse for living off your mother's social security income, never mind about mowing the grass. I bet my neighbor could mow the grass if she wanted and it would be cheaper than feeding and sheltering a grown man like her son who just bums cigarettes off her and beer money. It's a shame. And sometimes it takes more than one cup of coffee to feel better about it all.

Anyway, so I'm not addicted to coffee, AT ALL.

Sometimes my girlfriend calls up and I have to go over to see her and she doesn't drink caffeinated anything but if I'm coming she makes a cup of coffee just for me, using a French coffee press. That makes the best cup of coffee! It's not bitter at all and she always has real sugar for me and sets out the half and half. If we're walking she puts it in a thermos container for me and I carry it all around the park, pausing during our conversation to sip, sip, sip at that wonderful, warm coffee. Mmm. She's a good friend.

But she herself only ever drinks decaf because she says coffee just gets her completely wired and jittery. Not like me at all, because I know when to say when. I just have the one cup per day and then I'm good.

It's not like my own cups are that huge. I actually measured how much coffee fit in each cup and it's hardly more than twelve ounces. Not too bad. I've been eyeing the cups that are selling in a little shop down the street from here. They're definitely cups because they have a handle on them, but man, they're really huge. Like soup bowl size. Still, I bet if I measured, they would turn out to be about the same size as the cups I've been using. Probably they just have really thick walls or something.

I used to have a little cup that I bought at a thrift store that was like that. It had really thick walls and the handle fit the crook of my finger just perfectly. It was a genuine diner-restaurant-style coffee cup and cute as a button. It was so small that I used to drink two cups of coffee from it every day. But eventually, I had to stop kidding myself and started using the blue cup (and the white one with the black handle, but this was before my daughter brought that cup home), but just one of those. And I accidently broke the little white one anyway, so it's just as well I'd already gone on to the blue cup.

Still, sometimes I miss that little white one. Especially at times like just this moment, when I've just finished drinking all the coffee from the blue cup. If I still had the white one, I could fill it up again. But I only get one and, since I'm not addicted to coffee AT ALL, that's that.

I wonder if my neighbor might need to talk?

Grounded

When I pick up the phone it's my mother. She asks me if I can reach my daughter, Alice. She says to tell Alice not to come today because she's not feeling well.

“Is Steve there?” she asks.

“No, he's still in Michigan. Do you need something?”

“Does he have a gun?”

“No, he doesn't.”

After a moment, I say, “He's got an airgun, Mom. It would just hurt you, not kill you.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry, Mom. There just isn’t any easy way out.”’

“You get a hold of Alice for me,” she says. “Tell her not to come.”

Making allowances

The experts say that giving your children an allowance helps instill in them a sense of the value of money. It encourages them to establish spending priorities, set goals and save up for what they really want.

With this in mind, I dutifully offered my children a dollar a week when they were young and then waited for the miracle of fiscal responsibility to take root in their brains.

It would have been a more effective training tool if I'd actually paid them. What would happen is I'd forget to get cash prior to payday (Saturday) and then offer to take them shopping at Goodwill instead. At the store, the kids' purchases would eerily reflect their frustration with the paymaster. Nick would pick out a toy that transformed into a weapon of mass destruction, Sam would get something sad-eyed and fuzzy, and Alice would fall in love with a bridesmaid's dress which cost twenty times what I owed her.

Eventually, the kids got tired of shopping at thrift stores. Alice went to work at the bed and breakfast down the street and the boys got a paper route. Once my children got a taste of regular paychecks, allowance went by the wayside. Now it's interesting to see how their experiences with the world of money has shaped them.

Alice is frugal, works hard and budgets for expenses. I think this is a natural reaction to being raised by a spendthrift who prefers reading "best of craigslist" to actual work and who balances her checking account by intuition. However, a bad example is still an example, so this counts as good parenting.

My youngest son, Nick, is an opportunistic money manager. There are things he'd like to have but, if at all possible, he'd rather have someone else pay for them. And though he's willing to wait for what he wants, his patience has its limits.

"Mom, when's my birthday?"

"In 364 more days, Nick."

"Oh. When's Christmas?"

Sam doesn't care enough about money, in my opinion, which explains why I frequently find dollar bills scattered in his dresser drawers, balled up under his bed, or being used as bookmarks in his favorite novels. I have told him that this is not interest earning behavior but he only rolls his eyes at me and says that I'm not being properly philosophical towards money.

"You shouldn't think that there's not enough money, Mom. You should think of it as sufficient for your needs."

It's not that I don't get what he's saying, it's just that I don't understand how philosophy will persuade the universe to put money in his college fund.

When I was young, I didn't get an allowance. If I needed money to go somewhere, like a dance or a ball game, I'd ask my dad for it.

"Dad, can I have three dollars?"

"If I had three dollars, I wouldn't speak to you."

"Please?"

He'd reach into his pocket and I'd hold my breath, wondering what might come out of it. Sometimes there were a couple of singles in there, sometimes a twenty, sometimes nothing but a handful of loose change. With Dad's pockets, you never knew. I had a large number of siblings who might've cleaned him out already or he might have had to cover an overdraft on the checking account or there could have been a closing on a house the day before. It was feast or famine at our house, growing up.

Last week the subject of allowances came up again. I asked Sam whether any of his friends still got one. He looked embarrassed.

"Yeah, I think Kerrian does."

"So, what is it? Like, five bucks or something?"

"Heh, no. Actually, it's more like fifteen or twenty."

"What? A week? Are you kidding me?"

He shook his head and smiled and I thought it best to leave the subject alone for a while. My kids are very understanding as far as a dollar a week goes, but I hate to think what they'd be picking out at the Goodwill store if I owed them each twenty dollars come payday.

Epitaph for a nasty vegetable

Here lies okra,
pulled out by the roots.
It tasted like crap,
so now it's kaputs.

Joe College

It's almost noon on Wednesday morning and I'm driving my son to the community college campus where he's dual enrolled for the summer in English Comp and Introduction to Sociology. He doesn't seem very enthusiastic about this latest adventure in learning. Maybe it has something to do with the layover he's got between his classes.

"What am I supposed to do for 2 1/2 hours?" he whines.

"Explore, why don't you? Go in and out of all the buildngs. Find the library, check out the bookstore, see where everyone hangs out," I say.

He looks unconvinced.

"You could do your homework," I offer.

"Pfft," he says. "Maybe I'll just find a place to sleep."

I know he was up late the night before, talking online with his friends. Not for the first time, I find myself wishing his friends' parents were better at enforcing bedtime curfews than I am. I think about asking him if he'd like to stay home today. But I have a policy about calling in sick for school. You have to be throwing up to stay home. If you're not throwing up you don't get to call in sick. My son looks bone tired this morning but he's not sick. Besides, this is the first class of the summer semester. He has to go.

He leans his head against the window and pretends to be asleep. "Whoof," he mutters. I ignore him.

I know what his problem is. I recognize the signs. He doesn't want to go to school at the community college. He wants to cuddle up to the computer in his bedroom instead, talking and typing with his friends online. It's warm and familiar on the internet. He knows everybody there and they know him. Community college is scary. Anything can happen to you out in the real world.

My son has always had trouble fitting into the role of brilliant student that I wanted for him. He ignored all attempts to help him organize his work, instead crumpling and jamming his papers any old way into his books. I could spend any amount of money on school clothes every fall and it wouldn't matter since he wore his shirts inside out and backwards anyway, claiming it was "his look."

I remember when he going through a particularly slovenly period in middle school and I put my foot down and told him he had to change his shirt and underwear at least once a day. It was months later that I discovered he was layering on five t-shirts at the beginning of the week, then taking one off every school day. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have let him get away with it, but it seemed funny at the time.

Today we get to the campus and I walk to the bookstore with him to get his book for his sociology class. There's a line at the checkout that reaches nearly to the back of the store. This is not good. My son is already nervous about college. If we have to wait here for very long it means he's going to be late for his first class of the day. But there doesn't seem to be any choice. He needs this book for his evening class.

After a while we become aware of the muted commentary offered by three girls standing behind us and realize that they're directly contradicting everything one of the cashiers is telling her current customer.

Cashier: "You have to pre-pay for us to order the book for this class."

Girls: "Huh-uh." "Don't do it." "Ain't happenin'."

Cashier: "We'll call you as soon as it comes in."

Girls: "No way." "Huh-uh." "I'm warnin' you."

Cashier: "If it's not the right book, you can return it for a store credit."

Girls: "Don't believe her." "It's a lie." "Huh-uh."

By the time we leave the store, my son is laughing out loud, much less worried, and indeed late for class. I could kiss those girls, but they'd likely not stand for it. ("Huh-uh." "Don't do it." "Back off, yo.")

As we head towards the building where his English Comp class is he separates from me and runs up the stairs to the second floor. "See you later," I call and he turns and waves, then takes the remaining steps two at a time.

I walk to the car and tell myself it's going to be fine. He'll like his classes, he'll enjoy his professors, and he'll find a place to fit in. That's the good thing about community college. There are all sorts of people here. Older people trying to improve their situations, younger people being prodded by their controlling parents. He's bound to find people like himself. Friends in the real world to go along with his virtual ones.

It's not like it's the first time I've watched a child grow up and become more independent. It's just the first time I've seen it happen with this particular child. It's hard letting go of the kid you think you know in order to for him to become the person he knows he is. It's okay, though. We're going to go through this learning experience together.

And now for something completely different

(The following is a story by my sister, Mary. She's my favorite.)

I went to Lafayette, Louisiana and all I got was this lousy black eye.

It started out innocently enough; a long weekend with friends filled with good times, some tennis and a slumber party at a fishing camp. What more could a girl ask for?

The original plan was to fly down to join my former tennis comrades and good friends for a weekend tennis tournament. Well, once the entry fee came to light, $100 per entrant, we all decided unless that tournament t-shirt could bring us to orgasm when we wore it, there was no way any of us wanted to pay that kind of money. So my girlfriends had planned their own tournament of sorts which involved games of tennis each day with whoever wanted to play. Friday we had a slumber party at a fishing cabin that one of the friends was renting while waiting for her house to be rebuilt. Sure, alcohol and fishing poles were involved, a couple of them even ended up being cast into the lake in fact, but that’s not where I got my black eye. No, that didn’t happen until the day before I had to fly home.

We had scheduled a doubles match for Sunday morning, which came in overcast and humid, well this is Louisiana after all. Everything was going along fine, my partner and I were ahead in the match by a couple of games. Couldn’t tell you the score of the game that we were playing at the time when the miscue happened. I was in the back court trying to get my racket on a high bouncing ball, one minute I had it in my sights and swung at the ball and the next minute I can truly say I saw stars. My racket, after making contact with the ball, which I swear was five feet over my head, came out of my hand and was met on the way down by my left orbital socket. No cries for “momma!” or “medic!” was issued from my lips, I was too busy scrambling for my glasses (can’t see shit without them) and putting my baseball cap back on my head. We had a game to play! By the time I’d put myself back together all play had stopped on the court.

“Did we win the point?” I asked my partner, trying to act nonchalant about beaning myself with my own racket.

“Uh, no, we lost it.”

“What?! Oh, maaan,” I whined, “it would’ve made a much better story if we’d at least won the point.”

“What happened?”

“I think I just gave myself a black eye,” I responded, already I could feel the area over my left eyelid swelling.

Karen, my teammate, took a closer look, “Oh wow, I can see what part of the racket hit ya, it left a mark.”

That’s just great, I thought, Jim will never believe this. I mean, one would expect a black eye coming out of Philadelphia, but Lafayette, LA? All that southern hospitality? Please.

After different scenarios were discussed among the players on the court to explain the black eye, like getting into a fight with Bill, Karen’s husband over the point; or a head on collision going after a ball was another. We all decided to consider it a “lagniappe” from the trip, which in Cajun country is something that is thrown in for free.

I did contemplate applying makeup to the other eye to make the blooming color scheme on the one eye less noticeable, except I don’t carry makeup. So I met Jim at the airport braced for an explosive welcome once the offending eye had been spotted.

Apparently, the lighting at the baggage claim is very flattering because Jim didn’t notice a thing, even after giving me a kiss and a hug. It wasn’t until we stopped for something to eat on the way home at a Taco Hell that things got a bit prickly. If you want to be seen in a bad light, go to Taco Bell, it definitely doesn’t show your best side.

Once we had ordered and taken a seat at one of the tables, Jim is spreading out his meal, I’m congratulating myself on dodging a bullet, and the next thing I hear is, “What the hell happened to your eye?” Damn. So I tell him. He was trying to control his laughter by holding it in during the explanation. His shoulders were shaking so much I thought he might fall off his chair. Shaking his head, with a big smile on his face, “Jesus, Mary” was all he said.

I must admit, it’s a gift.

Apology to my CPA

Sorry, Tim, that I didn't fax back my permission slip for you to file my taxes electronically until the day they were due, but your package was hidden under a stack of bills on my table and I kept putting off looking at it because I knew what I'd find when I opened the envelope and that's a return stating that I owed the government seven hundred fifty seven dollars and the state one hundred twenty nine dollars and the government again nineteen dollars for a total of nine hundred and five dollars, Tim, plus there's going to be your bill coming down the pike for two hundred and sixty five dollars to do all the math and take what deductions there were and file all the paperwork and I don't begrudge you a penny of it because back when I had to do it myself it would take me days to sort out all the receipts and to update my Quicken accounts (why doesn't it do this by itself?) and then I would put all the numbers in and they never came out the same way twice and always I was sure that I was paying too much in taxes and my husband thought so, too. (It completely ruined the month of March for me.) Now I'm sure that I am paying too much again but at least it's not due to my own stupidity, it's due more to the government being greedy, maybe. But I don't blame you. I'll never blame you because you are a numbers man, unlike me, and you understand taxes, unlike me, and so it's good that I know someone like you to do my taxes, because the alternative would be me doing them and that would just be too awful.

I'm awake

It's 1:15 in the morning. I can tell this because I've squinted hard at the clock on the shelf next to my dresser clear on the other side of the room. It would be easier to tell the time if the clock were on the bedside table, but my husband needs it to be farther away from the bed so that when the alarm goes off in the morning he has to get out of bed to hit the snooze button. He usually does this three or four times every day. It seems to work for him.

I can hear him speaking now through the door to our room. He's in the hallway and he's talking to Nick. I know this because he's telling him to pick up the clothes in his room and brush his teeth and get to bed. He's probably just come home from working late and has done the usual perimeter walk through the house, checking on the boys and telling them to get off their computers for the night. He's hates this. He says it feels like whenever he sees them he has to yell at them.

I've wrestled with this, too, but it's not as hard for me. The kids are home schooled so I see them all day long. Not all of the time spent with them is nagging time. Sometimes it's fun stuff, like a park day or club day with other home schooled kids. Sometimes it's a field trip, although that happens less often now that they're both in high school.

It's harder to find field trips that are interesting to teenagers. The last one was supposed to be a tour of a recording studio but because the owner's sound engineer didn't make it in to work that day, it devolved into a monologue about the owner's early days in the music business and how, since his voice is gone, he likes to encourage good looking young women to come and sing on his cable tv show. It was educational, all right, just not in the way I'd anticipated.

I hear the thumping up and down the hallway of my oldest son, Sam, as he reluctantly performs a regular Thursday night chore, emptying the wastebaskets. I notice that he's avoiding emptying the wastebasket in my room. He probably thinks I'm sleeping through all of this. I wish I could.

Briefly I consider doing some thumping of my own, out into the kitchen, perhaps, where I could make a cup of cocoa in a put upon manner and inflict some guilt where it would do the most good. I decide I'm really too tired to get up. Maybe I'll read for a while. I flip on the light next to the bed and pick up a dog-eared copy of "Interesting Times" by Terry Pratchett. I love Pratchett. He makes me laugh and I can use a laugh or at least a grin right about now. Damn it. I was sleeping so well, too.

My sister says that when I was young I used to thump up and down the halls when I was mad, just like my kids do now. My dad called me Thumper, which usually made me stomp even harder. I was slow to pick up on teasing back then. I had a hair trigger temper as a teenager, too. My dad seemed to delight in provoking it, or maybe it just seemed like it to me.

I hear footsteps approaching the end of the hall. Will whoever it is notice that there's a light on in my bedroom and feel all contrite or something? The steps recede again. Obviously, nobody's worried about cutting in on anybody's sleep time tonight.

I read for a while and eventually my eyes close more than they stay open and I put the book down and turn out the light. Whatever fireworks were inspired by my husband's return home are all over for this evening. I can sleep, hopefully the boys will sleep, and eventually my husband will sleep. No more drama, not even from me, Thumper.

It's raining

You know what the best thing is about rainy days? I don't have to go running in them. 

If I were a ninja jogger, I'd be out in that mess right now, slogging around the trail down at Bartram Park, but I'm just an amateur runner, someone who runs because it's just a habit I've got into, and not because I was silly and made some promise OUT LOUD that I'd run every day no matter what. Thank god I've got that much sense, at least.

So today is a free day, hurrah! And I don't have to run. My body will object, of course, but that's what brains are for, to keep bodies from getting out of line.

I'm going to sit here on my comfortable butt and just listen to that wet stuff dribble down the outside of my house and revel in the fact that I am not going to be tying on my running shoes, looking for extra shopping bags with which to clean up after my dog, not going to be grabbing my cell phone, my iPod, my headphones and my car keys, all of which add at least five pounds to my pockets, making them flap at my sides when I run like little chicken wings, not going to be deciding whether it's worth it to bring the cooler and get the milk first or whether I should just walk into the grocery store, wet and stinking, and get it afterwards, not going to pee three times before I leave the house in order to avoid having to squat at the side of the trail, anxiously scanning both ways and practicing what to say for when I'm discovered in the woods with my pants down ("Thought I saw something valuable here, so I'm just taking a look at it, but I'm all done, now, so I'll just be running along,"), not going to be seeing the lady with the red hair out there in the matching jogging pants and sweatshirt, the guy with the hound dog named Jackson, the two probably queer guys who always look disdainful of my own mostly casually thrown together outfit--a shirt that says "You had me at woof" and shorts that are rusty black with holes in the legs--and who run like gazelles, not going to race down the trail to get back to my car before the episode of "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me" is through and I have to stop laughing and start thinking about how hard it is to run in the mornings.

No, I'm not going to do any of that, because it's raining, and I love rainy days, almost as much as I love running.

Nick Armstrong, boy of steel

One day, when Nick was a sixth grader in middle school, he came home and I asked him how it went.

"I'm sore."

"Really? Why is that?"

"Well, we had to do the President's Physical Fitness test today in P.E. and so Coach told us all to do 25 push-ups. And I said, 'Twenty-five? That's not hard. I can do fifty!' and Coach said 'Oh, you can, can you?' and I said, 'Yes, I can. As a matter of fact, for seven points, I can do 150!' and Coach said, 'Okay. But if you don't do 150 then you lose 7 points," and I said, 'How about 300 push ups for 20 points?' and Coach said, 'You're on!' so then I did 300 push ups."

"You did 300 push ups?"

"Yes, I did. And Coach said, 'Well, Nick, you sure surprised me. I didn't think you could do it,' and he took out his little notebook and wrote down 'Nick Oliver - 120 points' in it. Some kid wanted to give me a high five but I had to hit his hand with my head because I couldn't lift my arms."

"Then what happened?"

"Well, Mom, I managed to get up off the floor without using my arms, but when I got to the locker room, I couldn't get my padlock open to get my clothes out. I turned the combination using my teeth and I was trying to push it open with my nose but I wasn't having any luck and some kid came in and saw me and asked me if I needed any help and I said, 'Sure,' and he opened my padlock and I got my clothes on. Then I backed into my backpack and ran for the bus."

That night I gave him an ibuprofen and made him soak in the tub. He slept like a rock. Next day when he came home I asked if the kids had started calling him "Pushup Boy" and he said, "No, Mom. They're calling me 'Armstrong.'"

Dreaming

I distinctly remember dreaming about talking to a credit card company on the phone and explaining why I missed a payment last month. This really sucks. Michael Swanwick dreams about writing the perfect paragraph and I dream about explaining myself to my creditors.

How does a person go about dreaming about what they want to do for real? I mean, I recognize that my dreams are all about what's stressing me out at the moment. Bills, money, and how to make enough of the second to pay all the first. I get that.

What I want my dreams to reflect are my hopes, not my fears. How do I make that happen?

It's probably got somehting to do with believing that my dreams are under my control and not something separate from me, something that happens without my active participation. Dreams are something that I've always thought of as uncontrolled longings. Things that I don't know anything about in advance. Isn't that funny? I mean, they're my dreams, right? Who should know better than me what they're going to be?

But you're talking to someone who willfully ignores a lot of what she worries about, so those worries come out when I'm sleeping, when my guard is down, when my brain has gone loose.

Dreams. It's such a beautiful word. I should be able to enjoy them. Controlling a word like that seems wrong somehow. Dreams should be free to float around and touch you here and there and tickle you in places that are unexpected but nice. Dreams should be mysterious but in a good way, opaque like heavy cream, but rich with possibilities.

Contemplating darkness

My husband and I were talking about how afraid we are that we'll begin to lose our minds in another fifteen years. He thinks he'll be working for ten of them and he's angry that his retirement won't come sooner.

I think about how fifteen years isn't any time at all and what if I live fifteen years beyond the time when I begin to go senile? I bet fifteen years of relentless creeping senility lasts a hell of a long time.

Most my father's siblings suffered from dementia before dying. (All right, Alzheimer's disease. Does it matter what you call it?) Two of them are still alive, living in the care of their spouses.

For years I watched my father fold into himself, become something other, horrifying and angry and monstrous. I remember laying my head on his knee, his hand on my head and wishing that it wasn't just an automatic response on his end, that he remembered I was his daughter and that he loved me.

I don't want to be him when I get old.

I've read that dementia sets in early, when you're in your thirties or forties. That if you're going to be senile when you're in your seventies and eighties, there's nothing you can do in your fifties or sixties to prevent it from happening to you.

Whenever I have trouble thinking of a word, or find myself in a room with no idea why I went there, or when I feel compelled to respond to a situation with a particular favorite phrase or line of movie dialogue, I think, "Is this how it starts? Have I begun the long journey already? What's next?"

I know that memory lapses happen to everyone, that I'm normal, that I'm silly to panic, and besides, what good would it do?

But it's like I'm living just in front of a shadow. I'm standing in the light right now, but I can feel the creeping coldness at my back and sometimes it touches me, just briefly, and I almost know what it will be like when I'm caught by it and covered completely.

So much for that project

I ended up not using a writing prompt or a picture prompt for this one. A friend was over and telling me about a Glinda the Good Witch wedding dress she made for someone once and I thought it'd make a nice picture.

Purple nails

I'm trying an experiment. I want to learn to use pastels but I'm having a hard time deciding what to draw so I'm using writing prompts to direct my efforts. I found "purple nails" at http://dragonwritingprompts.blogsome.com/ . I'll continue this way until I get tired of the project. Could be months (not likely) or it could be days (much more likely).

A sign of better times

I recently posted a sign over the kitchen sink. It reads: "If you dirty it, then you must wash it. The Management." Notice I've given myself a promotion. I'm no longer chief cook and bottle washer.

Mom smirked when I told her about my new plan to do less cleaning up after all the able bodied men in the house. I actually heard her do this over the phone. It sounds like it's spelled. "Smirkff," she said and right away I started worrying that this experiment in training my children and my husband to be better roommates was doomed to failure. She told me to tell her how it was going in a week's time.

Well, it's been a week and it's still working. It's all due to the paper plate with the marker message on it that's taped to the kitchen window. When the boys see the sign it reminds them that I'm right there, looking over their shoulders, making that Dog Whisperer noise, that "tch" sound that stops them from setting down a dirty plate or cup somewhere convenient and prompts them to run some hot water and soap over them and then put them in the dish drainer.

It hasn't been perfect. I still have to empty the dish drainer from time to time, otherwise the stack gets teetery, and broken china was never part of management's vision, but if you look at it as a way of counting how many dishes I don't have to do every day, it's impressive. I'm thinking of making another sign on a paper plate, enclosing it in a ziplock and hanging it in the shower. "If you shed it, you must clean it out of the hair trap. The Benevolent Dictatorship." I'm due for another raise.

Bleeding creativity

My fingers are sore and stiff today. Why, oh why do I ruin the skin on my fingers trying to execute these elaborate hand sewing projects? I must be going senile. I know this, not because words and names I used to know escape me, but because I've forgotten once again what a pain it is to push a needle through six layers of denim at a time. Satin stitching a teal border on a blue jean pocket is a cool way to hide a hole on a pair of pants destined to be made into a big purse, but it's also a very painful way to express oneself. Does it make you more creative if you bleed on your projects?

One minute I was searching the house for the pile of old jeans I'd last seen moldering in a corner of the living room, the next I had cut them up into rectangles and was piecing them together in interesting ways, not caring what this would mean for my poor fingers. If you're going to the trouble of hand making a fashion accessory, racking up hours of labor and pain in the process, then the end product has got to be cool, cool enough to draw admiring remarks and envious looks from all your equally craft-crazed friends.

Twenty four hours into this project, I've already decided to reduce the number of pockets on it from four to two, soon to be one, maybe, probably, definitely. And I'll just paint on any more embellishments I think up from here on out. For one thing, it'll be easier on my hands, and for another, this way I may even get to use the purse before Christmas. Besides, if I don't scale back on the amount of effort required to finish this endeavor pretty quickly, it will end up tucked away in a shopping bag somewhere, filed in my mind as another PTBCSWIFME (Project To Be Completed Sometime When I'm Feeling More Energetic).

The thing is, projects like this one -- labor-intensive, spur of the moment and falling into the category of Biting Off More Than I Can Chew in a Weekend -- always prompt me to think inconvenient thoughts while I'm doing them. Thoughts like, I could walk into any number of thrift stores and pick up a perfectly serviceable purse for $4 or less and paint it to look like something I would be proud to claim as my own and it would be a lot less trouble than what I'm doing now. The problem with this solution is that nothing is open until 10 am (it's 8 am now) and I have no money, not even an extra four dollars, which is precisely what prompted this whole project in the first place. Also, I wanted a bigger purse than what I'm using now.

Unfortunately, I think that this purse will also be too small to be practical. Stupid to start with my son's old blue jeans, really. They're a size 8. Slim. There's only so much yardage available in jeans this size. The purse I'm building has to be able to carry my wallet, my checkbook, my sketchbook, my notebook, any current sewing projects, my water bottle and snacks. In other words, about 20 pounds of stuff.

I had a bag like this when I was in college. It also held, in addition to the list above, a masonite board, clips, an 18" x 24" pad of newsprint, assorted drawing pencils, tubes of student grade acrylic paint, paint brushes and a plastic can for holding water. As I recall, it was while I was carrying all this plus four bags of groceries up a flight of stairs to my apartment that I experienced my very first back spasm, which put me on the floor, then in my bed for two weeks. I lay there, waiting for the pain to go away, meantime consuming ibuprofen by the handful and counting the minutes until my boyfriend got home from work every day so he could help me to the bathroom.

On second thought, maybe there's enough fabric here after all...

That dog

That dog lays on the couch
legs every which way
completely open to the universe
accepting herself as a creature on a blue gingham covered stick of furniture.
She doesn't wish the cushions were stuffed with feathers
she doesn't worry the curtains
which are trapped behind it
and don't hang straight as a consequence.
She just sprawls on the end
spreading herself as thinly as possible
on the pillow and the seat
cocking an ear when my pen scritches across the paper
slashing in the lines for a checkerboard pattern.

Taking comfort where you can find it

When she came to the phone last night she sounded so fragile, so near to tears and so bewildered.

"I did it wrong," she said. I didn't ask her to tell me what she'd done. My sister had already told me in an earlier phone conversation that Mom had used a pen knife. "If she'd really wanted to kill herself she'd have used the scissors. They were sharp," my sister said.

I found myself wondering if she'd made a mess of her clothing. Was there blood on her sheets? Mom told me that the nursing home staff had called for an ambulance and then she was at the psychiatric hospital. "I thought it was taking a long time to get there and then the driver said we weren't going to the regular hospital," she said.

Mom feels a need to visit the hospital on a regular basis. When she stayed with me, before we moved to Florida, we averaged a trip to the emergency room about every three weeks. She'd go and the staff would hook her up to all kinds of equipment and they'd monitor her for an hour or two and then send her home. She'd be okay for a few weeks and then something would trigger another anxiety attack and her heartrate would jump and she'd have to go again.

Invariably, it happened over a weekend, when she couldn't see her doctor. My husband felt sorry for her but he used to get very frustrated by what he thought was a waste of time and resources. "Do you think you're having a heart attack?" he'd ask her sternly and she'd tell him no. "Then you don't need to go to the E.R. Emergency rooms are for emergencies. You're not in danger of dying so you don't need to go."

Sometimes a talking to was what she wanted and she'd subside for a day or two. But sometimes she'd insist she needed a doctor to look at her. When my husband took her he always fumed a little afterward when the medical staff would send her home without having changed anything in her list of medicines. He kicked himself for giving in to her panic.

I remember a story Mom told me about the time right after she'd given birth to one of my older brothers. She was hemorrhaging badly and suddenly she could see herself below where the doctors and nurses were busily trying to save her life. She floated up and away and then saw a light and started toward it. Then she was stopped. I can never remember who it was she said stopped her progress toward the light. It was two or three people, I remember that, and one of them was a saint, I remember her telling me that, too.

She said these people stopped her and told her she had to go back, that it wasn't time for her to go yet. She said she argued with them about this, that she wanted to go on toward the light but that they were insistent that she couldn't, not yet. And so she went back, she said, but she was angry that she'd been turned away.

She would have been around 35 years old then. I always think about the pull of that light on her and how powerful it must've been to tempt her away from a family of now five boys and a husband. Or, alternatively, how unhappy she must've been to want to leave so soon.

Maybe when you're freed from your body you leave your emotional, glandular self along with it. As her child I try to think up reasons for her to want to leave me and this one is as comforting as any other.