the Aquarius Woman

But Alice had got so much into the -way

of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen

that it seemed quite dull and stupid

for life to go on in the common way ...

Put cats in the coffee, and mice in the tea- And welcome Queen Alice with thirty times three!

The safest way to enter into romance with an Aquarian female is to remember she's as paradoxical in love as she is in everything else. That way, you won't be expecting Priscilla Alden and get Pocahontas.

This girl has all the faithfulness of the fixed signs when die's in love, but she also has the detachment and lack of emotion of the air element. It's possible to have a happy relationship with the Uranus woman if you leave her free to pursue her myriad interests and circulate among her friends. Never try to tie her to the stove or the bedpost. Ask the man who's tried. She can suddenly decide to study ballet, meditate in the mountains or join the Peace Corps. Remember the story of the princess with the long, golden hair who lived high in a tower? That's the Aquarius fe–male. Cutting off her flowing tresses won't change her any more than it did in the fairy tale. She dreams different dreams than you or I. She hears a distant drummer-and follows a star most of us have never seen.

She belongs to everyone, and yet to no one. Her love can be tender and inspired, but there will always be a vaguely elusive quality about it, like a half-remembered song. You can hum the melody, but the lyrics keep slipping away. The Aquarian girl's demand for freedom is insistent, but her allegiance to anyone who can accept romance with–in such limits is boundless. Here's something you'll like:

She won't be terribly interested in your bank book (unless Cancer or Capricorn or Taurus is on her ascendant). Money is never the prime consideration of the typical Aquarian woman. She won't care if you're not the richest man in town, but she'll expect you to be respected in some way for your intellectual achievements. Dr. Christian Bamard and his heart transplants or Wemher von Braun and his rockets interest her far more than J. Paul Getty and his billions.

When you set out to catch this butterfly in your net, remember that she'll never spend her unpredictable life with a man who isn't true to himself. Her own code of ethics may be as weird as anything you've ever come across, and quite different from the accepted codes of society, but she lives up to it totally. She'll understand that your rules may also be highly individual. That's fine with her, but don't compromise those rules. If you're looking for a passion flower, you've picked the wrong daisy. Passion is not her forte if she's a typical Aquarian. She'll think physi–cal love is pleasant enough, if it's not overemphasized. In other words, she can take it or leave it alone. Uranus fe–males can respond to lovemaking with a haunting, deep intensity, but if you prefer to keep it platonic for long periods of time, that's all right, too. Like all Aquarians, she may have an unconscious fear that desire for one per–son will imprison the spirit in some way, and keep her from being true to her one great love-freedom. Freedom to ex–periment and investigate and freedom to give time to hu–manity. Also freedom to pursue her rather kicky, off-beat fancies.

She's an ideal girl if you're planning a political, scientific or educational career. You couldn't do better, unless you happen to run across an Aquarian girl with adverse planetary positions in her natal chart who enjoys shock–ing people by walking barefoot down Main Street or smok–ing big black cigars on buses. There are some pretty wild, way-out Uranian females here and there. But the average girl born under the sign of the water bearer is a social delight. She's graceful, witty, bright as a penny, and ex–tremely adaptable to all forms of society, high and low and in the middle.

Her lack of suspicion under normal circumstances is a special bonus. A traveling salesman should find his dream girl in the typical Aquarian female. If she actually catches you being unfaithful, it will cause a deep wound to her sensitive nature. You'll know it the minute you look into those strange, dreamy eyes. But she won't suspect you without cause, and she'll rarely doubt your word. The typical Uranus woman will never check up on you after you leave, phone you at the office, inspect your handker–chiefs for lipstick stains or look for blonde hairs caught in your cuff link. Deception will have to be brought forcibly to her attention; she won't go out looking for it. Before you give her too much credit, consider that her lack of pas–sionate jealousy is due to something more than strength of character. First of all, she probably dissected your psyche under a microscope before she gave you a second glance. Besides, she has so many outside interests and so many people who turn her on to talk with, there's not much time for her to worry about what you're doing when you're out of sight. Out of sight can often mean out of mind for Aquarians of both sexes. Absence seldom makes the Uranus heart grow fonder. Occasionally, an Aquarian woman will suffer a promiscuous or flirtatious mate, be–cause there's something she needs which she can find only with him, so she looks the other way. On the other hand, if she doesn't really need you, that moral strength will work in reverse at the first actual proof of infidelity. Shell simply walk away. Don't try to kindle the embers, they're stone cold dead. Of course, you can still be friends. Why not?

She's willing. It never embarrasses an. Aquarian girl to be chummy with ex-lovers or husbands. She's forgotten the past and wiped the slate clean of memories.

There is one peculiar and notable exception to the rule. Like the Uranus man, the Uranian female will remember the first true and honest love for a lifetime. Only the first, however. Are you wondering whether that Aquarius girl you once knew still remembers you? The answer lies in her definition of love. It could have something to do with the first boy who gave her a bunch of sweet peas when she was nine-the boy who walked her through the park in the rain-or the one with the funny ears who knew the clown at the circus, and used to feed her peanuts.

Uranus women involved in extra-marital affairs are rare. They can be tempted in exceptional situations, but a dis–honest relationship goes against their chemistry. It won't be long until an undercover romance is broken off for good. Yet, there are many Aquarian divorcees. There's a reason. If a situation becomes intolerable, the Uranian nature turns cold suddenly. They can disappear overnight, and never look back. They don't seek or enjoy divorce, but it isn't the shock to them it is to their more sentimental sisters. Uranus rules change, you know. Since she's such an individualist, with a list of friends several miles long, the Aquarian female never hesitates to make her way alone if the need arises.

Expect her to probe into your heart until you haven't a secret left, or a dream that hasn't been analyzed. But don't try to dissect her private thoughts. That's not the way the game is played with Aquarians. She'll keep her motives hidden, and sometimes take a perverse pleasure in de–liberately confusing you. She'll usually be truthful to a fault, but remember, with an Aquarian, telling a lie is one thing. Refraining from telling the whole story is another.

It's comforting to know that an Aquarian girl is pretty cagey with a buck. That is, it's comforting to know unless you're planning to hit her for a loan. She might say yes a time or two, but if you let your credit rating slip, she can be colder than the guy at the bank when you skip your car payment. On the rare occasions when she ac–cepts a small loan herself, you'll get back every penny with no stalling, excuses or feminine wiles, if she's a typical Uranus female. As for every man's nightmare of charge accounts, you'll have little worry on that score. Aquarian women are uncomfortable about owing money. Bad debts don't fit in with the Uranus code.

Her appearance is puzzling. Most Aquarian women are lovely, with a haunting, wistful beauty. But they're change–able. They can give an impression of smooth whipped cream, then suddenly switch to salty pizza as quickly as a bright, blue, zig-zag bolt of Uranian electricity. Next to Ubrans, Aquarian females are often the most beautiful women in the zodiac. At the very least, they're interesting-looking. The Aquarian manner of dressing can stop you dead in your tracks. There are a few of them who could grace the cover of a fashion magazine, but the average Aquarian girl is anything but conventional about her cos–tumes. She can wear some outfits a gypsy would envy, and her naked individuality can produce some mighty unique combinations. She'll usually be the first to wear a new fad, no matter how zany it is, yet she can also stick to Grand–ma's styles-even great-grandma's styles. With typical - Aquarian indifference, she'll mix yesterday's lace snood with today's metallic jump suit, and the effect can be a little startling. She'll wear her lace nightgown to a formal ban–quet, ostrich feathers to the supermarket, bell bottom slacks to the opera, sneakers to the theater, diamonds when she visits the zoo-and top it all off with a faded Mother Hubbard she picked up in a thrift shop.

Your Aquarian girl will probably have an unusual way of wearing her hair. Her tresses are as unpredictable as her personality. They can be worn braided, pig-tailed, pinned in a bun, flowing down like a waterfall, short as a marine's, in Mary Pickford curls or as straight as a poker. One thing you can depend on. Her hair won't look like the hair of any other female on this planet.

A conversation with her can be remarkable, to say the least. She has charming manners, and usually behaves in a timid, almost reserved way. Then comes one of those sudden Uranus urges, and out will pop a remark with absolutely no relation to what anyone is saying. You'll be talking about the fluctuations of the stock market, and she'll interrupt out of nowhere with: "Did you know that Woodrow Wilson, Jack Kennedy, Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, Calvin Coolidge, Benjamin Harrison, Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt and William McKinley all have double letters in their names?" There's only one way to answer a question like that. Tell her she missed Millard

Fillmore, Ulysses Grant and Thomas Jefferson. Then gen–tly, but firmly, lead the discussion back to the stock market. Other minds may progress in fairly logical steps, but hers rigs into tomorrow, then zags back into today with no more sense of direction than a flash of lightning. Now and then she'll toss off an unexpectedly poignant phrase. You'll ask her what she thinks of space travel and she'll answer, "When I was a little girl, I thought the stars were holes in the floor of heaven where the light shone through." If she's in a different mood, you'll say that melted snowmen make you sad, and shell counter with: "A melted snowman is just a pile of slush, Charlie." First misty-then practical. First timid-then rowdy. Aquarian women will rudely ridicule flying saucers, then tell you a story about a polka-dotted elf on a windowsill. Never talk down to an Aquarian female. She'll resent not being considered your equal, and an unsympathetic attitude will cause her to retreat and become unapproachable.

Since Uranus rules the future, you might imagine that these girls would be natural mothers. Children do, after all, belong to the future. But the average Aquarian woman may be bewildered by motherhood in the beginning. She has to adjust to devoting all her attention and energy ex–clusively to one human being for a period of time, when she's used to spreading herself far and wide, and this can take some practice. Her natural aloofness may make it difficult for her to demonstrate warm affection outwardly. The typical Aquarian mother is devoted to her offspring, but also somewhat detached toward them. But shell prob–ably be the most willing PTA worker in the neighborhood. She'll talk happily for hours with their small friends on their own level without patronizing them, and she'll give up her afternoons to work for a school project. The chil–dren will learn the lessons of brotherhood and humanity from her by observation. Aquarian mothers are never fiercely protective of their children. They take a tolerant view of the most startling confession. A Uranus woman will seldom punish a child for telling the truth, no matter what he's done. With her unprejudiced viewpoint, she'll gain the complete confidence of her little ones. She's great at reassuring young minds about everything from monsters hiding under the bed to the pain of being ignored in the playground. She can turn their tears to laughter in minutes. Your children will find her jolly fun, a little helter-skelter, relaxed about housework, helpful with homework and gentle when they're ill. She won't smother them with affection, and she'll seldom nag. Maybe Tommy didn't wash his hands the third time he was told, but she's more interested in what he learned in science class.

We may be a little ahead of ourselves. Even though Uranus likes to reverse the existing orders of things, before your Aquarian girl becomes a mother she has to become a wife. And before she becomes your wife, you'll have to convince her that marriage isn't synonymous with Al-catraz. She won't exactly rush into matrimony. She's in no hurry to take your name until she's weighed you, sorted you, tested you, and found out what makes you tick. The opinions of her friends and family will mean nothing, though she may ask them what they think out of curiosity. She has her own yardstick for measuring you. Assuming you pass her test, marriage to an Aquarian girl can be confusing. She'll listen pleasantly when you give her advice, but there's something in the Uranian make-up that prevents her from following directions explicitly. She can't stick to the recipe when she bakes one of her angel food cakes anymore than she can park the car exactly where you told her to. There's some kind of a snag in her thinking that causes her to believe just a little twist will improve any–thing. But shell smile agreeably as she goes on her own sweet way. There's a constant urge to experiment with a different way to make the coffee, fill her pen, fasten her ice skates or cross the street. She'll wear a sweater back–wards, mix her brandy with milk, arrange flowers in a fish bowl, rinse her hair in shaving lotion or make a rock garden on your desk. But don't ask her why. She doesn't know herself. The unique and unusual is her wave-length, that's all.

Because her nature is so impersonal, expressions of deep feeling won't come easily. Except for those sudden remarks that sound likes a combination of Robert Frost and Yogi Berra, she has few words with which to express her love, and her pattern of physical passion is woven closely with threads connected to the mind and soul. Although the unique Uranus outlook leads some Aquarian girls into peculiar attachments, once they find the right mate their marriages are usually models of happiness.

Your Aquarian woman can float through her days and nights with all the grace of a proud swan, but she may behave like a clumsy bear in romantic situations. The line between friendship and love is often all but invisible to Aquarius. Love songs about people who only have eyes for each other strike her as silly. There are so many miracles in the world for eyes to behold, it seems to her a terrible waste for two pairs of them to do nothing but gaze into each other's depths. Shell be glad to let you take her hand and walk beside her as she looks with happy delight on the sunrise, an antique car, the milkman's horse, a yel–low garbage pail, a stuffed owl or a red balloon caught in a church steeple. But don't distract her with too much to-getherness. Let her wander through her wonderland alone when she chooses, and she'll never question your pinochle games with the boys.

The quickest ways to lose her are to show jealousy, pos-sessiveness or prejudice; to be critical, stuffy or ultra-conservative. You'll also have to like her friends, who will come in odd, assorted sizes and shapes.

She's susceptible to sudden flashes of inspiration, and her intuition is remarkable. Her judgment may not seem sound or practical at first, because she sees months and years ahead. The Aquarian girl lives in tomorrow, and you can only visit there through her. What she says will come true, perhaps after many delays and troubles, but it will come true. I suppose, after all, that's the most special thing about your February woman. She's a little bit magic.

my clock is all wrong...inside.

so yesterday i awoke from sleep at about 3 in the afternoon. i didn't do anything that made me need that much sleep...nor did i do anything that should have made me sleep through an alarm so loud that everyone else in the house was freaking out about it and someone else had to come upstairs into my room and turn off (without me even noticing).

my roomie said i was moving and talking in my sleep, but very much not awake.

so then, i was up. i remember seeing six o'clock come on the telly this morning, but don't remember falling out or going to my room and getting a sheet and pillow and coming back down to the sofa. but, there i woke up at about 2.30 this afternoon. so now, my internal clock is all askew. right now it's my evening, and it's two something in the morning. i've been cleaning and doing laundry, after looking for dining room furniture and being in contact with most of those i needed to be about halloween.

it's no fun to be awake alone in the middle of the night. i'd rather be hanging out with someone, or have someone give me reason to go to bed...because heading there alone right now doesn't seem like the move. lol @ needing a reason to be in bed, but if you're going to be awake, reason is needed!

so, instead i'm still cleaning, organizing, chatting on instant messenger...catching up on things i'd rather not be doing but which need to be done.

i could go for a walk right now but streets aren't safe for womenfolk at this time. so instead, i'll clean and organize some more. wait for the sun to come up before my energy goes down, i guess.

mehhhhhhh. bored and boring!

i want sushi | nicknames. | friends that know all | scriptage

i want sushi, but i finished at the gym too late & everything was closed. damn, moments like that i miss hwood, yummy, and all the other conveniences of my old life.

instead, i'm making miso soup, rice & salmon. it'll probably be better and cheaper if i make it myself, but i want sushi dammit!!

so...everyone in my life has a nickname, if only in my head. i have a couple of friends that know all of my nicknames for everyone & it always makes them laugh to hear them when they get assigned, especially the men that are trying to holla. they always get hilarious nicknames that usually make fun in a subtle way. recently, i've started changing all the names in my phone to the nicknames & it's hilarious to scroll through my missed call list (b/c i don't answer my phone evAr hardly). it's more fun to have nicknames for people.

i believe that we all should have someone who knows every single thing about us, even the things that we don't tell the people that we're 'intimate' with (especially when we're intimate with multiple people), and who loves us anyway. for me, that person is someone that i appreciate so much. he's my honesty box...lol. he's the place where i put everything...he knows everything i'm doing, everyone i'm doing, all of my dates, all of my shit in my health crisis and relations with my family and friends. and he loves me anyway. he laughs at my jokes, he finishes my sentences about the why i'm doing what and who i'm doing. he understands me in a way that maybe no one else does, and he keeps me in check by being honest and by asking me the hard questions & demanding that i answer them. he knows when i'm not telling him the whole truth or the real reasons behind my answers.

it's nice to be known like that, to be understood and appreciated. it's nice to have long conversations with that person. today i talked to my friend for forever and it's so nice to have someone to talk to...to really dialogue with and joke with and talk about movies and music and politics and life. i'm a lucky girl where friends are concerned :)

•• so i'm reading the script for American Gangster and i cannot wait to see it in the theater!! mad excited. (thank you for giving me the script bebe :)) - also, i saw Gone Baby Gone today and it is a really great movie (thanks Adam!! you're the best movie friend & know my taste so well!!!). i'd say GBG is better than Michael Clayton, and i really love how Clooney's character was the anti-hero and they all lived in the gray zone in MC. GBG had me way more than MC did, though, i'll admit.

...also, i'm still addicted to Last One Standing & still listening to Kenna...i bought my friend Kenna's disc today b/c the music store only had 2 copies left! it's that goot!

life, love, the gym & other stupid shit.

these past days have been more full of bullshit than i care to even think about, but it's all that i can think about.

everytime that my phone rings, it's more of what i can't tolerate right now.

acclimating to a doubling of estrogen in my hormone replacement therapy has been hard. right when i thought that i was getting adjusted to my moods and how the medicines alter them, i'm right back to edgy, hormonal, irritable, easily hurt, the place where even to leave the comfort of a storm is too much.

and then my grandma calls to tell me that she's picked out her casket and her tombstone and arranged for it all to be taken care of with her life insurance, typed up her funeral instructions to the minister, set up the Power of Attorney and Living Will, and she's ready now. she picked out everything so that i wouldn't have to. she appreciates me helping her pay for her life insurance policy and she doesn't want me to have to do the rest. and she's ready. jesus. okay. just breathe through it. hide the tears and accept it. tolerate. breathe. absorb. apply more cream.

and then lose your best friend. accept that the compromise isn't going to happen. try not to lose my temper and say heated things when my hormones are raging in me and i'm already at the limit to what i can endure. tolerate. breathe. accept. hang up and sob. take more pills.

rent the truck to go and pick up the furniture. go to the gym. dump all of my hurt and anger and frustration there. focus. go agro on those machines. heart rate climbing. sweat. cry while doing cardio. push myself past all pain and hope to reach numb.

and then, while on the machine, notice that i'm being stared at...hoard. and notice that the person staring is an actor. a very attractive working actor. stare back because fuck it, what else is there to do. when my legs feel that they can't go any more, heart pounding, every inch of me sweating, climb off. and go upstairs to do strength training and weight machines. and he goes upstairs too. places himself across the room on machines where he can stare blatantly at me. and when i move to ab machines, he comes to the machines directly behind them and starts doing reps with ridiculous amounts of weights. staring. smiling. even a wink. trying to pull me into something that i don't have the energy or strength of heart to do. but he stares. and i stare back. i won't be broken by another person today. i won't admit defeat, my weakness, my inability to relate, to another person today. and so when i come off of the ab machines, having pushed so much and so hard with so much weight that my workout partner can't keep up, he stands up, takes out his iPod, and tells me that he's enjoying watching my sexy ass work out so hard...to know that i'm being watched. i laugh and go to the mat. plank, 8 minute circuit training, plank, side plank, other side plank. at other side plank, i look up and see that he has placed himself at the machine where he can see everything that i am doing and is making, yet again, no bones about the fact that he is enjoying what he's seeing.

and so, i stand up and walk over to him. say, 'i'm angie. i hope that you're enjoying watching me try to break myself.'
and he tells me that it's my fault, for being so sexy, and that his mind is wandering, thinking of all of the things he'd like to do that tattoo. has anyone ever licked the ice cream cone? has anyone ever traced it down? how sexy my legs and body and the tats that i've chosen to adorn myself with are, and what they make him think of.

he is a sex symbol. he is attractive and oozing sexuality and confidence and in those moments, it is more than what i need that he has chosen me. while staring back, i have seen the other women approach him and try to talk to him, and watched him be dismissive as he reaches his head around to keep me in his line of sight. i have watched them walk by me on my machine after that and stare me down, and watched him laugh about it. i have listened to my workout partner talk about how fucking fine he is and how it's obvious he wants to fuck the shit out of me. i have watched the light reflect off of the massive diamond that he wears. in my place of rawness and hurt, trying to push my body to its breaking point, i have seen and heard everything, i have maintained eye contact, i have not waverred.

i have decided to offer myself up to the gods of helping me forget the things which are causing me to ache and want and cry and hurt. i have decided that whatever it takes to keep living, keep breathing, keep knowing that i am alive and desired, i will do it. i will do as i have always done and evolve past the moment of everything and everyone that i have loved falling away from me, choosing to propel themselves in a different direction. and so, when he reaches for his phone and demands my number, i give it to him. as he dials and lets it ring, i tell him that my voicemail is full and so when he hears confirmation, he tells me his number and to program it in because i'll be hearing from him again. i smile the smile of cynicism and 'uh-huh'. he laughs and tells me that i am funny & beautiful, that in a land of the bitch who won't eat and won't engage in sarcasm, i am what he has been looking for, and that he is glad that this is the gym that he was close to tonight and so, out of his pattern, stopped there. that it is the universe.

it is rare to meet someone so candid, so frank, who also speaks of the universe. even more rare that i would have the benefit of knowing who he is and so therefore have the knowledge to doubt him. i know his world, have been a part of it, and so do not believe that someone with access to the kind of women that he has access to truly would desire me, but i go along with it. pretend to believe that he is sincere. verbally spar with him, tease him, finish my workout and leave. as i'm leaving, he makes it a point to call to me across the room...every woman who has been staring and trying to talk to him or get his attention now even more angered that i am the one that he has chosen. i have come in braids like pigtails, no makeup, cotton shorts and a tiny shirt, no appearances, no faking it. everything that i am, raw, unaltered, undone, visible. and that he has chosen this fucks with them.

by the time that i have gotten back to my phone, he has text me that he's still thinking of me, that i am perfect cuteness and that he can't get his mind away from the places that it has wandered while watching me go hard in the gym. while i'm at the grocery, he calls me. he tells me that he is grown, tells me his age which is a full decade over what i believed it to be, and that he is at the place in his life where he doesn't fuck with not going after what he wants, and that what he wants is to spend time with me. do i like italian food? do i like soul food? he's from the east coast and is a cat that wants someone who likes what he likes, who will be an intelligent date and eat good food and be down for being woken up at 5 a.m. to spend some time before he leaves to shoot his movie. and it is flattering. i talk back, let myself be carried away into the feeling of being chosen by someone that everyone else wanted. he laughs and laughs, tells me that i am funny and sarcastic and smart and perfect. he wants to see me. will i see him tonight? when i tell him no, will i see him tomorrow? when i tell him why i can't, he laughs at my plans and tells me that he will wake me up on friday morning then. to expect to hear from him again. that he is not easily put off from what he wants.

in his words, there is the promise of distraction, of a steady stream of compliments, of probable physical gratification. it is flattering. it makes me feel good to be so desired, so blatantly admired and wanted. but also, there is the danger that would come with giving myself even remotely to someone when my heart lies elsewhere. as much as i want the distraction, i do not want to fuck with someone else's head or heart. i know the danger too much of having head and heart fucked with, and i feel that i can't even begin to do something only for my own pleasure, my own distraction. that i must remember that he is a person with his own thoughts and feelings, and be responsible for that. even though it is hard. because what i want to do, what i am tempted to do, is say fuck it and let him be a distraction for me, let him make me laugh and cum and feed me dinners of italian and soul food and tell me over and over again of my cuteness and my sexy and my beauty.

and so i breathe. accept. focus. continue. go to get the furniture...finally. finish the laundry. make the seasoning mix to toss the scallops in, cut the potatos, sautee the spinach. all the while, crying. being easily flustered. and yet continuing on.

life and all this stupid shit. the desire, the ache, the sadness, the loss...it all remains. and so i just soldier on.

tootsie pops and working out.

i love both tootsie pops and workouts...so today has been good b/c its included both.

i also got to go to the tea room for proper tea and i made pork tenderloins and sauteed spinach & string beans...so yummy!!

it's been a good weekend and start to my week.
things are going okay...even though my hormones have been intensified and i'm hungry all the time and moody moody moody.

i'm maintaining.
that's all i can hope for.

day by day.

that new Kenna is awesome btw!

<3

Day 2 of Operation: I don't want to be the fat bitch.

ooooohhhhhhhh, day 2.

day 2 was when things got good.
for anyone watching me sweat.
because it was funny.
not 'funny i'm laughing with you'
but, 'funny, you are looking to me right now.'

morning = hike in the mountains for a very long time (i put someone who has been training for a while to shame though, so my endurance isn't that hit!!).
afternoon = apple store & new swimsuits for swim therapy prescription.
evening = salad with chicken & then the gym for cardio (elliptical), abs, and upper body.

now i'm home, showered and about to do laundry so that i can do it all again tomorrow.

i will be one point five inches smaller in the waist by halloween.

oh, and saturday i'm getting a trainer for free :)

my measurements didn't make me upset at all and i thought that they would...i didn't really gain much, i just lost tone. easily rectified?

you tell me.

i'm hungry again!!!

Operation Two-A-Days aka no more Pushing Maximum Density has commenced.

i'm a thick girl.
not fat at all.
especially compared to how i used to look.
but, i'm borderline.
i get Mad Holleration, no doubt.
and not even stunting, it's just true.
i leave the house and i get attention.
it's not attention that i want...
i just want to feel good about my body All The Way again.
surgery has changed my body.
Hormone Replacement Therapy has changed my body.
treatmments have changed my body.
some things...
a Perfect stomach,
a Flawless stomach,
youth, maybe,
i will never have again.

i have beautiful eyes.
i have a beautiful smile.
i have, amazingly after the hormones and treatments, long beautiful hair.
i have, more importantly, intelligence.
i have strength of character.
i have a razor sharp wit.
i have a fabulous sense of humor.

these are all good things to have.
and maybe should be enough.
but i want The Body.

i don't want to Push Maximum Density any longer.

my doctors tell me that i can't do it again.
that i can't get my body back there.
that a hysterectomy and HRT have altered me,
in a way that means that i will have to accept my limitations.

i call bullshit.
my entire life has been about disproving the Powers That Be about what i can and cannot do.
this will be another way that i prove them wrong.

i have started operation Two A Days.
hiking in the morning.
gym for alternate cardio w/upper body and cardio w/lower body in the evenings.
it feels good to be on a mission again.
tonight's workout was an hour and a half.
cardio...elliptical for 40 minutes.
lower body strength and toning on the weights.
i was stronger than i thought i'd be.

soon, i will be an even lovelier vision!

and the funny thing...
i got mad holleration in the gym
from the trainers
while i was working out.
laughing, i am.

i can't wait to be my next evolution.
i can't wait to prove them wrong.
i can't wait to sleep tonight!!!

Make Sure They See My Face.

Kenna's sophomore album, Make Sure They See My Face, is finally out. (Fucking Finally Thank You, Interscope Motherf*ckers).

Anyway, if you know about Kenna, then you know that his first album got completely and totally fuct with by the Powers that Be in the Music Industry and we almost never got the release. That album, New Sacred Cow, was leaked on the internet and getting mad play on radio stations and internet radio shows long before it was finally released by Interscope.

The same thing, unbelievably, started to happen for MSTSMF.

The thing is, I think, Kenna defies classification and stereotype. Born in India, raised in Virginia, looks black, music isn't gangsta' rap...none of these things matter if you like his music, but if the Machine doesn't know how to package you up pretty and put you in a niche, then chances are that you'll never get to decide that you like the music. We just won't hear it, because it doesn't fit very well into the societal concepts of who = what, even in 'Artforms'.

{Newsflash to the Music Industry - Music is still an artform. Kthxbye.}

Anyway, I could go on and on about how Clive Davis killed the Music Industry and how the machine is a beast that chews up talent and spits it out while less-talented-but-more-marketable aholes are putting songs like T-Pain's shit on the radio and MTV.

But, I won't. I'll just say this...Make Sure They See My Face by Kenna is out now...buy it. Because even though he has the beast/machine/industry behind him, all they're doing is fucking him back there and he deserves better.

A video clip of Say Goodbye to Love, by Kenna and directed by Pharell - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN-ysBuRVQA

And a final tidbit for you - Radiohead is saying goodbye to the beast and stepping out to independence now that they got stadium status. Their new album, In Rainbows, is being released by them directly to fans - for the price of however much you think it's worth. And you can pre-order the Disc Set for the album, including wax there as well. www.inrainbows.com

Let's take music back.

i am, indeed, somehow still about faith...

faith that the universe has meaning.
that my little human life is not irrelevant.
that what i choose to say and/or do matters.

~~~~~Revelation Must Be Terrible~~~~~~~~~~


Revelation must be terrible
with no time left to say goodbye.

Imagine the moment staring at
the still waters with only the brief tremor of your body
to say you are leaving everything
and everyone you know behind.

Being far from home is hard,
but you know, at least, we
are exiled together.

When you open your eyes to the world
you are on you own for the first time.

No one is even interested in saving you now
and the world steps in to test the calm fluidity
of your body from moment to moment,
as if it believed you could join
its vibrant dance of fire and calmness
and final stillness...

as if you were meant to be exactly where you are,
as if like the dark branch of a desert river
you could flow on without a speck of guilt
and everything - everywhere would still be
just as it should be,

as if your place in the world mattered
and the world could neither speak nor hear the fullness
of its own bitter and beautiful cry without the deep well
of your body resonating in the echo...

knowing that it takes only that one terrible
word to make the circle complete,

revelation must be terrible
knowing you can never hide your voice again.

- David Whyte

there are certain people you just keep coming back to...

she is right in front of you

you begin to wonder
could i find a better one
compared to her
now she's in question

and all at once
they all begin to say
sometimes the hardest thing
and the right thing are the same

maybe you want her
maybe you need her
but maybe you've started to compare
her to someone out there

looking for the right one
you light up the world to find
where no questions cross your mind
but she won't keep on waiting

for you
'without a doubt'

waits no more for you to
sort it out

and all at once
they all begin to say
sometimes the hardest thing
and the right thing are the same

maybe you want her
maybe you need her
but maybe you've started to compare
her to someone out there

maybe you want it
maybe you need it
maybe it's all you're running from

...all at once,
they all begin to say
sometimes
we never know what's wrong
without the pain

sometimes the hardest thing
and the right thing
are the same

maybe you want her
maybe you need her
maybe you're still comparing
her
to someone out there

maybe you want her
maybe you need her
maybe you had her
maybe you lost her

somehow.

a break from cleaning - my dad died when i was 9...

My father was not what most people would call a good man.

He was a criminal, a felon, a convict...prone to violence with a moody disposition. He was a bad man to be on the wrong side of...he ran organized crime and not-so-organized crime. He was a fighter...he wore cowboy boots and carried knives and guns.

When I was a baby and a little girl, I didn't know these things. I only knew that he was my daddy and that I loved him, craved him, wanted him like I wanted no one else.

It was an often told story to me by my grandma that when my mom, at 16 & married to my dad, was pregnant with me, my dad spoke constantly of his coming son...his Jr. He absolutely-without-a-doubt knew that I would be a boy, his legacy. When my mom went into labor with me, and the family gathered, they waited anxiously for the phone call from the doctor (I love envisioning how different those times were, especially since my son's adoptive parents were in labor & delivery with me, and the father video recorded the whole messy affair). When the call finally came, my dad answered eagerly, and she tells me, he jumped into the air and let out a 'Whoooooo, a girl - JUST WHAT I WANTED A BABY GIRL!!!!', while clicking his cowboy boots together.

And I became, in those moments, exactly what he had wanted. He never treated me like I had disappointed him from my arrival into this world.

From as early as I can remember, even though they were both terrible parents who caused me trauma due to their abuse of each other and their inability to see how their actions were not just affecting them any longer, my father was the one with whom I bonded. When he was with me, he was my heart and soul. He truly understood me.

Also from as early as I can remember, he started telling me that he was going to die when he was 30. I remember calculating what this meant for me...how old I would be when he would be no more. I remember never doubting him...he was so convincing, I think because he was so convinced.

I witnessed terrible things at my father's hands. I suffered terrible things due to the neglect of both my father and my mother. And it was my father who, after a night so horrible that I have recounted it only two times in its entirety in my life, drove me through the rest of the night, across states, to my grandma's house with one paper grocery bag of belongings. He urged me out of his El Camino and onto her porch and he rang the bell. When she answered the door, he said to her..."If you don't take her, I'm giving her to the state. It's not right, what's happening to her there. Do you want her?"

Of course my grandma took me. And ultimately my sisters as well. And for so long, I waited for him to come back. There would be times when he would, times when I would get to spend time with him. And always, when I did, I felt as if I were spending time with the other part of me. Of course, I didn't feel that then...I didn't know how to articulate that feeling of 'connectedness' that I felt with him, how much I felt that he was the only person who truly 'got me', but all that I knew was that I ached for him in a way that left me broken.

I spent so much time trying to figure out what I had done to cause him to want to give me away. I had tried my best to be a good girl. I had learned to read early, learned the songs he wanted me to sing for his friends, learned to tie my shoes, learned to give my sisters their bottles and later their food...learned how to set my alarm and get myself up and off to school when no one came home to care for me - never telling anyone the horrors that were happening at home. I didn't understand why he could so easily toss me aside when I had tried as hard as I could.

My mom had always been the abuser - the beater, the berater, the hater, the one that I couldn't please. And so I had stopped hoping for her affection, her praise, her love. I knew that no matter how well I did anything, there would be something that I didn't do well enough and so I would get beaten for it. I hoped that it wouldn't be bad enough that I had to miss school - school was my respite, my happy place, and so when she beat me so bad that I couldn't go because they couldn't see the results, I was broken up about it.

But, he had been the rescuer. In a home life as twisted as ours, having someone who cared enough to beat the person who had left you beaten and bloodied made them your hero. And that had been him. Even though their relationship was tumultuous at best, abusive, and I witnessed horrors by him, I was never frightened *of* him...he was always the one who scooped me up and showed me love. He was the only place where I felt any gentleness, any love. And so even though I knew what he was capable of, I didn't flinch from his hands. He was my tamed lion. My protector.

As I grew older, our relationship grew more close. He would take me fishing, riding horses, to his job sites. He took me on long hauls in his semi-rig. The stops along the way...the huge lollipops...the pulling of the horn for women who raised their arms and pulled down on the interstate...the getting to stay up all night and listen to country music and talk on the CB radio...those were the moments when he was my dad and I was 'yes, the girl that he had always wanted'.

I honestly always felt that my dad was the only person who understood me even though I guess I understand that he probably understood very little. But whether I wanted a horse, or a motorcycle, or a frilly dress and matching hat for Easter, he never batted an eye - he never questioned it. He never said - 'but you're a girl, you can't do that.', or 'but you're a tomboy, you really want That dress?'.

My dad was always happy to let me be who I was, and to teach me whatever he could. He was happy when I wanted to know what he knew. He taught me how to use tools and was happy when I would hammer and saw on my own pieces of wood, listening to music and singing to myself, while he worked in the garage. He taught me how to ride a motorcycle when I was 7 years old - bought me my own tiny little 50 cc dirt bike, taught me the brake and the gears in a huge field and then let me go crazy while he would build fences and work on trains. Also when I was seven, he started teaching me cards and pool and taking me to the pool hall with him for late-night poker games. The old man, Hoppie, who ran the games said something to him about it only one time - everyone was afraid of my dad and the 9 of his brothers who 'ran things' with him (he had 12 siblings!) and so it was a big deal for him to be ballsy enough to say something at all. My dad let him know that it was in his best interest to mind his own business and it was never mentioned again. I was - and loved being, as crazy as it sounds, but I didn't know any better - the 'bartender' for the games, and would pour the guys their drinks...half whiskey, half soda.

I would sit on his lap and he would point to me the cards that were important and give me pats on my leg when he was winning hands. Always, those nights, my grandma thought that I was spending with him at my other grandma's house baking pastries and playing with my cousins. If only she had known the kinds of activities that I was really being exposed to. It was also in my seventh year that my dad started really immersing himself in drugs. Cocaine had made a huge splash in our small town, and he being what he was, he was all up in it. I remember being 15 and learning what cocaine was and telling my grandma that my dad had done it in front of me copiously for the last 2 1/2 years of his life...the reconciling as I figured those things out.

But, I loved it...I loved nothing more than being with him the times that he would come for me. I loved going fishing with him before sunrise and sitting in the boat in total silence watching the sun come up over the water. I loved how proud he was that I could bait my own hook and dive off of the boat with absolutely no fear - I always remember wondering why he thought that I would be afraid of anything when I had already known the most physical pain that I could imagine at my mother's hands. I wonder now if he ever even thought about it, or considered that one had to do with the other. I loved that he was so proud of how great I was in school - in kindergarten I was getting praise but as I progressed, everyone knew that I was different, that I was smarter than the rest, and that I was destined for different things. He was proud of me for a variety of reasons, but my intelligence was number one. He would come to the awards ceremonies at my school every year - out of place from all the other dads in their suits in his Wrangler's and cowboy boots, and hoot & hollar, as my Grandma would say, at every trophy and award that I would get. He told everyone who would listen - and he wasn't the kind of person that people didn't listen to - about his daugther the genius.

For my 8th Christmas, not long before I was going to turn 9, he asked me what I wanted for Christmas. Like always, I named something really small and told him that he should get my little sisters something really great. My grandma also likes to tell those stories - how I would give my money and my gifts to my sisters and the other kids in school who didn't have much or who wanted/needed/threw fits for more attention...how I always just wanted things to be copasthetic and I thought that I could sacrifice my way to peace. But, that year, he wasn't having it. He sat me down and explained to me that it was our last Christmas together - that in case I didn't remember, he wasn't making it past 30, and he was going to be 30 in July, so he wouldn't be there to see Christmas for a nine year old me. So, he wanted me to tell him what I really wanted...what would be the one thing that would make me the most happy.

There was a Radio Shack about two blocks from the apartment where my grandma was raising us...and I was *known* there! My love for things tech/gadget started early, and I had long been buying broken things at the thrift store where I worked for a quarter and taking them apart to put them back together. My grandma kept my hair short and permed to my ears, and the men who worked at Radio Shack called me 'little orphan angie'. I think, now, they felt sorry for me...they let me play with everything that came in, they would even open new stuff to let me tinker with it. Then, I thought they liked how smart I was with the stuff. Now, I realize that everyone in that too-small town knew my story and they probably felt a mixture of pity for me and fear of who my dad was. I would buy things with the extra money that I put away from my babysitting after I paid my tithes to the church (mandatory per my grandma) and gave my grandma the contribution for the house, and they would always give me a discount and let me know when new things that I would be excited for were going to be coming (remember when Radio Shack was the ultimate in technology?). Anyway, I knew that the new Tandy piece-it-yourself computers were going to be launching that holiday season - *sidenote, on Christmas & being Jewish...my family still celebrates the Roman holidays instead of the Jewish ones, the fear that my great-great grandfather had instilled about being Jewish keeping them held into Christianity in the Midwest*, and so I told him that that, a computer, was what I would want if I didn't have to think about how much something would cost.

And so, for Christmas that year, in lieu of the $75 in an envelope on the tree that I usually got, I indeed got my computer, and all of the coding books to go along with it. My dad watched on in awe as I hooked everything up, put it together and powered it on...and opened the book and started typing away. He was frustrated for me to learn that I would have to type in hours of code to generate my own games and programs, but I was enraptured with the glorious world of MS-DOS. Along with books, I had a new escape on the nights that I could not sleep...which at eight were already too many to count and my grandma had come to accept that my nightmares were too terrifying to force and so she let me have my night~world.

When I got the games up and running, and my dad was around, he would play with me for a while. He never understood why I didn't like the Atari better, but there was something I loved more about a game that I had created with all those lines of Commands and Functions. We were doing other things less...the fishing and hammering and sawing and card games had all pretty much ground to a halt. He had discovered Vegas and he was around even less, and flashier when he was. And then came the night that an argument when he and my mom both happened to be stopped by - the dual visit rare but the argument when both of them there not so rare - resulted in him pulling a gun and aiming it directly at her. When my grandma stepped between him and my mom, her daughter...and even though she recognized my mom's many faults, and often took my dad's side when it came to myself and my sisters, in that moment she was a mother...he didn't falter with it at all.

My dad loved my grandma, my mom's mom, more than he had loved anyone else ever. They were close, and there were many times that he would show up at our house in the early twilight hours and she would make him coffee and biscuits from scratch and he would pour out his heart about my sisters and I, and his frustration with my mother, and his life in general. His love for her, and the lengths that he would go to to get her the things that she needed for us, was something that intrinsically I knew about him from as early as I *knew* anything about relationships and the human condition. Because life had forced me to grow up quickly, because I had been an adult for almost as long as he had known me, he had never treated me like a child...he had never sent me from the room or edited his conversation when I was present, and so I knew more than I should. And this moment was heartbreaking for me...

It wasn't the first time that I had seen my dad wield a weapon. The summer before, he had come to take me out of school early, and had asked me if I knew where the man that my mom was seeing lived. When I told him yes, he asked me to tell him how to get there. When he pulled up in front of the man's house, he (the other guy) knew he was and most likely what he was there for, and to his credit he faced it head on, emerging onto the porch with a baseball bat in his hands. Unfortunately for him, the time of chains and batons - which my father and his brothers & sisters had at one time been known for - was long gone, and with the cocaine, a whole new kind of weapon had made its debut in my dad's life. My dad told me to stay in the car, which shielded me from nothing as he only walked five feet away, they exchanged words and my dad then drew his gun and shot the man and got back in the car and drove me away. He stopped at my favorite diner and tried to get me to get an ice-cream, and then he took me to the police station where his brother was the mayor...he gave me to my uncle and told him to get me to my grandma and then told him what he'd done. I'm not sure how they made that go away, what they had to do or say to that man and his family, but my dad came to see me in a week...bringing me a huge stuffed animal and taking me to Wal-Mart to 'pick out anything I wanted'. Because my grandma had been complaining about the phone in our house, I got a new phone, a cordless one, and refused anything else. It was the first time that I didn't know what to say to him, how to be.

This second time seeing my dad with a gun in his hand was a whole new kind of terrifying - both because I knew that he had the courage or the don't-give-a-fuck to use it, and because I knew that as much as he loved my grandma he hated my mom and the drugs that he was on were consuming him, fueling him, by then. He wasn't the same dad that he had always been. In a short period of time, things had changed more than I knew how to acclimate to. Now, I see that he was rushing towards what he saw as his coming end...he was going to have it even if he had to create it. But in the wake of his self-destruction was the ruins of my idolization of him.

I knew what could happen when and if he pulled the trigger. And seeing it aimed at my grandma was freaking me the fuck out. And somehow, I still believed that in there was my daddy, the man who had always wanted me, his little baby girl, and a part of me wanted him to recognize me in all of the mess that was swirling around me...and so, I screamed out to him and ran towards his outstretched arm. I wanted him to put it down, maybe walk away, but I definitely wanted this tension and conflict and fear to be over, this looming feeling of terror and chaos. But, he never dropped his arm, and even more shockingly, he grabbed me and pulled me close to him and then put the gun at my head. And he used me to terrorize my mother, he asked her why she would cry while he did that when she was the one who had beaten me and left me bloody all those times, who had whored around and left me uncared for in the apartment that he paid for, alone to feed his two younger daughters.

I remember only getting incredibly calm in those moments. Feeling and hearing everything, and being so afraid, but locking in to my grandmother's face and getting so insanely calm, not allowing myself to cry at all...knowing how much he hated tears. And I remember that my grandma stopped crying and became calm as well, as she stared into my face. And she started talking to my dad like nothing at all was wrong, like it was any other time that he was there, and she was maybe at any second going to put some coffee on and start to make some biscuits. And when my mom started to speak, my grandma made her shut up and then told her to get out of her house, told her that she was making everything worse. And it seemed that this was the stance that my dad wanted her to take, once this happened the tension started to ease, and he let my mom leave. And he got hysterical, explaining to my grandma why he did what he did, but not letting go of me, and telling her how he had fucked up my life, how he had probably fucked it up the minute that I was created, that there was too much that I had seen and known and felt and experienced already, and probably the best thing that he could ever do was end it now, stop the hurt right there, and keep me from ever having to hurt again.

Somehow, my grandma talked him down that night. She told him that there was no telling what kind of spiral this would send my mom into and so she was taking us away for a while, and she hurriedly packed us some things and put us in the car and we drove away into the night, leaving my dad crying on the sofa with his gun sitting on the coffee table in front of him.
After that night, things weren't ever the same. I still loved my dad very much - that's the thing about our parents, we never stop loving them, or wanting them to love us, or approve of us, or be proud of us. But, I was finally scared of him, of what he had become. My grandma kept trying to impress on me to remember all the time before and not this, because this wasn't him, this was something and someone else completely, and so I have lived my life trying to do just that.

That summer, on July 25th, my dad had his 30th birthday. On August 8th, my grandma woke me from an incredibly intense dream of his death with tears in her eyes and I said to her, 'He's dead, isn't he?'. He had had a terrible accident on what is ironically called 'Dead Man's Curve' and been ejected from the sunroof of his car. He was going so fast, and was so not sober, that the damage done to his skull and brain was massive and he suffered brain death along with various other extreme injuries. His passenger was ejected from the car and hit a tree and suffered a broken neck. Fortunately, the passenger lived and no other cars were involved.
They kept him on machines for 6 days but finally let him go.

Just like he had always told me he would, my dad left this world when he was 30 & I was 9.

My mom has continued to play the role of the abuser, I just haven't had a rescuer and so I have forced myself to be my own. I worked hard in school and even though we were poor, and everyone knew the story of my family the criminals, and my mom the loose-piece who danced topless on tables in the bars when she was drunk, which was often, and who slept with my friend's married father's, and who was married and divorced more times than I could count on one hand by the time I was in high school, I believed that the world was mine and that I could go anywhere I wanted to and be anything I wanted to and do anything I wanted to.

I had the grades to graduate after my Sophomore year but I stayed and took Advanced classes and some classes at the Jr. college in my town. I was in National Honor Society and Drama and the talk of the school, and at standardized test time, I got the highest score ever scored by anyone at my high school in over a decade. I was accepted into a Summer Program for the health sciences at a major university for which there was over 500 applicants and only 79 people accepted, and I got the scholarships needed to spend the summer there. While there, I did work on a Science test of the local bodies of water that had political reach and I came to be familiar with my local State representative. The next year, my Senior year, I was chosen to be a Page at the House of Representatives and was also given financial aid for the time there. While there, I came to know a lot of the Representatives personally because I had the kind of fun and funny personality that people were drawn to, and there was also a Bill passed about me on the Floor - put to vote and everything...one of the funniest stories of my life still to this day.

There was a local journalist who had taken my photo when I was five years old and a cheerleader with a local super-jock football player who was breaking all kinds of records and seemed poised for an NFL career. When I started accomplishing things, he remembered me - I think because of who my family was which was probably why he had taken my photo with the football player and run it in the paper anyway - and he started following my scholastic achievements. He would come to my school and take my picture and write stories in the local paper for each of my new things done...the Health Sciences Program, the scholarships, the House of Representative. He called our Representative to ask him if he had a comment about my tenure as a page for the story that he was doing and the Rep told him this story - 'She became a joy to everyone that had personal contact with her through the days on the Floor. She made us all laugh and smile. She is smart and witty and funny, but more than that, she is fearless. Most of the other kids were kind of taken aback with everything, but she seemed as if she had been here her whole life, she never broke stride...let me tell you what kind of girl she is. We pay the Pages with checks from the H.O.R, and apparently, she hadn't been cashing hers. Well, she happened to go to a local mall and find a dress that she wanted to buy for prom, but she needed to cash some of her checks. So, she came back here to the cashier's office in the House to do so, but the cashier refused to cash them for her because she wasn't an actual employee of the House. So, Angie comes up to my office and tells my secretary that she's my Page and she needs to see me, so I have my secretary send her in. And she comes in and tells me this. And I ask her what she wants me to do. And she says, straight faced, "your my Representative, Represent me. Go down there and vouch for me, tell her to cash these checks. I need to have a dress that no one else is going to have and this is the one." And so I did...I got up and went down to the cashier with her and had her cash the checks. She was sincerely grateful but also triumphant as the cashier handed over the money, which you could tell she didn't want to do...I'm sure it was hard being shown up by an intern from High School. But, that's the kind of person Angie is...not afraid to at least ask for what she thinks she deserves in this life, and that in and of itself will get her far. I told her before she left that as charming as she is, she should consider politics, I'm sure she'd be a natural.'

My grandma was more proud of that story than any other, she must have bought at least ten copies of that paper and clipped it out. But the final moment of pride for her came when I graduated - with honors, and in honor of her, choosing to say the prayer to bless our class at the start of our new lives in lieu of speaking. My graduation came with a commendation from the Governor of our State for my accomplishments, my GPA and my grades in Science. It came to be that because of extra-credit questions and assignments in Physics, Advanced Physics and Advanced Chemistry Classes, I graduated with above 100% in Chemistry and Physics. These days, it's not uncommon to have a higher-than-100% average due to the change in grading scales, but back then it was still on a 90-100 for A, so above 100 was unheard of, and the journalist did a story on that as well. He came the day that they handed out all of the Letters and awards in our school and took pictures of me surrounded by my Letters, awards and my Commendation from the Governor with the State Seal. It was a great accomplishment, coming from a family that didn't graduate from high school much, and I felt good...but I had done what I had always known I would. I had always known that my smarts and education would be my way out.

It was not for me. It felt good because of how good my grandma felt about it, because of how proud she was to see me walk with the special color of ropes for NHS and other honors. I don't remember ever seeing her more happy than she was that day (even though I broke her spirit by insisting that I wear shorts and a tee-shirt under my robe!). It was nice to make her feel that her sacrifice had merited something...that giving up her middle age to raise another set of kids had been more beneficial than the first time had been.

It's been a long time, and a lot of struggle and mistakes and obstacles and hardship and lessons learned, since that time. I've lived a whole other life and become a whole new person - shaped by a whole new set of circumstances and situations - then I was when I left that town to further my education. I thought that I had learned so much, and that I knew so much, and that I was about something. I thought that I couldn't be told.

Some things were true - I was fearless. It has been both an asset and a detriment, but it is something that I'm grateful for because it got me here. If it hadn't been for my fearlessness, and my tenacity, I wouldn't have survived my childhood, much less the struggles that adulthoold and disease have brought. Everyone thought that I would go into the world and Be Something, Change Things...but I have been only my own worst enemy where that idea was concerned. I am learning that I have changed things, and I continue to do so, only I do it on a smaller scale then I imagined back then. My life, my story, it matters to people, it helps some people, but my reach is so short.

I wonder, a lot lately, who and how I would be if I had had my father to continue to be my rescuer. I think that maybe I think about this for several reasons - the dreams are back, it's been almost a year since I last spoke to my mother and she's reaching out again, but mostly, I think that I think about him because my son is getting to be the age that I was when he died. And it seems so young except that I remember how much I understood, how much I absorbed and put on myself, how much I questioned without ever saying a word. My son shares my dad's birthday, and in the circle of life he looks exactly like me - but I look exactly like my dad - so looking at him is like seeing a vision of my father reflected in his face. But, innocent, childness, perfect still.

I wonder how much damage I have done simply by trying to give him the best possible starting place that I could. The best parents, the best socio-economic status, the best everything that I never had. He lives in a mansion, in a gated community, and goes to a private school that costs more per year than my grandma raised my sisters and I on when I was young. He has every advantage, every benefit, every toy, a huge family who loves him immensely. And I wonder if he thinks - 'Why didn't she want me? Why didn't she keep me? Why wasn't I good enough to keep if I'm good enough to come and see?'. In essence, I wonder if he thinks to himself all of the things that I thought to myself at his age. And, I wonder if there's any way to save him the years in between then and now that I went searching for distraction, numbness, things to fill the void. I wonder if there's a way to really make someone "know" love. Because I know that it is still something that I feel so unfamiliar with, when I am honest.

I know that some things I know and some things I don't. That I have tried to come back to the middle...to find a balance between the longing and the floating adrift. I have tried to set myself right in a path that makes sense to me, to find my own spiritual peace, my own happiness even though I don't feel that I will ever truly know love the way that I envision it, my own place of 'good person, good friend'. But, I know that there is a lot that I regret and there is still a lot I hope for. I know that when I sit and give it thought, I still believe that the world is mine...that I can go anywhere and do anything, I'm just not so sure about how happy I'll be once I get there or once I'm doing it. I want to be happy, I just don't see too many people who ever get there...and it take so much energy to be strong, to be fearless, to keep healing yourself, to keep killing the you that has evolved and starting again, that happiness always seems to be just on the back burner and just a little out of grasp. And I know that sometimes I think that my dad was right, and maybe right then at 9 I had seen and felt and been exposed to too much bad already in the world...maybe that was the moment of truth for me. Maybe this is as good as it gets.

But, more than anything, I know that I keep trying. I know that as I live my 30th year, I want it to matter, I want my survival, my fight through these medical obstacles, my will to live, my tenacity, to be what I am known for. I do not want my son to think that I chose leaving him without someone who would be willing to come and rescue him. Or someone who could answer his questions or tell him the story of when he was a baby in the belly. I don't ever want him to think that I didn't understand how much he thought about me, and how much I was or wasn't willing to sacrifice my quest to forget so that he could have good things to remember. These things matter so much more than I could possibly have ever imagined.

when i have nothing, i still have music...

and i'm grateful.

because i can't sleep. again. and i'm lonely in a way that isn't about needing company, because there's plenty of that to be found...but if i could just have the comfort of someone with whom i feel safe and warm to curl up next to, perhaps i may be able to relax...my body might be able to find a place of solace...and i might be able to drift away, if only for a short time.

but that is not an option.

and so i have my music.

the voices which have, through the years, been there for me when i had nothing and no one else. and it will be enough. because it has to be.

because that is what you do. there isn't anything else. no other options.

you just go on. any way that you can.

ants marching...

Bugs

New story on 365tomorrows by submission on October 4th, 2007, Titled Bugs - author is a great person and a great friend to me...

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Cycling & Coping Mechanisms {i love to cook}

There's a lot to come to understand and absorb when who you are has been turned upside down by medicine - by the giant world of Medicine...Science, Treatments, Therapies.

When hormone suppression and chemo turn you inside out, and the add-back therapy alters you even more. When you are watching the person that you've been for so long be turned inside out by things which you cannot control.

You stand helplessly by, even more frustrated and bewildered than those who love you...because they want you to be the you that you have always been. They see your strength as something that should maintain the 'you' in all of this...but each moment, each obstacle, each impediment on the journey alters you a little more.

Until, finally you are standing in the wreckage, a changed person. And then, there's the hysterectomy at 30. There really aren't words - which for someone whose gift has always been with words is a whole other thing - to describe adequately the way you feel about who and how you are anymore. All that you know is that you're different. How you relate, how you percieve things, how you are in a world which has a harsh need to change you anyway...everything that you have come to understand and rely upon in your world becomes something unfamiliar.

And, the coping mechanisms that you have used for most of your life are failing you. Suddenly, the things to which you have always turned to alleviate stress and pain are providing no outlet, no reprieve. There is no mercy to be found now.

One thing which still helps me is cooking. I love to cook...I love the art of it - bringing together flavors and consistencies. I love the beauty of it - the response that can be generated by making something delicious. I love the passion of it...how delightful it is to make something so nourishing and enjoyable for someone or someone(s) that you care about. I love how you can take so many basic things and artfully place them together to create something grandiose and delicious. I love flavors...I love the skill that it takes. Not just anyone can create something magnificent out of not much in the kitchen. Not just anyone can see the art in the hobby. I love the sheer delight that can be heard in eater's voices when telling you how much they like what you have created.

And, I like cooking for me. I cook even when alone. I like the routine of it. The choosing of the herbs, the cutting, cubing, dicing...love watching how all of the colors come together...love the smellls. I love creating something nourishing for myself...not having to measure, not having to refer to recipes, not needing help to give benefit to my body.

In a time when not much is helping my body, I like to know that there is something I can do to help sustain it...and do it creatively and with pleasure.

I enjoy cooking. It is one of the few things left, from my old life, which still gives me a feeling of peace and serenity in my new life. I'm happy to have a part of the old me to hold onto.

And soon, I'm going to be happy to have this herb encrsuted pork chop and broiled vegetables in my mouth!

i need to be surrounded by the ones who care for me...

it is so very nice to be loved and to know that you are loved.

it is nice to be cared for...to have a meal prepared for you, to be held when you are feeling 'ich'.

it is rare for me to experience this, but i am grateful when i do.

i had a rough day yesterday, very challenging to keep facing what i do with the doctors and the meds...but it was nice to feel safe and warm and taken care of, if even for a short time.

it is so much more appreciated then i can ever convey, but it matters in ways that i cannot express.

it is nice to have a few friends who care deeply....who understand that while i am not perfect, i try so hard to be as good as possible...and who give me the space to be me and still be a loving friend beyond my flaws.

i am lucky to have the friendships that i do...often times, i focus on the negative. but, i do have a few really good friends who care very much.