Welcome friends and family!

"The colors of life shift

within a fixed parameter,

movable blocks of shadow

and light, interchangeable

or not."































"Chaos is a friend of mine." ~Bob Dylan

"Chaos is a friend of mine." ~Bob Dylan
Da Boys!

Front and Center!

These two creatures who have locked up my heart will be front and center in this little corner of blogosphere!







Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Mirror Mirror and BFF



It's a slow day.  We finally got a brief shower and that was a welcome relief.  I managed to capture some fun photos worthy of the "awwwwwwwwwwwwww" factor. 


Spanky ADORES Mac!  Chews on him and is in his face constantly!  However, from day one, Mac has been the member of the pack that has Spanky simply can't stay away from.  Mac lets him know when enough is enough.



Mr. Curious discovered himself in the mirror while I was in here on the computer.  It was too cute!





Hope the photos brightened your day!!

Monday, August 16, 2010

He Tells Me About the Tar Monster




Another new poem.  We shake our head at the tales that our Connor spins here and at school.  They are a combination of reality, Connor's reality, fantasy and facts he's read or heard. 



He tells me
about the
Tar Monster
who eats kids
whole.
One
was seventeen.
It ate an entire village.
I question
and he tells me he
Googled it
but it’s no longer there.
It scared people
so they took it away.


Columbus
and Presidents
people
his family
tree
so a teacher
informs us.
There are details
only he knows.
Nessie is real;
it’s a fact.
I learned of a bird
at our feeder
that is not found
in Texas. It’s
an Oklahoma bird
that must be lost.


He says
he sees
people we
can’t see,
and we
nod
knowing
this is not
part of his disorder.
When a therapist
questions
the details
spin
then melt
back
into the nebulous
web of his psyche.

This child
of my heart
spins
his reality
like cotton candy
on a warm day,
sticky details that
melt
with the telling,
yet,
he keeps spinning,
adamant
in the tale,
his mind
a web of
whirling fancy.
I can see him
building
thread
upon
thread
and I am mystified.


~~~~8/16/10

Friday, August 13, 2010

A Chance Encounter






And yet another new poem sparked by and old, new friend and the upcoming school year.



A chance encounter
stumbled upon among half-
forgotten names in a virtual
yearbook sent me spiraling
back into musty halls clogged
with the muffled echoes of teenage angst.

Snapshots appear then
disappear into a dormant scrapbook
where images blur and bleed into each other,
the Kaleidoscope collage from a long barren field.

Memories are like sandcastles
on shifting sand--
tiny grains of truth and half-
truths watered down with the waves
of eroded emotions.


Swells of first love
and small triumphs crash
against pangs of rejection
amid tugs of uncertainty. It’s
a roller coaster of
insecurity cloaked in brash spirit--
a wobbly ride over untested landscape.


I fumble my way
among the fossils,
like a blind woman
picking the bones of a distant land,
detached, yet not…
immune to lingering echoes.




~~~8/12/10



Thursday, August 12, 2010

New Poems

The unbearable heat lately has forced me inside, for the most part.  That being said, the heat has been good for my creative juices.  I've written a few new poems that I thought I'd post.


"August"


This heat
assaults me
like the uninvited
embrace
of a stranger,
his stale breath
pressed
against my cheeks
as I blink back
the assault of an angry sun.

August
straddles
my limbs
and stifles
my soul.
Languid thoughts
drowse
on cushions
Of distant snow angels.

~~~~8/11/10


"Intrusion"


Small
shards
of
discontent
prick
my illusion
of
contentment
and
I
turn away
from
the
sting.

~~8/11/10


 
What if




we could go back
and rewrite
a story
or even a paragraph in time?


What if
we could insert
a word or
conversation
Into a completed chapter?


The days are blank pages
as we journey through them,
one word, sentence,
one scene at a time….

no editing allowed once the ink has dried.


~~~8/10/10
Back in time.....9th or 10th grade.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Another Chapter in My Mad World!


Let's just say that life is never dull in my little corner of the world. 

Friday my new computer arrived.  The old trusty desktop (and I still prefer a desktop) had reached the blue-screen daily, or almost, stage and I knew it was imperative I break down and get a new one before Old Trusty was abruptly ripped off life support.  Over the past year Old Trusty had slowed to a crawl and limped along while irritating and frustrating me on a regular basis.  Also, my computer time had been severely curtailed due to working every day and the escalating chaos around here.  Old Trusty didn't make it easy for me to spend my limited time online.

So, I broke down and got a sleek new computer with Windows 7.  Love it!  Also had to replace my 10-year-old deskjet and scanner with a sleek new wireless all-in-one Photosmart printer.  Again, love it!  Boy, has printer technology come a long was in a decade!!  That was last weekend.  Today is the first day I've had to really begin my relationship with Old Trusty's replacement.  As usual, chaos intervened.




While replacing Old Trusty with New Hot Tech I noticed what looked like water damage around the edge of my carpet and baseboard beneath my desk.  Said desk sits in front of a window where I can watch my birds come and go at the feeders off my patio.  I enjoy that during the day.  Anyway, I was appalled and had no clue what was causing the damage since there was no indication on the window or wall that water had leaked to cause the damage I discovered. 

Oh great!  Just what I needed:  another, possibly expensive, issue to deal with!!  I was not happy and the excitement of initiating my relationship with New Hot Tech was considerably "dampened".  The floor and baseboard were dry at the time of discovery to I sprayed Moldex on the area and, on Sunday, cleaned that portion of the carpet. 

As I said, New Hot Tech arrived late Friday and I was up until 2 AM on Saturday setting up and transplanting NHT from Old Trusty.  The only hitch in the process was the dampened mood and undercurrent of anxiety over what the water damage meant.  Saturday dawns, I take Trish to work and return to do my usual chores and cleaning of one or more fish tanks.  I wanted to get all that done as quickly as possible so I could play with NHT.  Like I said, however, chaos intervened.

I don't even remember the trigger at this point, but while I was cleaning the house something set Sam off and all Hell broke loose!  He literally threw virtually the entire contents of his bookcases and room out into the hall and  the family room area!!!  I couldn't do much to stop him as he was hurling things in my direction.  I got the 3 dogs out and closed Connor's room door.  (Connor came out some time later, before I even made a dent in the mess, and asked..."What happened?"  This is how clueless and hyper-focused he is when playing a video or computer game.  Part of his Autism.).  After annihilating his room Sam refused to help clean up, cussed me on the way to his mother's room where he slammed the door and remained for some length of time.  I was horrified and almost didn't know where to begin with the cleanup.  I had no choice as it was extremely hot outside where I had banished the dogs and I had to get them back in as soon as possible.  Spanky, being a typical puppy, was sure to find all the broken bits and small Legos.  Not a good idea, so I just jumped in and tackled the disaster.  I probably had the dogs back inside in under an hour.  By then I had gotten all the books into containers where I could pick up or sweep up the small and broken items.  I spent the majority of the rest of the morning and afternoon until time to pick Trish up from work, putting his room back together, primarily all the books back in the book cases.  It was one of those messes that couldn't be left to have his mother make him clean up.  Book are our friends and I wanted to get them picked up and put back out of harm's way.  The broken and unimportant items I swept up and threw away.  I salvaged the video games and put them in Connor's room.

This, my friends, is just a small example of what life can be like with kids who have mental illness.  It's not pretty and it can be very chaotic.  One or more unstable kids is volatile with a 90-something chance of violent weather patterns!!

Soooooooooooo Hot Tech had to wait.  Sunday I had more time to get to know the newbie.  I also cleaned, as I said, the damaged carpet area and made a mental note to consult with good old Mr. Larry as to what the problem might be and who I should call to deal with it.  Monday was a busy day and I never got that chance.  Monday evening I had to attend to some business that my dear brother brought to my attention.  It was tedious and took the better part of the evening.  Some of it I had to do on  the new computer and that made the going a bit slower.  Office has changed in the past 7 years! 

Yesterday morning, before I took Trish to work, I noticed the water-damaged area was wet again.  Bummer!  It also dawned on me that I'd just run the sprinkler in the area outside my window to water the container gardens.  OK....  Looked like the source of the water had to do with the sprinkler right outside that window and the fact it had a 360 degree head on it which constantly sprayed my window when the sprinkler was running.  The "where"  it was getting in was another matter.  So, anxiety rising like a tide in my belly again, I took Trish to work, stopped by the mail center and got the work I'd done the night before notarized and sent off (NOT inexpensively!), came home and called Mr. Larry.



He decided it was probably the fact that the sprinkler head constantly sprayed the window and the caulking around the outside of the window was eroded.  He thought it was probably pooling in one corner and going down behind the brick, but not into the wall area.  So, we replaced the sprinkler head with a 190 degree one and he re caulked the outside of the window.  The cost:?  A 24-pack of Miller Lite in the can, his beer of choice.  He helps me out because he's the perfect next-door-neighbor and has been, along with his wife, for the entire 16 years I've lived here.  Years ago, when he refused to take anything for the help he provides from time to time, I insisted and we decided on Miller Lite.  Mr. Larry had come to the rescue again!

Trish is off today and has gone to Dallas with the boys for a doctor's appointment.  I'm home with the furkids and relishing the alone time, a drying carpet and pad, and the chance to resume the new relationship with Mr.New Hot Tech.  I took some photos of the water damage and new computer and decided to indulge in a new blog post on the newbie.