catelin: (cleaver)
( Aug. 3rd, 2008 09:15 am)
August in Texas pisses me off. I'm a hothouse flower, mind you, and the heat normally doesn't bother me a bit. But August is different. August makes me want to shave my head, get naked, and run around screaming "FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!" to everyone and everything all at once. August brings out the hermit in me and it's not uncommon that I'll go the entire month without returning a phone call. It's too hot to talk. It's too hot to move. Nothing is comfortable and everything rubs at me like a cactus splinter that drifts across my hand, invisible but no less irritating than the things I can see with my hateful eyes.

I've been up early this morning, fuming while everyone sleeps. I had fantasies about clanging through the house with pots and pans, blasting The Dicks at full volume, making every kind of angry noise possible. August brings out the punk ass in me, in all the worst ways.
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catelin: (Default)
( Jul. 22nd, 2006 09:17 am)
1.
She irritates me. She is like a child, with her petulant demands for attention and insistence at having the world roll under her feet according to her desires. She stands at the door for five minutes, fuming when I finally hear her and open it. I ask her why she did not use her key. She's had a key for months.

"I could not find it," she snaps. I look at the half-dozen keys on the ring and smile to myself, realizing that I have been opening the door far too often.

2.
I paint and paint, sweat trickling down between my breasts, sticking my shirt to me like papier mache. The music is loud and I keep working in the heat. I am alone. The house is a mess. The boys are gone for a few weeks, giving me a chance to feel what it is like to be without them. It's a small taste of what my life might be like if they had never been here and I am unsettled by how much I miss them. It is a physical pain, to be a mother. My canvas and brush are blue, and I imagine the boys laughing together and diving into blue water, two little fish under the watchful eye of their grandparents.

3.
We sit at the table and exchange stories. He is younger than me by almost a dozen years, something that distracts me even as I focus on his softly accented words. I've had a parade of suitors lately, all of them very earnest and interesting. I think to myself that I have become one of those eccentric middle-aged women who is charming in her own peculiar sort of way. Still, the opportunities for companionship have done little to lessen my preference for spending much of my time alone, tending to my gardens or working on any other number of solo projects I have brewing. A friend once told me that I reminded him of an old Joni Mitchell song.

She will love them when she sees them
They will lose her if they follow
And she only means to please them
And her heart is full and hollow
Like a cactus tree...


I watch him stir his coffee and he smiles at me. We dance in the shower at midnight as if it were the Trevi fountain.
catelin: (Default)
( Jul. 3rd, 2006 08:41 am)
I'm back, but posting privately for the most part. Summer's been great so far. I've got all sorts of crazy projects going at once and, as always, it seems that there are not enough hours in the day to do everything.

My dad just gave me an old behemoth of a truck that I've decided to paint a mural onto. I have to thank [livejournal.com profile] harley1456...if I'd never met Al or seen all the wonderful art cars through the postings in his journal, I would never have done such a thing. So thanks, Big Al, for that. : )

I'm hoping to take some sort of road trip at the end of the summer, time permitting. Still not sure where I'm going, but it will be me and the boys.

I miss you all and have been keeping up with the goings-on in your lives even if I don't comment much.

It's July already. Can you believe it?
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For any of you who want to play the roller derby version of Where's Waldo.


Can you spot me?


Summer's the best. Having a great time. Wish you were here.


Love,
Cate
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catelin: (sittingbrighid)
( Apr. 22nd, 2006 11:59 pm)
My hands are dirty. Sometimes digging in the dirt and planting things is the only way to feel better about everything. There's too much going on in my head and heart to make sense of these days, so I put agave and aloe into the ground around my little house. I planted prickly pear and cholla, Brazilian mallow and sunflowers. I scattered hollyhock and moonflower seeds across the back fence line. Tomorrow I'll begin piecing together all the cedar, transforming branches into trellises and garden gates. I forget sometimes, until I get outside, how much I love this place. It's not just my house; it's the land. I love my oaks and the grapevines. I love the way everything gets quiet at dusk and the deer come out to feed. I love the moon and the stars that move above me, reminding me that I am always going in circles and that's exactly as it should be. I love the sound of frogs in my pond and the old possum that finds its way to the cat's food every night. I remembered all these things today--the laundry list of what I love about here. No matter how much changes, I can't help but feel lucky to be home, to know that I have this place for me and my boys. My hands are dirty, but I feel cleaner than I have in months.
catelin: (Default)
( Apr. 4th, 2006 12:33 am)
I can't believe we're already bouting again this Sunday, but here are some pics from our first bout on March 19th. I was so pleased with how things turned out. It was definitely a success for us, coming together in less than a year!! The skating was good. We're all still learning, but I was really proud of everyone and I felt like we'd made HUGE improvements since November. These may look like ordinary derby photos to everyone else, but look closely and you will see the extraordinary magic to be found wherever determined women gather together. : )

http://www.alamocityrollergirls.com/gallery2/v/alamocityrollergirls/19March2006/
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catelin: (sittingbrighid)
( Mar. 31st, 2006 09:10 pm)
It pains me, as much as it is a great relief, to find that I am becoming more and more practical when it comes to affairs of the heart. That great cold winter taught me well. Taught me that I can get through breaking even my own heart to do the right thing when I realize that it needs to be done. The ending of things still has the inevitable sting, but I have such a greater sense of movement these days...of how this time--now--will pass and soon things will be different in ways I have yet to even contemplate. New love will come, just like spring. I am lucky that way, and still so very grateful for all of my life's seasons.
catelin: (hands)
( Mar. 27th, 2006 04:30 pm)
This time he was leaving. He’d gone about doing it in his head often enough. He imagined next weekend without her, how he would tend his garden and flop into his hammock with a good book. His spirit, compressed from folding over itself again and again according to her needs, would slowly spread and take root in the bare patches of dirt he carried inside himself. There would be nothing left of her by summer. The harsh words between them would soon be covered in a green so lush that just thinking about it made him kick off his shoes.
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