catelin

We watched the new(er) documentary about Joe Strummer last night. The Future is Unwritten. I love documentaries. I really loved Joe Strummer, with that intense sort of fan girl love that makes me inarticulate. It would have been a great film without all the commentary from people like Bono, John Cusack, and Johnny Depp. Oh, and Anthony and Flea from the Chili Peppers. Wretch. I was so annoyed by the pontificating from so many people so far up their own asses that I couldn't just enjoy the footage of Joe and his music. Let's Rock Again was a far better Strummer movie, poignant and wonderful, without all the posthumous cocksucking.

Lazy weekend ahead, for the most part. Youngest son has decided he wants to be a Cheeto for Halloween. Strange choice, but he's my strange son. The cool fall weather that I wait for every year has finally arrived! This makes me very happy.

John and I voted yesterday. It did my heart good to look around the polling place and see that there were plenty of us there who were obviously not voting Republican. I live in a very, very Republican county even for Texas so this was really heartening and amazing to see. I think the numbers from my state may not be quite what everyone is expecting this year, not that McPain won't win Texas, but I'm hoping that we'll at least manage to make a statement of some sort with a closer margin than what's been predicted. Local elections will benefit greatly from the larger numbers of us long haired liberal types and that's fanfuckingtastic! I'm ready for the revolution to begin.

All sorts of changes are on the horizon, almost all of them good even as they are uncertain.

Quickest update yet...

1. The Donna has invaded my home and we are having fun, fun, fun!!! I am trying to convince her to move to Texas. Plying her with Cheetoeeees and manicures seems to be working! Seriously, she needs to be here. NOW.

2. Sarah Palin is a vapid twat.

3. Today is fair day in Comal County, yo, and we're going! Cakes, pies, piggies, moo-cows!!!

4. I want a Starhead shirt. I will email you later about that. Actually, I want more than one.

5. First cool day of the fall, barely a hint of crisp but it's coming!!!

I have rarely cut people from my journal, especially with unkind feeling toward them.  Today, I did so.  I did it with disgust and relief, but I did not do it lightly.  You see, I am a big believer in dissent and debate.  I do not take it personally when people care to express different views--be they political, religious, what have you--from those that are dear to me.  And my views are dear to me.  I have earned the right to have them through experiences both joyful and desperate.  I always assume that others have come to their views in much the same way.  I am always surprised to find how many have not.

When you are so glib in your railing against "queers and homos," I recall sitting with my friends in the rooms of strangers.  They were dying and we were there so they would not leave this earth with no one to bear witness to their passing.  Abandoned by everyone who should have loved them, abandoned by a government that should have supported them, they died in the arms of people who barely knew them.  When you speak of other human beings with a hatred disguised as flippancy, I recognize you, asshole.  I know who you are from that dark time when so many of my friends were sick, sick to death.  And you did nothing but smile and say it was your god's will.

When you talk about the sanctity of life and how no woman should ever have the right to "kill her baby" I recognize you.  You are the one who is terrified of women, who secretly hates me for being in the same courtroom as you because you believe that your penis makes you better than me.  You are the one who goes to church every Sunday, but didn't hesitate when you paid for your Sancha's abortion so your wife wouldn't find out you were fucking someone behind her back.  You think we don't know, but we do.  Everyone does.  I certainly recognize you as the same hypocrite who wears a thousand different skins in a million different ways.  We've all seen you because your selfishness is too great to be camouflaged.

When you call my candidate of choice a "negro" you conjure every memory I have of race and hatefulness.  Being a sister of the south, I have plenty of those.  I know that you didn't use the word you really meant, not only because you are a coward but because you feel that not saying it somehow lends a patina of civility to your bigotry.  It doesn't.  You are the same mean spirited whisper behind my grandmothers' backs, using the same word for the both of them regardless of the tone of their skin...dark or honeyed brown.  You are the reason that many of my friends are the first children in their families not to speak Spanish.  Their parents didn't teach them, they discouraged them from anything but English--English that you used to put signs in store windows that said "NO DOGS OR MEXICANS."  Have you forgotten that?  I haven't.  You are the same good looking young man who smiled at my friend in the bar 25 years ago and leaned into her ear to hiss "No hablo español."  Did you not remember that?  Because she still does, and so do I.  The funny thing?  She really didn't "habla español" because her parents had grown up getting their knuckles rapped at school for slipping into their native tongue.  They'd learned to deprive her of the language that had been in their family for generations.  You taught them that.  You are this country's shame, and I am sorry that you still feel so afraid of everything and everyone.

You are the weight around so many necks, the boot on so many throats.  Have your smug say somewhere else.  I respect your right to do so, but this little corner of the virtual world is like my kitchen table and I find that I do take it personally when you hurt so many people that I love with your words.  I wouldn't invite anyone with that sort of bile oozing from their spirit into my home, so I feel comfortable choosing to no longer have your hatefulness smeared in my face here.

Texas is officially hotter than hell.  I thought we might escape the usual blistering heat since it took a little longer to get here, but it was just jacking with me.  Along with the heat, new neighbors moved in down the street.  The former owners divorced and rented the place to a woman who seems to be dating this guy. 



Seriously, and I'm not even kidding.  Our new neighbor.  Down to the beater tan and tube socks.  We call him Dougie Nunchucks.  He drives an old brown Chevy with paper tags.  I really don't even know if he actually lives there.  He's here almost every weekend to knock back a few malt liquors and exchange crabs with his old lady.  Alas, the afterglow generally includes a good fight between them and him yelling "Fuck you, bitch" as he tears down the street in all his white trash glass-packed glory.  He is spectacular!

I broke my toe getting into the shower yesterday.  It hurt like a mutha and looks gnarly enough today to gain the respect of my two boys.  It got two hearty Whoas! from each of them.

Work is awful and wonderful at once.  People are hurting or killing their kids in record numbers this year.  It's been depressing, to say the least, but I do have a sense of accomplishment when I manage to fight the monsters and win.

I'm writing a little more, but still focusing more on things that get my hands dirty.  It's hard to get back into the habit after so much time spent with more active sorts of art.  My man and I are going to start working on some sculpture projects that will be messy with concrete and Mexican tile.  Funny, I used to wish for a collaborator for stuff like this--a partner that I could make art with--and now I have one.  It's an entirely different process than working alone and I'm really looking forward to seeing what we create together.

Summertime.  And the living really is easy.

Everything is fine, benign. Huge sigh of relief for me. Thanks for all the kind thoughts and good energy. I am certain it played a big part.

I'll be forty-four years old next Sunday. I don't know why, but every time I think of this birthday and its number I picture 44 blackbirds flying out of a pie. It's an odd age, 44...so close to 45 and 45 being almost fifty. Weird. I don't feel old. I do feel wise, after a fashion. And happy. Not even happy, so much more than happy. I am blissful.

I got a big promotion at work that came with a fancy schmancy new title. I have a new attorney working with me. Everyone is very happy with the change and feels like the cases are now being handled better. I think I did the right thing in accepting the position. I'm the Chief of the Family Justice Division. See? I told you it was fancy! It's still all the same Creeps & Perverts cases, but the name sounds so much more civilized.

In other news, my man gave me the best Valentine's day gift ever last month--a beautiful new sewing machine. It wasn't anything I was expecting, but it was more perfect than he could have ever imagined. It was the ultimate gift for a holiday marking love. Sewing, for me, is so connected to both of my grandmothers, how they loved me and how much they taught me. When I sit at a sewing machine and work, I can picture both of them sitting there next to me, heads nodding, both of them smiling at how much I can do now. It may seem silly that sitting at a sewing machine binds me to that wonderful universal light--call it love, grace, god, whatnot--but it does. It conjures every good thing I ever had in my life that is related to being loved and loving without reserve. I'd never talked about this with him, so it wasn't anything intentional. But whether happy accident or intuition, it was one of those sublime acts that struck such a heart chord in me that I wanted to melt. I sure do love him.

Last week we drove in a borrowed pick-up to the boonies south of San Antonio and picked up some wrought iron patio furniture. Next week we're heading out on a road trip to the bayou country of southern Louisiana for my birthday. Spring is going to be a season of all sorts of movement and travel, but home for both of us is becoming the little house here at the lake and that makes me grin like a kid.

Today is one of those days where nothing in particular is going on, but I just woke up with a feeling that all is right with my small corner of the world. I have two beautiful children, a man I adore who adores me right back, a house that I love, and more than enough animals to drive me crazy. When I was a little kid, I used to imagine how I would be as a grown-up. It was always me, living in a big city, being oh-so-sophisticated. I think I was never sophisticated. I don't know that I ever have been, even when I lived in the big city.

My youngest son told me a few weeks ago that I am a Type 6 Hippie. I had no idea what that was, much less that he'd been classifying hippies! According to my ten-year-old son, a Type 6 hippie is a punk rock hippie. He told my man that he was a Straight Up Hippie. Now I don't know how accurate this whole classification thing is, since he seems to think that everyone who lived in the eighties was a hippie, but it still cracked me up. I'm more than happy to be a Type 6 Hippie. I'm happy to live out in the boonies. I'm happy that my most valuable monetary asset is a badass comic book collection that I would never sell. I'm happy that I have made a crazy, completely unsophisticated life for myself and my kids that has room in it for art, learning, exploring, sharing, and--most of all--plenty of laughter.

Other Hippie Classifications, for your edification:

Type 1: "People who protest the Viet Nam War after it's over"
Type 2: "Nature people, like nature conservers and stuff like that"
Type 3: "Disco and Afro Hippies"



The Hippie Expert & Mom

It's cold here today, like winter even. I'm already looking forward to spring and bluebonnets, but I think there's still a few more weeks of winter left to go. I had a great lunch yesterday and came home early to pack for a long weekend! After the last few weeks I'm definitely in need of a vacation so I'm looking forward to getting out of here for a few days. Work has been crazy and I've been feeling off kilter in all sorts of personal ways. Still, I'm trying to get back into the habit of writing and giving voice to things inside my head more. It's amazing how much writing is like exercising--easy to get out of the habit of it and harder than hell to find your strength for it when you come back to it. That's my nice way of giving my apologies in advance for the posts that may come close to being vapid accounts of all sorts of trivial shit that not even I care about...but still, I'm writing something even when I'm writing about nothing. That's what I'm going to tell myself at least.

I was looking at the archives of my journal and realized that I have been posting here for over seven years. Weird. What's even more strange to me is how the time has gone by so quickly. It doesn't seem like it's been that long, even though the edges of things from a few years back are already fuzzy to me and hard to recall. What I am most struck by is how much my children have grown during all this time. Raising children without a partner robbed me of the luxury of documenting their amazing passages as I would have liked. I didn't take tons of photos. I don't have a single video recording of either of them. There are no baby books to pass on. In this, I see the greatest difference between myself and my friends who had the support of an extra pair of hands around the house. I am not a picture taker by nature, so I am left in most cases to enjoy the pictures I carry in my head. Still, it would have been nice to have a few more snapshots of the boys. I've decided to try and write about them here a bit more, to have at least some prose portraits of them since writing is something that I know I can do. That's what's going on in my head this morning, anyway. I'll put a bit more thought into form and frame, but I definitely think that's something that I'll do.