My eldest son was moping around the house yesterday, his younger brother out snow boarding he was left with noone to torment, so I brought him with me to the clinic to help decorate it for Christmas.  To make it less painful, I cranked the tunes on my Ipod and jammed to the music while we decorated.  Mind you I am fully aware of the delicate balance of actually being a real person while hanging out with a thirteen year old.  In my head I'm not mom when I listen to music, it is one of my more freeing touchstones...my son, to be sure thought differently...especially when Kanye came on and I just started to dance and sing "Keep your love lock down"  As a preface, I can dance...not expertly, but I do have an inherent sense of rhythm...seriously I'm not being delusional.  After the horror induced scream of a pubescent male scream and an initial leap into the bathroom, when he realized that I wasn't going to stop AND I didn't really care what he thought, he poked his head out around the door and watched me.  His expression slowly changed from looking at disgusting road kill to disdain, to the realization that his mother listened to Kanye West...and that she didn't dance like a mom.  He was so taken aback that he actually swore..."Shit mom, what the hell....now I won't be able to get that out of my head...you're not supposed to be able to dance..."   I jumped into mom role for a minute and smacked him on the back of the head.  "Don't swear!  And just because I am your mother doesn't mean I'm dead from the neck down...so pick up that garland and ...0000h, I love this part!"   The greatest thing of all?  We danced together!  Maybe music will tame the wild beast afterall!

Thanksgiving was relaxing, it is so much easier to cook for four instead of 25!  I did everything from scratch and it was good!  The best part was watching the movie, "The Secret of Roan Innish"  A great Irish film, the accents so reminded me of my childhood and all my Irish relatives who are now deceased...(my parents were both the babies of the family)  I pulled out my favorite Irish authors and snuggled in for the rest of the day.  It was remarkably uneventful...and it was great!  Today the Christmas decorations come out and hopefully it will look a bit like fantasy land...so you know there are alot of lights.  Somehow it gets me ready for the season of light. 

 

As a reminder, I won't accept friend invitations from private or empty sites, sorry but it's a bit like having a perfect stranger ask to be your friend.  Read the taming of the wood fox in the book "The Little Prince" and you'll understand.  Have a happy holiday weekend.

It's not always easy to be thankful...not when the economy is tanking and everybody seems nervous...but it is a necessity.  In order to move beyond the difficulty, it is important to focus on what should be important.  So, today I am thankful that God and the universe has a better imagination than I do.  I'm thankful that the road to success is often difficult but we are given what we need to accomplish any goal.  I am thankful that dreams are not dispensed and held onto for the soul purpose of frustration and if we could better freefall into them, there is a better chance of them coming true.  I am thankful that everyone of us has a special gift to offer, even if it may seem ordinary...try cooking something without the basics once and see how that turns out.  I'm thankful to friends and family who accompany me on this journey...even when I sometimes want to beat the shit out of them, and they me...we all have our moments afterall.  I'm thankful that I don't think or see the world in the same way as any other person on the planet.  I'm thankful for all those connections that I have made on this and any other plane of existence, on the road to becoming, well better than when we all started.  I'm thankful to W, for giving me some things to think about and open up about.  I'm thankful to all the talented artists in all their mediums who have enhanced my spirit so much as I walk through this ordinary life.  Finally?  I am soooooo thankful that I don't have to cook this Thanksgiving, and that it will be relatively quiet at my house.  Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

Ok, so I was really tired and more than a bit bitchy.  My husband's glory weekend worked out perfectly.  He got to talk to a bunch of old Gopher players and NFL stars he hasn't seen since college and most importantly they all remembered him, and were glad to reconnect with the happy-go-lucky kid from Wisconsin.  He was proud to have his sons there, and especially his lovely wife.  He was so proud and happy, I just sucked it up and listened to all their stories and talked about kids and other sundries.  I don't like going to college football games in general, but the Iowa/Gopher game was completely sold out.  Sitting amongst all the players was a hoot.  I'm sure they were big in college...now add 25 years and 50 pounds and the section we were sitting in was beyond sardine.  The boys were acknowledged during halftime, and I got a chance to breath for a moment.  They were all in their glory, and that made Steve really happy.  I drove home that night with one son...they can't be together in one confined space these days and we watched Saturday Night Live together.  The best thing was to sleep in past 8:30, and not have to talk to, or listen to any body until almost 10:30.  That was a good way to cap off this weekend.  I didn't start out very selfless, but I'm glad I forced myself to.

I'm glad this week is over!  It has been long, stupid, boring and oh yeah, STUPID.  I'm tired of bad logic, irresponsible choices, WAITING forever and crazy people asking you to do crazy things because, well the economy is bad...like I live in a bubble that is in no way connected to the very same sucky economy.  Geez.  My husband is mad at me because I refuse to attend the Minnesota Gophers 1980-85 footbal players reunion to be a trophy wife and drink cocktails while the boys relive every play of every game.  When he found out about it, that all these guys were flying in from all over the country to relive their glory days, I'm like...Hey that is way cool, go have a good time with your old buddies.  It will be a blast for you!  Until the time got closer and he began looking to cover every angle of being a big man and it may increase his it factor with a hot redhead on his arm (his words).  Hey, it' complementary to be considered a hot wife...but bring a picture, cause I'm not going.  I don't care about all the cocktails and standing in awe of my man.  Ok, please don't think I'm being bitchy, supposedly that was one of the things that he loves about me, that I don't fit the pretty girl image of the college athlete's spouse.  Of course there maybe plenty of guys who have wives and girlfriends like me, I don't care, because this is about them getting together and talking about old times, not..."Hey look at how awesome I'm doing with my life after football"  I did compromise and promised to go to the Iowa/Gopher pre-game mixer and then game when they acknowledge these guys during halftime, but I'm sitting in the nosebleed seats so my oldest son can share the front seats with his dad. 

Here it is 6:30 in the evening and I'm still at work.  The thing is, is that I arrived at 6:30 this morning.  I'm tired and long to languish in a hot tub, but I can't.  I have to pick up the boys (we've decided to do couples counseling for brothers) from their appointment and then go home to make dinner.  I need a backrub...I could certainly use Van Cliburn's hands right now.  I feel like falling asleep at my desk, but there is a 36 week pregnant woman aching from back problems in the back.  I need to squeak out just a little more empathy before my day is done...

I've been obsessing as of late, to try and find a book my eleven year old would actually like to read.  One, because I think reading is still one of the single most important functions of your brain, and two, I seriously don't want him to fail his reading class.  He can read very well, so that's not the problem...he just doesn't think he'll like anything at all.  So, I checked around and decided to buy a copy of "Twilight".  Of course I'd heard the hype about the movie, so I thought that perhaps he would jump on the bandwagon easier if he knew he was part of the throng of teens that are hooked on this series.  So I bought them...and read them all, this weekend.  Ok, I read freakishly fast and since my self imposed book buying moratorium, I have been re-reading books...so these were the fresh blood, excuse the pun, that I had been craving.  I was very curious that the author Stephenie Meyer went to Brigham Young, and wrote a book about vampire/human love.  I guess the more I thought about it, the fact that they held out beyond kissing because she might die at his hands was a pretty clear metaphor about chastity.  But I don't want to talk about that.  Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't have read all 2000+ pages had I not enjoyed them and actually successly bribed my son to start reading them had I not like them, or found them worthy.  I am cautious, though, about what is so attractive about the kind of forbidden, obsessive,almost heroin addicted like love that is portrayed in the book...especially to a heroine, who in any teenage world is completely ordinary...save her smell.  Of course I'm aware that every young girl, awkward or not, wants the chance to be loved by, well, some godlike (as in the greek or roman kind) looking creature who will forsake everything for them...but are we setting them up for disappointment?  Does it even exist?  I mean in a pure sense, not the neurotic/psychotic kind.  I understand chemistry and attraction, but that kind of love that is true and intense from the very beginning?  I really don't think so...and I guess that makes me a bit sad, but I think we do love a disservice when we introduce it as something that takes away our control, our ability to be rational.  The other thing that I was surprised at was how cosmopolitan and cool she made the vampire lifestyle and how flawed and almost cartoonish humans are.  Perhaps we've lost the ability to appreciate how wonderfully delicate and flawed we are and the amazing things that have still managed to come from the genus homo.  Still...hmmm.

Not going to be subtle.  Watched the latest episode last night.  I got a bit bored, except that someone finally recognized Michael Scofield and actually put his health first...hard to find a doc these days willing to do that.  This is what I think you should do.  Again, I waive all rights to this idea, although ideas are free anyway.  Have Michael get the operation, go into a coma and let us into his psyche for awhile.  Hey you've borrowed a ton of other themes from other stories, so why not this one?  Only do it better.  Do it better than anyone else.  Let us meet his mother, the woman who helped these two men go to such great lengths for one another.  Let us see her talk to him as an adult...the veil between worlds must get suspended somehow when you're in a coma...She can help him work out what to do, and how to deal with all the collateral damage.  Michael has got to realize that vengence isn't his...people should get the chance to bring about their own demise, after all how would they learn otherwise?  Truly, if redemption is meant for everyone...then there has to be opportunities to learn, to reap what you sow...to get back what you put out there.  That would be the miracle in television land.  Hell, there are women who see dead people, cheerleaders with super powers, a guy who can bring the dead back to life for a minute and the best nerd ever with a computer in his brain.  Send us on a journey to discover Michael.  Convince us that redemption is not only possible but probable, if you have faith in letting events work themselves out.  Cuz frankly?  I am bored with it.  I'm bored with the company, bored with revenge, bored with close calls and I almost can't remember why this all started.  So do something....please. 

I am tired to the point of exhaustion...mostly because my dreams are freaky!  In one, I am staring at a huge pile of expensive jeweled earrings and wondering what the hell I'm supposed to do with them, they are obviously mine but not quite sure which pair to wear.  In another, my doorbell rings all night long with various and sundry sorts, some in costume, some not.  The weirdest is sitting in a shower unabashadly naked with my actor friend and others relishing the hot clean water after a difficult job only to sit on the porcelain and plan the next...Most often I wake up tired because of the throngs of people I don't know surrounding me all the time.  I think I need a spa day and a very large bottle of tequila.  I know I'm surrounded by people all of the time because of our clinic and our kids, so it would seem to be an obvious connection...except none of the situations are the same and these people are perfect strangers, of all sorts.  Suddenly being a Quaker seems like a good thing.

There are moments in my life when I am certain the machinations of hell are infiltrating my life in such a sublte way, that before I have a chance to figuire it out, I am tethered to a sense of timing that is so off, so bad, that the statistical probabilities are worse than being hit by lightening...several times...in the exact same place.  Most of the time I rebound from being spiritually sucker punched pretty quickly, but man this time?...this time it sucks!  When my own family is so immersed in the melodrama of their own lives that I actually keep silent for fear of pushing them over the edge, there are few others I can turn to.  To say I'm stressed out is an understatement.  I devolved into a tweenager last night and actually told my children that they would grow up to be friendless and homeless if they didn't stop the CONSTANT fighting.  My husband was relagated to the guest room again this time for his inability to not spend money on major purchases without informing me and putting our checking acount into the red yet again and I stayed up half the night watching "27 Dresses" and crying like a baby...which I never do, feeling like the world was going to end because I had made the biggest mistake of my life.  Now, I'm perfectly aware of my tendancy toward melodrama, especially due to the lack of sleep.  However, that describes more my response to, not the cause of the mire of shit I have waded through in the last three days because I was absolutely in the wrong place at the wrong time...noting specifically none of the poo which proceded to be flung on my psyche was of my own making...I even respectfully declined involvement in a few cases determined to enhance and solidify personal boundaries, which blew up in my face anyway.  The examples I could give you would violate some confidentiality so I can't give any details except to say: I AM A GOOD, BALANCED PERSON WHO SHOULD HAVE ACCRUED ENOUGH GOOD KARMA BY THIS POINT TO HAVE AT THE VERY LEAST ONE TOILET SEAT DOWN AND UNPLUGGED FOR MY USE SO WHEN I NEEDED TO HIDE SOMEPLACE FROM THE KARMIC POO SLINGING AT LEAST I WOULDN'T HAVE TO SEE IT FOR REAL OR FALL INTO IT BY THE SHERE FACT THAT I HAVE TOO SMALL OF AN ASS TO FIT AROUND THE PORCLAIN WITHOUT A SEAT.  Truly, if I were to do it all again, I'd take a vow of silence and never flash my baby blues anywhere in the vicinity of the male gender, EVER.  I wouldn't give an encouraging nod or an opinion of assistance and would feign ignorance at every turn.  So the next time I speak of high moral imperative, I should know that hell will be waiting with a bucket to test that theory. 

When I think of what the necessary building blocks must be for our future in this country, it seems reasonable to include a strong moral imperative...The problem, though, lies with what that implies.  Some may think immediately of the kind of tabloid moralism that has been plaguing our country, represented by the mobs of folk whose ugly heads flair the minute they are given an opportunity to throw a stone and stand in moral superiority against another's past actions.  Personally, I mean the kind of moral imperative that moves us as a whole people toward goodness and redemption even when reason gives us permission to act in one circumstance that would be labeled immoral in another.  I often argue that any act of vengence, regardless of the justification for it, can ever be the guiding or underlying imperative for an action, especially if taken on a mission to right a wrong.  I mean a moral imperative that guides us to cling to others who will give us strength when we may be too weak to manage the path on our own, the kind that demands a faith deep enough to believe in the light even when we can't quite see it in that moment when darkness begins to envelope us.  I mean the kind of imperative that in any given situation, even one full of agony or regret, can demand we find forgiveness and a lesson that hindsight will always offer if we are willing to see it.  More than anything, it is an imperative that will guide us all regardless of any particular faith or lack of it into a better future. 

All will be well, and all manner of things will be well....I woke up refreshingly hopeful today.  Obama's speech made me well up with tears, as well as some of the events of yesterday.  At one point, when a friend of my husband's called from Colorado who makes it a habit of harassing my liberal ass, I announced that hell had indeed frozen over because he had voted a straight democractic ticket.  I have hope in a a new day that does hinge on many die hard conservatives I know who were willing to shift their thinking and be open to something new.  Sure it may have taken dire circumstances to bring us here, but it almost seems divinely choreographed.  It is my hope and prayer that we invent a new way, and having the first African American President ever seems like the most perfect and poetic way to go about it. 

 

I sense an underlying calm that will accompany some chaos.  In my dreams I see the same thing.  There are many vehicles that people are climbing into and starting on a journey.  Most of my dream companions as of late are with me and it feels like the real work is just beginning....

Ok, last night we got home late from swimming, so we stopped at Subway on the way home.  I know it's bad to eat dinner at 8:30 at night, but oh well...shit happens.  So to appease my tweenagers, I let them watch the recorded episode of Prison Break up in my bed...with sandwiches, a rare moment, which also created a giddy sort of environment of openess with both boys.  Here are some snippets.  My remarks are in italics.

 

"Hey, it looks like Michael Scofield has packed on a few pounds."

 

"No, he hasn't, it's just a big shirt."

 

"I believe he has been packing a bit away at the catering table"

 

"What's a catering table"

 

"It's where they eat.  Anyway, don't you think he looks more normal?"

 

 

"Like a regular prisoner"

 

"Like you know any prisoners"

 

"Well,  I still have yet to rethink my disdain over those women who go after guys on death row...hmmm, "

 

"You are so weird mom..."

 

"I predict that Michael is going to have an episode...in 5,4,3,2 and 1...SCORE"

 

"You must be psychic!  How did you know that?  Great wrap, by the way"

 

There is much snacking and fist hitting as we have a contest who can predict what happens next, and then there's this scene with Gretchen and the general.

 

"Don't do it, Please don't do it....."

 

Then everybody screams because he kisses her, and his lip doesn't quite go back to normal and he looks like he's suffering from dry mouth or he's going to throw up.  We all procede to laugh until we cry.  Both boys agree that this is probably the most implausable scene imaginable...it is just too gross.

 

"Mahone is the best actor, hey would you kill someone if they killed me?"

 

"I'd shake his hand!"

 

"Do not go there!  I would like to think that I could find a way to not, but I guess I couldn't predict what I'd do."  It really was a hard scene to watch, my favorite part of the episode actually.

 

"Aw, Bellick can't die...I like Bellick."

 

'Who's Bellick"

 

"Ah, the guy that is going to die"

 

"You suck

"No you suck"

 

"You both suck, now be quiet and let me finish watching this..."  A moment passes and both boys look at each other and start to laugh,

 

"Mom said you suck"

 

"that was totally awesome mom..."

 

 

As much as I feel sometimes that I don't have a voice or in the great scheme of things I am more invisible than not, I do relish my right to be heard as a citzen and vote.  I have never missed an election and feel this time around, as much excitement as I did the first time I voted the spring of 1978.  My first presidential election wasn't until 1980, when I voted for my favorite president of all time: Jimmy Carter.  I simply appreciated how smart he was, how knowledgable in foreign policy and what a good man he was and still is.  I hope that Obama will earn my respect the same way.  In any event, I will be glad to have all the backbiting over with. 

 

I was surprised at how few trick or treaters were out in our town, especially given how great the weather was.  Many of the houses were dark.  I certainly hope the economy isn't a reason that people didn't join in the fun, if you can't spend a couple of bucks on some sweets, then we're in serious trouble.  Kids should have their holiday.  My eldest son handed out candy this year, while my youngest son had a friend sleep over and flirted with all his classmates at our neighborhood party.  He never really even collected candy...a surprising change of events from last year.  Ah the days when they dressed up like Tigger and peapods.