Perhapsody

As if the last post weren’t downer enough, there was yet another blow in the McCollum household last week.

Rest in peace, my sweet Rascal-boy.  I won’t go into cliches about your long journey being over, but simply say that I’m glad you were able to go on your terms, in the place you spent your life.  I’m glad that you went in your sleep, and that despite all those physical limitations that hampered your later years, there was no pain and no suffering.  You got to feel the mountain grass soft under your belly and listen to the breeze, and you got to be with your family.

I will miss you.

This is not a conversation I want to be having.  I’ve been putting it off for a week now, but that seems cowardly, and I know I have to talk about it sometime.

So here it is.  Short, brutal, unsentimental.  Factual.

Last weekend, my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer.  Terminal, systemic, advanced cancer.  It may have started in her liver and breast, but now there are nodules wrapped around her bronchial tubes, a mass pressing on the bottom of her lung that keeps her from breathing well, a mass on the top of her lung that presses against her throat and keeps her from swallowing.  And just to be sure that there’s nothing to be done about all this, it’s in her lymph nodes as well. Read the rest of this entry »

’scuse me while I blow my horn.

A milestone has been reached, my friends.  Given the support of my wonderful pookie and friends, it wasn’t as hard as I expected, but simultaneously, I can’t really believe it’s here.  There’s the numerical proof, of course, but that’s not as much fun as this comparison.

Read the rest of this entry »

Can’t concentrate today;

All the little boxes on the forms

(that bring such color-coded, left-aligned

order to the world)

are just lines on a page.

And who cares if in a year, breakfast ends

at 9:00 or 9:15?  A difference only in strokes of ink,

it doesn’t translate.

Got questions out in the ether, emails sent

last week. Can’t continue till those answers come

and so I wait.  What good is busywork in a holding pattern

when you know that any minute now, you’ll get the call?

The meaning won’t descend

on these artificial deadlines for months

and while I know by then

the time for unpanicked thinking will be past,

I can’t convince myself to give the nod,

accept this contrived necessity as truth,

and do it now.

our yard, if i do say so, is looking pretty damn hot right now. not only because it’s like satan’s sauna out there today, but because we have gotten phase two of garden renovation to the final stages, and it’s finally starting to resemble our original vision.

upper bank weed-ate, check.
lower yard mowed, check.
bulb garden weeded, check.
birdfeeder garden created and morning glories planted, check!
arbor day bushes all doing their bushy thing, check.
awesome tree of awesome planted, check!
giant pointy bushes trimmed around the front of the house, check!

and it’s only going to get better. brecks was having a giant sale (the 70% off kind), so i picked me up these…and some of these…and a couple of those…and this little guy…and oh yeah, that.

some of them will go in the woefully-neglected front yard, some beside the screen porch on the shady side. the others will be part of next season’s patio container garden.

i’m very excited. especially about the mimosa!!!!!!

“you don’t write anymore,” he said, quirking that too-knowing eyebrow at me as we trekked our nightly trek around the neighborhood.

a misty ribbon of guilt spiraled around my lungs and squeezed. “i’ve been busy,” i said too fast, picking up the pace.  “the symposiu-”

“the symposium’s over,” he said.

“no, it’s not!  there’s the post…planning…the…emails…the…”  i didn’t have to look at him to know that i’d have to find a stronger defense.  “i’m planning a trip to scotland!”

“so?”

“so!  SO…it takes a lot of time. there’s DETAILS!”

he wasn’t buying it.

i thought about blaming my barely-functional laptop’s 10-minute load times, but even my own brain wouldn’t accept that excuse.  probably half of the writers you admire so much didn’t even have typewriters, let alone laptops!  don’t be such a wuss.

“i just…haven’t been inspired.”  it felt shameful to say it out loud.

he shrugged.  “you know how many times i’ve written something out of sheer inspiration?  maybe twice in my life.  you have to start writing when you’re not inspired, and it’ll come.”

a little field of dreams, i grant you,  but irrefutable nonetheless.  i was sitting here tonight catching up on my online reading and watching all these people create things that i couldn’t even dream of, and feeling intensely uninspired.

and then it clicked for me.  don’t get me wrong, this is by no means new information or even particularly earth-shaking; it’s just my own little personal eureka moment.  writing is like exercise.  if you hold out to do the marathon, you’ll never get off the couch.  there’s always going to be something else to do, or think about, or plan for.  i have to actively make time for this too, just like i make time to walk or bike or go bowling.

i’ll write something tomorrow.  promise.

It’s a dangerous time of night, and I’m in a dangerous mood.

opening doors better left shut, picking scabs

off old wounds, writing letters I know better than to send.

I nearly wrote one of them here, but caution

(or convention) tells me not to rock the boat,

and so CRTL-A-Del has done its work. No fear –

I’ll swallow the confusion one more time

(ignore that even after all these years, it stings

going down), and I’ll be good.

No unpleasant scenes, I promise. I’ll not ask

you to remember why you hated me,

or worse, to know if you still do.

I’ll be good.

But still that rebel murmur in my ear

wonders what could have been, what still could be.

How much water flows beneath a bridge in seven years?

Love trumps pride, and here’s the thing:

I miss my friend.

Despite the best efforts of the Embassy Suites chef, I have reached my second goal.

TEN POUNDS DOWN, BABY!

It’s 8:15pm and I’ve got my feet propped up on the spare chair. My suit jacket is flung over a third chair, and my pantyhose are balled up on top of it. My shoes are around here somewhere. The only sound in the office is the click of the keyboard as I type, and the whirrrrr-thump-click of the copier down the hall. Read the rest of this entry »

one of the things i enjoy in both my blog and my poetry is creating the title. it’s sometimes the most creative part of the process, and i love finding the allusion, the verbal snapshot, the evocative phrase or lyric that really captures the rest of the piece.

this is not one of those titles.

today, i can’t be much more than straight descriptive with a dash of pwedictaboo and a smattering of cliche. it’s been a long day, and tomorrow will only be longer. on the one hand, this is what i do. i like deadlines, and i can feel my brain clicking into high gear as i survey the wilderness of reminders and to-dos that festoon my desk with post-its and my white board with three colors of ink.

that is, IF i am allowed to do my job.

my morning began at 9:00 AM, when i walked through the door, laden with my pocketbook and totebag. allen (my boss) and pam (assistant boss) were talking in the hallway. “good morning,” i said, heading down the hall to my office.

i heard footsteps. surreptitiously, i glanced back. pam and allen were following me. “well,” i thought as i unlocked my door, “they must need to talk to john (mucketymuck) or thomas (higher mucketymuck).”

i set my bags in the spare chair, dropped my keys in the pocketbook, and turned around. and nearly ran smack into pam, who was now standing between me and my computer chair.

pam

is a wonderful woman, with many talents and good qualities. one of these is that she is a teacher who is accustomed to lecture halls. and when pam is stressed, pam projects. i’m pretty sure she has the lung power to announce a football game sans microphone or sing opera.

my office is about 9×10 feet. it’s like standing. in. a. speaker.

pause for a moment, and rewind to 8:30 AM, when I went in the garage, cranked the car, turned it off, went back in the house, got my cell phone, went back out, re-cranked the car, turned up Salt and Dimitri the Greek, and got on the road.

no, rewind even further, to 7:45 AM, when i woke up calculating how to most efficiently create badges for three disparate groups out of a single database. the mental checklist was clicking along as i drove, equal parts van halen (all i neeeeed is a beautiful giiiiiirl) and inventory - packet inserts - what’s due when - who do i need to call - must remember - what am i leaving out.

i live for that stuff.

until i’m trapped in my speakerbox, on the wrong side of my desk chair, LOOKING AT THE MESSAGE BLINKING ON MY PHONE, can’t get to my computer and i KNOW I HAVE EMAIL and GOD WOMAN SHUT UP ALREADY. i haven’t had caffeine of any kind, i haven’t even sat down, for chrissakes, and she’s freaking out about god even knows what, i can’t remember now, because it wasn’t important.

oh yeah, it was name badges.

she apparently awoke in a cold sweat, fearing that when she gave andjie her crappy 2006 badge as a design suggestion, i would interpret that as “hey, do it exactly thus-wise.” a thought which, incidentally, had never entered my head. i told her as much.

and yet she kept talking.

i had to ask her to move so that i could log into my computer. i got about halfway through a two-line email, and she was back. some other crisis, some other freak-out, some other decibel damage to my eardrums.

remember that whole gears thing from a few paragraphs back? yeah, kiss that goodbye. i felt like i was standing in a newspaper office in the aftermath of a hurricane, watching shreds of good ideas drift down around me. i literally couldn’t remember my name. it took me till lunchtime to get back to where i’d been at 8:30 AM.

but after lunch

mel and i were a couple of finely-tuned symposium-planning machines.