She

She was so glamorous when I was little, the most glamorous women I knew. She surrounded herself with beautiful things, she demanded beautiful things. Ornate jewelery, marble coffee tables, plastic covered sofa cushions - these were the trappings of my childhood.

She was a little thing, 5 feet tall exactly, but it was years before I realized it. She carried herself like she was royalty. She spoiled me positively rotten. She could be petty and vicious, and quite often was, but never to me. She was proud, always proud, far too proud to beg.

She found religion when all the money went. Pop gambled it all away, and she just gave up. She was the definition of blind faith, casting demons out of her car engine when it wouldn't start. She evangelized at anyone who would listen, and pushed her family away when they didn't convert. I finally went to her church and pretended to accept her lord and savior at the age of 12 to ease her mind. She feared for my immortal soul, and I wanted her to stop worrying and stop preaching at me.

Over the years she calmed down. She began talking to her brothers and sisters again. But she considered her church her "real family". It cut me every time she'd say it. I pulled away from her. I was a teenager, of course, so it wasn't out of the ordinary, but I think deep down she knew it was her religion creating the space between us. I'd remember the summers spent with her, and I'd miss her. I'd mourn the loss of the woman who'd had a hand in raising me.

She was, so like a baby in the end. Lying there in the Hospice, barely able to speak, or breathe or swallow. She'd whithered away to almost nothing, and it hurt to see her like that. Her eyes glazed over and milky, I don't think she knew who I was anymore. Me, her little negrita.

I love you, Nan.

Another Reason My Kids Are So Cool...

I taught Jack to say "fish" with my tattoo as a teaching aide.

My kids are So cool!!!

As I sat down to eat my lunch, Jack came running over to see what was on my plate. After studying my salmon and broccoli for all of ten seconds, he began saying "NOM NOM NOM" and proceeded to steal broccoli off my plate and eat it. FIVE TIMES!!!

Re: Demon's Dance

That was a sort of ode to my hallucinations. I used to have a bunch of pencil sketches that went with it, but I'm not a very good artist. I thought I'd type that up while it was fresh in my mind, I don't think I have any paper copies of it left.

An old poem (Demon's Dance)

In a Forest clearing

savage shadow demons dance

to the beams of light reflected

in my interested eyes' glance.

Forms of darkness undulate

indifferent; unaware

to the pounding of the drums

with their arms thrown in the air.

Claws clutch at living light,

(the kind which can't be caught).

My eyes in disbelief gaze on,

my mind recedes in thought.

My emotions seem unreal to me,

like some ephemeral dream...

Mind muddled, gaze glazed,

soul trapped beneath this trance,

What does it mean

(if anything)

to watch these demons dance?

Always with the issues...

Well, the move went fine.

We're here, and most of our stuff made it over as well.  All on time, no worries.

Now we've got this outrageous cell phone bill to deal with.  Apparently Suz whined through all 1200 of my rollover minutes, all 400 of my anytime minutes, and then managed to whine for a further 367 minutes that did NOT occur at night or on a weekend.  Jim is pissed, and frankly, I'm pretty annoyed with myself.

In the past I've checked my minutes every week or so.  I never come anywhere near using them, so it's never mattered.  But Suz has gone a little mad with the man problems etc over the past few weeks.  Enough so that I've been looking for excuses to get off the phone.  I should have realized that once she started testing the limits of my patience she was passing the limits of my contract.

Ah well, a nice relaxing weekend by the new pool should help my nerves.

Not happy...

Well, we got caught in the rain today.  Normally, I quite like the rain, but Florida rain is like sudden, unexpected retribution from an angry god-like being.  If it were summer, it might be warm rain, but it isn't yet, so it wasn't.  Also, no matter how much your toddler enjoys splashing around in pools and bathtubs, the second he gets hit with a drop of rain he is sure to grab on to the sides of his stroller and scream like somebody just took away his lovey, set it on fire, then pissed on it to put it out.

The upshot to all this is that we were soaking wet by the time we got to the Mall @ Millenia, a really posh affair filled with high end shops, leather couches and extremely snobby looking people.  Oh, the looks we got.  How dare we enter their mall and drip on their floors?!!

Upon arriving home, I emailed the realtor to see when he would like to meet up, give us the keys and collect our first month's rent and the last of our deposits.  You see, we established a month ago that we'd be moving in on the 25th.  He's not charging us for the extra week in the apartment, which is nice, but not necessary.  We'd have paid the prorated rent.  We just need the place, you know?

So he returns my email saying he hopes we can still move in on the 25th, but it may now be the 27th.  I'm a bit annoyed I had to email him to get this information.  We've already hired a U-Haul truck for Saturday, and the cable guy is set to come on the 26th.  We agreed on this a month ago... so WHY IN THE FUCK AM I JUST FINDING OUT ABOUT THIS NOW!?!

Ok.  I needed to vent.  In other news, if anyone ever reads my blog, they might be interested to know that my husband has begun blogging here: http://blogs.cardrunners.com/humphreysjim

It's a poker blog. Oh lovely, apparently inserting a link screws my font all to hell.