Spring, nearly...

Did you happen to see the SUPERMOON? It rose orange and red and I happened to be at the oceanside by happenstance. As big as a flying saucer, that moon. Stunning. Wow factor. Bigger even than in England when I saw the lunar eclipse out my window at the YMCA and stayed awake all night to stare at it past the trains which passed directly by my window and shook the bed. Pretty magical, sites like that.

Had a good visit with my father. Went to my first baseball game with him. Only boys went to baseball games when I was amall. What a cheat. We only went for one inning and it was St. Patrick's Day so they were playing the Pogues over the loud speakers. Bonus. And it was the LAST inning so we had the stadium nearly to ourselves and just watched the kids clamour to get their balls (baseballs) signed by the players and such. Nice moment with my dad.

Most memorable moment? I leaned over and kissed his cheek. "I got really lucky, Dad, to have you as a father. You made me life possible."

"Well, you've been a good daughter."

My mouth hung open. My eyes watered. My father had never said anything remotely like this to me.
And I will hang on it for the rest of my life.
He only has a 20 percent chance of recovery.
But he's still alive and well, I cherish every minute I have with him, despite our difficulties through the years.

I love him so.
It's spring, nearly. New birth this way comes....new buds, birds returning, air maybe warming some day soon, gardening and yes, riding, riding, riding.
I must rob my piggy bank. I only got 3/4ths a tank for $75 the other day. This is going to severely cut down my travels with my horses as when I'm hauling I only get 8 mpg.

But wander and wonder I will. It is who I am.

Ice, Ireland and Illness

Was off to Ireland on  Monday. Tickets purchased 6 months ago. The day finally arrived to fly away to my favorite place to see friends' new babies and grandbabies and to tap my toes to the Miko Russell music fest craic.  The morning was covered by three inches of ice. Airport closed. Couldn't get out for a week and well, had to be back before then. Got all my money back, or most of it, after haggling for nearly said week.

The day my trip was cancelled, I learned my father has a terminal kidney disease...at 10 that night. Strangely I had a dream the night before about being in a hospital, seeing cancer cells that were these strange black bugs eating away at cells under a microscope. So I knew...somehow. I always have these kinds of visions before these things happen. Wrote a poem about my brother's death a month before he died. First line, I wish it was someone I didn't know outside of a newspaper report. Last line: But it's my brother.

So, will be going to see my dad. I won't have much time with him because of well, better not even go there.

But I will be able to hug him and maybe play our favorite claw game where you try to pick up stuffed toys from a rigged machine. I have the top game, having picked up three toys in one lift once. it's just something my dad and I do. And we also play Backgammon and use the doubling cube and gamble. I taught him to play and even if he only has a million to one chance of winning, he will accept the cube. Thus, I usually win some big extra cash and get a lot of giggles out of it.  He calls me a lucky shit. I am. I have my dad still.

It's been a bit of a tough go. But I did get a DVD of He Died with a Felafel in his Hand and will watch it soon on my first 43 inch flatscreen TV purchased with saved money from canceled trip. And I will laugh, I am certain. It's a big flippin tv, I'll say that. Go big and then go home!

Anyways, i was a bit down about not getting to go to Ireland and then I was reminded about what really, really matters. The people you love most....

shoot the geek squad...

Ok, so there's a lot of folks who own computers but are clueless as to how to fix them or get free shareware and thus pay out the nose for such people as Best Buy's Geeker Squad who simply rob and steal from unknowing people. I hate that kind of lowlife corporate bottom feeding. And I need a t-shirt that says, "No, I will not fix your computer, nor save you from whatever plagues you in your life, or any of it." But I do.

My friend just got laid off her job of 25 years from Pfizer. Because she was so good at what she did, is a leader, had worked her way up, had streamlined processes and got herself too much pay and so, hurrah for America, canned. Not to mention she is raising her grandchildren toddlers now because her kid makes babies but is not man enough to care for them. Children having children. I'd like to cut some of their nuts or put a permanent condom on them, or worse than that.

Anyway, friend is trying like hell to get another job before financial crisis hits that looms quickly. Computer is only a year old and "geek squad" tells her she needs to spend $200 for this's and that's to fix it. Get real. She could nearly buy a new laptop for that. So I went and fixed it and installed free viralware and got her Office and Word open shareware and so on.

"How'd you do that?" Common question and it takes too long to show and explain. I used to be a teacher. I no longer have as much patience as I used to. It wasn't real high in the first place. I don't particularly like fixing computers but it gives me satisfaction to thwart the geeks who steal from unknowing innocents and also keeps me from going ballistic and opening fire in some corporate fkn store....

End rant...

Some days you just gotta laugh...

Really though, that should be everyday, but it doesn't always feel that way or happen so easily. Today I went and got paint for my kitchen cabinets. It's wicked cold and so, one does indoor projects. Seemed a fine idea. Old oak cabinets..add some color to the center panel..cheap makeover. Get home and start painting and it's bright mint green, like chocolate chip mint ice cream, instead of kelly green which would match the stained glass window. So, I just think, maybe when it dries? Nope. It's still mint. I can't help but laugh. I cannot even go down there without cringing. It could make me frustrated or mad. It just makes me laugh.

Then my pup ate another pair of my cowgirl boots. Yet another. She knows better. They were old but not a good thing. I cannot afford new boots which is why I have old boots. But they are just boots. Of course she found out quickly, again, that this is a very bad thing to do.

But I wasn't upset. Just a part of my day.

Some days I can roll with whatever comes.
Others it isn't so easy.
Not sure what defines that or makes it so.
But glad I could laugh today and will take that for what it is.

It's simple. No reason to get your shorts in a knot over everyday "stuff". I mean, really.

Books I Want to Write...

I've had a few books in my head for some time. One is a compilation of the teacher articles I wrote for Billings Gazette here on my blog in 2009. They are one page lesson plans which could last a day or a week or a month. They would be good grouped into sections with tear outs for subs or for teachers who needed a lesson plan that keeps kids' attention. They are fun and students respond well to them. I used them enough times to know.  Title: Teaching Ideas for a Dull or Rainy Day, perhaps.

Another I'm considering is a commentary on online communications, Facebook in particular. I think it could be a much better forum design. I notice and observe how people use it and communicate. And my PhD surrounded this topic so could draw some from that. Facebook, Smacebook. 

Another would be a novel based loosely on life events of mine. I flew on my own the first time at age 8. I traveled to Europe at 13. I attended military school and private girls' schools with kids like Christy Pabst of the Beer family, and Dorothy Lay of the potato chips, and The Cover Girl, who was fat.. I have been a wanderer and teacher and writer and adventurer for all my life. I was locked away in a ward in Chicago at 13..my own private version that closely parallels Girl Interrupted or Cuckoo's or a combination. I taught overseas. I ride horses and climb mountains and do just about anything adventurous. I just don't have the thread of it all in my head yet..how it unfolds. Life is messy. It's like trying to make a snowman out of snow that won't stick together.

I like to write. I write for myself right now. I would like to write and have a goal of making something from it.

I have also co-written poetic dramas with my students in the past and that was some of the most powerful writing. That's another possibility. Screenplay. I can visualize those...clearly.

So, of course, I'll continue to think on it some more and then one day, I will do it.
Or so I believe.

From Pillar to Post...

Some days in winter reflect and are a direct and natural extension of the endless grey and cold. One becomes inert, reads books, watches films, sleeps, doesn't want to get out of bed in the dark of dawn's brisk awakening. If on the next day the sun rises and the sky is clear ice blue, one propels forward, feeling pressed and guilty for the lackadaisical loss of the day before, or days.

Floors get cleaned of salt and water marks. Waxing on hands and knees, wiping away the slush of winter creeping in the doorways on pup's paws and snowy boots. Lots of shoveling until there becomes nowhere to put it anymore and the trash bin is in the street past the piles too high to see over. The dog disappears in it, bouncing and happy and I am just cold trying to keep her from running across the street or off into the woods herding deer. Also tire of being shut in by the oppression of the coldest winter since 1917 and this is only month 2 of 5.

I teach a 3 year old to build his first snowman. He comes in with visible breaths, drinks hot chocolate and falls asleep.

I fix mom's computer and another friend's on the way, which ends up taking 3 hours but hey, I get to visit and assist..and get homemade veggie soup..and I'm outta the house.

Get paint samples. Buy toys that are light, inexpensive, educational and fun for Irish kids I will meet and hug for the first time when I travel soon across the Big Pond. Ah Eire..I have missed you. And there will be a music fest and good craic and good times for all of us friends who have been apart too long. And the crashing sea...

So it goes.

I'd like it to be more level..less harried some days; less inert on others.

But attitude, happenstance, grey or blue skies, health of friends, family and self, dogs and doctors appointments disallow one to choose..and surprises are always thrown in, just for interest..of course.

It's a good ride.
Even if it's not always on my horses.

She's not dead, yet...

My brother died at 26, some 30 plus years ago. I learned then that no matter how hard you try to hold the memories, they fade. Only certain images, flashpoints, remain. No telling what they'll be. I remember his laugh. I sound like him sometimes and hear him in my own expressions. I remember his eyes, deep and sometimes menacing, as older brothers can be. But I know, it doesn't matter how hard you hold on, the realness of their being slips away, piece by piece, year by year. And it doesn't get easier. People who tell you that lie. Yes, it changes...acceptance becomes necessary. But it isn't easier; it's only different.

I learned yesterday I am to loes a very close friend. Soon. I am already trying to stash memories like a squirrel preparing for a long, cold winter.

And so, I will record some of those memories here so they will remain for a time.

I was 18 the first time we met through a mutual friend.I had few friends in Tucson, having just moved there for college. I took her a handmade Easter basket and hid in in her garden.  She never forgot it and was delighted. We were instant friends...as doesn't happen very often.

She took me to Apache Lake to ski for the first time. She could ski and rip a rooster tail so far, I was amazed. I never learned to ski on a single ski. She looked great in her bikini and she fed me and taught me the ropes of "the lake". We slept in the desert sand. Temps at noon peaked over 100. I climbed under my truck in the dirt for shade. Eventually we figured out a black bag hanging up for warm shower water. We were young and the heat and dirt didn't bother us. We laughed, a lot.

The last time I was there I commented on her ruby and diamond ring, shaped in a heart. She was born on Valentine's Day. She took it off and handed it to me. She's far from rich but would give me anything. I tried to give it back but she wouldn't hear of it. She bought herself another one that's identical and we both wear them every day. I gave her a claddagh ring the next time I was there. Love, friendship and loyalty reign.

One of her favorite expressions is: "Doncha know?" She got it from another friend who died of cancer a couple years back, an old beau of mine.

So many friends gone...and to be gone. Fuck.

She always made great Italian food and could cook any wild game and make it delicious. Her husband is a big game hunter and has dead animals all over the walls. We laughed about that....

Her husband will say, "You're a fruit cake, but you're MY fruitcake." He loves her so. I feel so for him.

She gave birth to her son in Lake Tahoe. I taught him to read. Helped him learn to swim. Housed him the first time he left home in San Diego. He now has his own daughter and he is still like a son to me. I could cry for him...and will.

She and I went to an 1800's New Year's Eve party a couple years ago at the lake. She was Pocohantas and i was Miss Kitty. We danced and drank and watched the moon rise above the mountains.

In the morning. we got up before anyone else and the lake was like we'd never seen it in all those years. Glass, to the point you couldn't tell where the horizon started or ended or where land divided from sky. Here's a picture...and if you turn it sideways,  it becomes an alligator.
I love her so.

She is in hospital to be sent home. Nothing they can do.

I will see her soon. And I know she will live in the tiny caves of the mountains along with the peeny, teenie, weenie little Indians who live there that she used to tell all visitors about. And past that horizon, into the nothingness and all of everything.

And one day, I will join her there. Here...

When somedays become THIS day....

I was far away from home, knew few people, and did not have money to be home for Christmas. Mary Irene Bagolini, aka Mib or Mibbie, befriended me and I was not alone that year, nor ever again in regards to a true friend.

She is a master of stained glass art and I have examples of her work all over my house. She tried to teach me, but I did not have her skill. She took me to Apache Lake, which is to this day, one of my favored places for spiritual renewal and carousing and walking bars without spilling a drink or ashtray while being barely able to walk at all after a long day of water skiing and tipping one after the other in the hot Arizona sunshine.

Her son calls me his second mom. He lived with me in San Diego as a roommate and taught me to make manicottis.

She was Italian all through. And at the lake there is a mountain with a big M carved into it which we have all come to know as Mibbie Mountain.

Today she learned she would not live for another year and could barely speak to me and certainly will not remember it. So our someday we'll go to Italy will never happen. And someday became this day today. There will be only memories now.

Someday I will never see her again..but I will never forget how she made me laugh, made me feel loved in her presence, and how Christmas will always hold her spirit in my heart...

I am saddened but blessed. This was the last time we will ever go to the lake together, taken last summer.

Why write if no one reads...

Ah well, cause I like to write I guess. Time passes, yes, quickly, though I've learned to downshift some and take it in more slowly.

Christmas was a quiet affair, spent mostly sleeping, cooking, eating breakfast and snacks in bed, watching Tolkien, cuddling, napping...did I mention not getting out of bed except for Christmas dinner at mom's? I took Derby Pie, a delicious chocolate chip, chopped walnuts, bourbon, eggs, creamy mixture that you can only eat a smidgeon of. I forgot it actually and had to drive 20 miles back to get it and will be reminded of how I ruined dinner by being late for years to come, I am certain. But it was all good...

I got enough money to pay off bills and get new tires which I needed badly, having trucked over off road terrain out west, literal boulders I ran over to get to the tippy top of the Big Horns, 11,000 feet and my place of bliss with my horses having picnics overlooking faraway places without inhabitants and wonders such as Solitude Lake way down there in the depths of a canyon.

Sunny here and bitter cold and I have ear problems but I'm inside, warm and happy enough.

My Cowboy, Hans Anderson

Rodeo beaching it in December

I have a new man in my life, for about 4 months now. He lives a few hours away so we see each other on weekends. He is a farmer's son, from generations back and works in a stockyard....and wonders how he'll find propane to fuel his heat and gas to visit his new love...me. He is kind hearted, hard working, and dirt poor living in his grandmother's trailer with a cat named Harold and a blind and deaf Aussie cowdog named Jack who still wags his tail and rolls in the snow while my pup dances around him....said pup Rodeo is growing up fast and is now 9 months old.





Got lots of cards from old students, some telling me they've now been married for 20 years and the kids are in college. Life....it's amazing and quick.

I enjoy it all, mostly anyways.

Cheers to anyone passing this way and Happy New Year with all blessings.









Blog Bliss

I haven't been writing regularly. I think when I started noticing my posts not being so happy, I didn't want to spew.

And I get busy with life.

I had a musician friend I've known for 10 years come visit from Australia. Had a gathering and he played beautiful guitar and sang. He was JUST as I imagined him. Remarkable. Witty, talented, warm, easy to have around, giving, loving...a real friend. And we only connected online...for 10 years. He worked with some of my online students. I edited his dissertation. We exchanged and stayed connected. Through a marriage and divorce, children being born and learning to walk, moving and changing, and still connected through these wires and now in real time. Amazing. Nice. Bonus. Happy memories and more to come.

Now I am getting ready for my friend from England to come for Thanksgiving. She is the only "sister" I have ever had. Adopted. Friend sister. But family. Trust her with my life. Only see her once or twice a year if that.

Have been polishing silver, making placecards, setting the table, hanging shiny pretty lights as we will share our Christmas together so we don't have to mail international. It's gotten exorbitant...out of reach.

She makes the best cup of tea ever. Something about her making it...tastes totally different and gorgeous...ahh....

Anyways, spose to snow on Thanksgiving and I adore the FIRST snowfall. It makes me as excited as when I was a kid...still. "LOOK! It's SNOWING." And the world turns white and fresh and the air is cold and pure and my horses get fuzzy and warm to ride bareback. The woods go quiet.

I am happy.

I am alive.

I am blessed.

Happy Thanksgiving all, and happy every day.