finding my confidence again

What a slow slog it has been in this effort to recover from the accident.
i thank God that the Fall semester has begun!
That is forcing me out of the house,
into the car,
onto the road.
Sure, I've been going to see my boys of summer... but that is just around the corner from the middle school I attended. My family lived too close for the bus to pick me up, so I walked the mile and a piece to it.
In other words, it's pretty close and I know the non-busy route.
Sure, I've gone to some movies, too... but those are no farther than the stadium... and I know the safer ways to them.
The grocery store is less than a half-mile from my house.
I've had my car back for less than a week. That means, really, I've been off the road for most of two weeks.
Me.
Not driving.
For most of two weeks.
That is unheard of. Everyone knows what a social butterfly I am, attending diverse events all over town, spreading the love and the joy.
Of late, that has only happened if someone has fetched me to the event.
After the drive to Tybee on Friday, I cancelled my attendance at Angela's birthday party. It was to be held at Tybee, all day on Saturday.
I simply was not up for the drive and the weekend traffic and trying to finding parking and... I was not up for it.
Her daughter's birthday is later this month, so I will be sure to be there. It's in town, even though it will be southside, at Olive Garden.
That's near the school.
By the end of the month, I'll have plenty of practice driving out that far.
I'll have to do so. Now that school has begun, I have a responsibility to thirty paying clients to be the one in charge, two nights a week.
The invisible trees will just have to take a break.

goodbye to Hiram

Ever since the divorce was finally completed on March 31, I knew things were going to change for my BFF.
The girl-child was soon to graduate high school and head to college.
The house's steep mortgage would soon be off her back onto her ex.
Her ex would pay off the credit card debt and remove that burden.

Well, that last one hasn't happened yet.
The divorce lawyer was totally incompetent and didn't add that bit to the final draft of the paperwork. It had been in the previous drafts... just not that final one.
Ernest Herbert Delong, the ex, is still sticking it to his two mistresses, literally, and to my BFF, figuratively. (He has been impotent with her for several years.)
He has continued to shirk his responsibilities. He has not paid the mortgage. He has not paid the insurance on his motorcycle. He has not even paid child support for his daughter. That's a violation of court order and he can find himself in jail for that lapse of judgement on his part.
I hope he will.
Chances are he will not. Chances are that he is in Dubai, shacked up again with the South African adultress. He could go to jail over there for that lapse in judgement, as could she. The folks in Abu Dhabi don't put up with adultery at all.
I hope he will be punished, and that she will be, too.
But who knows how to make that happen?

Tonight, I will spend what will probably be my last night in the house in Hiram. It's for sale and has already been shown multiple times. In fact, an offer has recently been made.
I hope it will sell soon.
But I will miss the loving home Sam decorated for herself and her kids.
They have repainted the rooms downstairs and several of the upstairs rooms, removing the messages on the walls.
"If walls could speak..."
These did.

rabbit holes

Today, I jumped into a rabbit hole, figuratively.
Here's the problem with rabbit holes: there's no way of knowing how deep they are until you're already invested in the journey.
This morning, after breakfast, I decided to finally watch a DVD.
I've had it for almost two years. It was one of the rewards received for my role as Fliss of Kickstarter.
As you may recall, late last year I began catching up with my responsibilities as that persona. I firmly believe I need to give feedback to these valiant creators, these brave souls baring their hearts to the world.
It is not a responsibility I take lightly.
So, it has taken quite a bit of time.
However, the process has been rewarding for me, too, in a way that I had not expected. I have returned to kickstarter many times, researching the projects I backed, and I have found that flame still burns brightly.
The flame of discovery of new talent.
I completely understand why Adam Levine and Blake Shelton are still serving as judges on "The Voice".
So, today, while in beautiful Daytona Beach, I listened to the steady rush and ebb of the Atlantic, admired a clear and blue sky, and wrote about four of the successful kickstarter projects I helped support. I had only intended to write of one of the projects, the one attached to the DVD, but then I found I had not yet written about two others.
I had thought for sure that I had.
I have to wonder how many others I may have not yet completed in my reviewing process, even though I have crossed them off of my "to do" list.
As luck would have it, today was a bit too cool for walking along the shore. You could say the weather encouraged me to stay inside, exploring this very deep rabbit hole, and work on finding my way clear of it.
But isn't "work" too strong a word for what I was doing?
It isn't like anyone is going to pay me for it.
No, I certainly will not be paid for these hours of research, review, and writing. My reward will come from sharing my words with those who did the work, those who have shared their brain-children, their precious idea-fruit, with me.
Feedback is very important.
It's always good to know someone else cares.
It's always good to know someone is listening.

lookin' after two old ladies

I snapped these two photos early on in my kitteh-sitting, back on May 27th, after my return from Daytona Beach.
They are still on my phone and serve as a little mini-movie for me.
I can flip from one to the other and back, animating Chloe as she looks back at Contessa, and then both as they look up at me.
Sheer serendipity that the photos turned out like that!

Tomorrow, the bfe will clamber out of the SNO+ and return to his girls.
I will be so relieved that they have all made it safely back to each other!
This has been such a big responsibility!


But it has also been a great joy for me to spend so much time with these old lady cats.
So much touch therapy I have received from them - and they from me.
Y'all know how I am about touch.
Tomorrow, I depart to join my outlaws at a family reunion in Orlando. I'll be getting lots of touch therapy there, too, as I visit with the first and second cousins of the ex. It will be so wonderful to see them again!
Sure, I get to see the Davidsons and Kopeks in Virginia ever couple of years, as I did last year after visiting Melaness in Pennsylvania, and in 2011 when I had traveled up with my bird to visit them and some other friends. It's been very nice seeing so much of them!
However, it's been almost five years since I've the Kopeks living up in Minnesota and Tennessee - not since the beach house at Nags Head, in July of 2009.
Sure, I was able to see the cheerful Stephanie just a few months ago, and she and I had a lovely time together! But I missed her brother, Chris, as he was in Georgia when I was in Tennessee.
And we will all miss their dad's laughter and jokes at this family reunion. I will miss David's bear hugs, too.
But this week in Orlando will be the first we've all been together and not at a funeral.
That will be very good.
That will be healing.
That will be a good transition from catsitter to on my own again.

These two photographs? I'll keep them on my phone for awhile, my own kittehs short film - super, super short! - to make me smile.
Who knows? I just may watch that movie for a few years.
I just might.

burning up the phonelines

So, this past weekend, my middle brother, drunk as usual, fell asleep in his tent.
No big news, that.
In fact, it's a very frequent occurrence.
Here's the difference: he had a candle burning.
In his tent.

These photos show one of the results of that error in judgement.
The phone is the third -
or is it the fourth? -
which I have bought for him in less than a year's time.
At least he had this one for more than a month.
Why do I pay for his phone service?
For just such emergencies as this. Or for those which are far worse, as in fall of 2010, when he suffered a TIA after indulging in crack with his sex partner of the time. If she had not had a cellphone, he might very well have died. He had allowed his service to lapse, yet again, favoring the expenditure of funds on recreation rather than sustenance.

Amazingly, incredibly, the phone, when the heat-sealed sides were pried apart, worked.
It worked!
Fortunately, at the time of the fire, the phone was well-charged.
So, yesterday afternoon, after he had it cut open, he called me with his news of the fire (which I had heard about that morning from his long-time friend Sue Crow) and with a request for a new phone.
You see, his phone would not be able to be charged again, as that port had been damaged by the fire.
I have to wonder if he would have called me if not for the need for a new phone?
Possibly. A girl can dream, right?
At any rate, he now has a phone which can be recharged. As good fortune would have it, the phones were even on sale at Target for $4.99, too! I think I will go back there in the next few days and buy another one, just because I know he will need it, sooner or later.
As for him, he is fine, thanks for asking. His right foot is scorched, but the rest of him is as fine as he gets these days. When he was awakened by the smoke of the fire, he kicked the burning plastic crate, with the fallen burning candle on it, through his tent flap. His foot, being bare, took the heat poorly, but he is tending well to it.
His tent is in good stead, too. It's truly a wonder he didn't set the surrounding woods on fire with the burning crate, but recent rains had everything well watered and not dry.
You know, if he would agree to go into an alcohol rehabilitation program, he would have other options for his domicile. But we have tried and our pleas fall on deaf ears. His chant remains, "they tried to make me go to rehab, but I said 'no, no, no!'"
I really hate that song. It's ironic that the young woman who wrote it died from her choices to continue her use of drugs.
Alcoholism, and other addictions, should not be glorified.
If the choices for that lifestyle did not adversely affect others in the addict's life, then all well and good. Sadly, addicts depend on financial - and emotional - aid from others to help maintain their drug usage, but resist any choices which would benefit all.
So, I will choose to continue paying for my fifty-one-year-old brother to have a cellphone, and paying for monthly service for that phone, as one of my monthly responsibilities. I will continue to hope he will one day call to ask for help to gain admittance to an alcohol rehab center.
But I'm not holding my breath.
I realize the folly of that hope that he will change. After all, he has chosen to pursue this lifestyle since before Mama died in January of 2001. Every once in a while, he swings closer to being a functional alcoholic, much like my ex and his friend, Bob. Then the weather will warm and he's back in the woods, living by his rules and no one else's.
I will continue to hope for him to choose to change.
After all, he is my brother and I do love him.

no Goldilocks

Dear Tony,

First - excellent sermon. I am so proud of you for presenting such a good message about responsibility. And how very good that others took the message to heart and spoke with you afterward. That is definitely a positive event.

I do hope life is going well in your new building. I also hope you will soon be returned to the Y buildings, but I have to wonder: considering the timing of your sermon and your move, perhaps you are where you are needed at this moment in time? Perhaps you have met some men who are lost and need a lifeline back to shore? I certainly do not know, but I know to trust God and to observe and to think.

I am so glad your pain has been swept away! I know what a distraction pain can be, tempting dark negativity to one's thoughts. Ugh. But it sounds like you are back on an upward path and I am grateful for that.

Funny - when I sat down to write this card, I had thought I was going to talk about other things. Then I read your sermon and just let my pen write as my heart, head, and hand led.

Thank you for that path.

with my love!

still here!

Oh, my goodness, my glorious bit of sand and surf still exists! I have been dreaming about this oasis of mine, this place to unclutter my thoughts, to make sense of the goings on around me. Sure, all the usual excuses abound for my absence, but believe me when I say this: my beach is always present in my mind, tugging on the edges of my thoughts, whispering the call of the sea, enticing me toward the gentle curl of the waves.
So many times, so very many times, a thought will arise that prompts me to seek out my beach and explore the path before me. But the physical world bids me do this, do that, so I make a few notes for later and I'm off to do whatever is demanded of me by others. I am now surrounded by bits of paper, jetsam floating on the surface of my desk, waiting patiently for recovery. The trick now would be to regain the thoughts lost in the depths of these simple notes.
"Trick or treat!" proclaims one scribble, "I do make a difference in chemistry! One of my students from 2000-2001 flagged me down at Spanky's to tell me so!" Oh, to recover the deeper story behind this bit of jetsam. I know I had an entire treatise in mind, and I'm sure I could recall its essence if I had the time. However, 'tis the season and I have not.
Another bit, torn from an unwanted postcard in a magazine, has a quote from Olivia Newton-John: "Nature is my church." So, if I give 5% of my pay to the man-made place of worship I've been known to frequent and 5% to environmental causes, does that satisfy the command to tithe? Just a stray thought, but I think I could have given it a good home and might yet.
"That young lady needs to work out her own salvation." This said by one of my Shekinah sisters to another, but it really struck a chord with me. After all, who else can save me but myself? Every twelve-step program out there is based, first and foremost, on the desire of the attendee to effect a change for the better in their lives. As any addict will attest, no change is possible if you don't sincerely want to work for it for your sole benefit. And, consequently, for your soul' benefit. Oh, yes, I could SO have waxed rhapsodic on this one! And may one fine evening, but this is not that night.
And another torn bit of a Jekyll Island program, no doubt scribbled on whilst I was homeward bound from the Shrimp & Grits Festival has two tidbits moored for safekeeping. The first says "can use music, smells, to time-travel to the past - we can try to predict the future - feet are still in the PRESENT time." Nice! I really like where I was going with that and look forward to diving in another time, but this next one... ah, that one begs for exposition! It says simply: "constellations of my world: school, job, friends, family, movies, theatre, music, lovers." To be always surrounded by such structures, whether visible or not, much like the starry constructs distant from this wondrous planet... reassuring, is it not?
The last bit for now is a page taken from the March issue of skirt! Alessandra H, a graduating senior at Savannah Arts Academy, advises "You can't be afraid of making mistakes - it's the only way to create something original." I'm looking forward to seeing what she offers to this world!
And now, time has come for me to say... later.