oh, the competency!

So today I almost accomplished something.

I wrote and emailed a press release regarding a free community event hosted by Master Gardeners, which takes place at 7 p.m. on Monday, November 12.

Yippee!

Yah. Until I got the return email from the local paper.

Hello bhd,
Can you tell us where this event takes place?
Thanks,
Awake at my desk
Copy editor

Oops.

well I guess

In the middle of the night I heard an owl. Must have been in the neighbor's yard. There wasn't another sound in the night but its deep and resonant hooting. Hoo, hoo-oo, hoooo, hoooo, hoo. I memorized the pattern before falling asleep again. I haven't figured out what it is yet.

I joke that I never get anything done because of moments like these. I might spend hours listening to owl calls trying to figure this out. In any case, I didn't hear it calling my name so I suppose that's a good thing.

Before I woke I had an intense and vivid dream. (In fact, all my dreams of late have been intense and vivid, mostly involving breakthrough interactions with my mother or a boss, strangely.) In the dream my sister-in-law Lisa was alive. Again. She had indeed died "last year" (it was actually 2 years ago) but here she was, attending her own funeral party. In the dream she'd died from some accident, even though she had been suffering with cancer. The feeling in the dream is that we were living that day again, and only she and I knew it. We knew it could go either way. Throughout the dream we kept telling each other, excitedly, "We don't know what will happen today!" We wanted to be somewhat careful, but we also wanted to enjoy the party. And always the refrain, where we laughingly reminded each other that we had no idea how the day would end up.

Well ain't that the truth. We think we know what's going to happen today. But it could go either way. It could go all ways. No matter how many times I remind myself that control is an illusion, no matter how many times I read back into my life and see how I've simply had to hang on and ride the waves that come at me, I still like to think I know how today will go.

Anyway, sometimes I wonder why I feel bogged down, as though I need to recover from something, or need to stay inside my house where it's peaceful and safe. I wonder why the past few years of my life seem to have faded into a dim memory, and why my memory in general is fairly lax.

This morning I spent a fair amount of time reading back through my blog here. Yeah, well I guess I can see why I might feel these things.

So maybe today I can go forward with a little more recklessness, a little more joie de vivre, maybe get a bit of a grip on things. Maybe I'll get up if I hear the owl, and go outside with the spotlight and see. Maybe I'll sleep like a baby through the night and get up and accomplish something tomorrow. Maybe I'll keep writing it down so that I can remember it next year, when today is just a fuzzy notion that hardly seems to exist.

evidently I've said it before

Here.

And here.

And here, too.

I'll make it simple right now. Lead with kindness. Even for yourself. Don't make me come there and beat it into you.

view at your own risk

Many, many thanks to the folks in Kentucky, and particularly to DownHomeGirl and appy_monkey for this fine, fine production.

it is not okay

Foreword: This goes out to several people that I know.

I'm angry.

I'm angry that people treat their so-called "loved ones" with abusive behavior. It is not okay to vent your own frustrations with venom toward your partner. It is not okay to project or blame your partner for your own shortcomings, regardless of your feelings of helplessness and worry. And it's completely not okay to act the next day as if nothing has happened.

Grown-ups own their actions, apologize, and change. Holding on to your childish, needy, drama-queen actions is as abusive as those actions themselves.

Don't misunderstand - nobody's perfect. Even in this home, where we both believe that kindness is the only way to treat each other, we stumble. Tempers flare, arms get waved, voices rise - but for us that's the signal that we need to stop, STOP! and figure out what's really going on. We're both willing to cede the need to be right and the need for control, and for one reason only: we love each other, first and foremost.

But if you use hurt against your loved one, you need help. Maybe you need to stop drinking. Maybe you need to take better care of yourself and not be terrified of your partner's attempts to take better care of herself. Maybe you need to put on your big boy pants and take a long, hard look at yourself, you jackass.

I know you don't like what you see. I'm angry that you don't care enough to change that. I'm angry that you don't want to be a better man.

When I'm angry, I eat without noticing my food, and dammit, I don't eat bologna that often. It could have been a good sandwich. So now I'm pissed at you for that, too.

other things I did in the bluegrass

1) Ate. Well. Continually, it seems.

2) Began some cool new friendships and deepened some others.

3) Saw Nickel Creek in concert. Farewell tour. Figures.

4) Painted a switchplate for our hosts' home.

5) Consumed immoderate quantities of excellent hooch.

5) Laughed until I cried. When that tent video gets posted, I'll be sure to link to it here.

6) Got re-pierced. Ouch. Now wearing 4 titanium bicycle tires in my ears. At least that's what they feel like. Two purple and two pale electric blue hoops.

7) Did I mention I slept? When I wasn't eating, that is.

8) Had raclette (the dish, made with the cheese) for the first time. Far, far safer than fondue, and oh so much tastier.

9) Listened to a few dozen of my friends singing karaoke in the basement, en masse. I should have gone down there to participate, but hobbitt was waaaay too busy taking pictures and having fun with the hot (literally and figuratively) young ladies, so I let him.

10) Rejuvenated. That's what f*ckation's for, eh? Well, that and the buzz maintenance.

sleeping in the blue grass

hobbitt and I are on f*ckation in Kentucky. We had an intimate get-together with 28 of our closest friends, many of whom we'd never met.

In addition to having a wonderful time, I'm having some wonderful sleep. As in, right into the middle of the afternoons. It hasn't helped that bed-time comes right before dawn, but, oh well. I'm still averaging something like 12 hours a night. And a couple of naps during the day, for good measure.

Perhaps I needed it. Perhaps I'm feeling safe and secure in another peaceful home.

I'll finish writing this entry after I grab another couple hours of shut-eye.

coming home to me

I love flight trackers.

hobbitt's flying home from San Francisco right now. Even as I type, his plane is descending into Seattle airspace.

I know it'll be another couple of hours before he's home. But I also know how amazing that feeling is, coasting in over the Cascades and the peaks of Rainier or Baker, over the vast amounts of blue blue water, the islands and fjords and green green landscape.

Home. He's coming home. Look out toward the strait, to the northwest. That's where we live. It's magical.

an oldie but goodie

"...Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we're liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

Marianne Williamson, "A Return to Love" 1992

This is for all of you. All of us. Let's shine! Why the hell not? What have we got to lose?

someone tell me why I'm insane

hobbitt's out in the garage with the ShopVac going to town on the Taurus. Mostly Snickers Bar wrappers, as far as I can tell. That car is clean clean clean inside, and always has been. Mom (who gave me the car when she learned that she had cancer) would have flipped in her grave if she'd seen the Snickers Bar wrappers, though. Oh well. Nobody's perfect.

Tomorrow it's going to the other side of the Sound, where it will be traded for this:



Heaven help me. I've gone 'round the bend. A chicken in every pot and two Volvos in our garage. I believe it's time for the Golden Retriever and a couple of 7-year-old soccer players.