Because everything.
Can’t watch the news because it’s full of shit and non-news, editorial views now pass as headline news, journalism is dead and Politically Correct runs the world only it’s running the whole damn thing into the ground instead of letting the happy shine through.
Or as Giles put it in both the first and last episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, “The Earth is Definitely Doomed.”.
~
I’ve been writing and writing and not posting, saving everything to draft and hating everything I write between running up and down the stairs twenty times a day to mess with the router/modem/anything internet related since obviously Mars is still in my retrograde. It’s exasperating to stop my flow of thoughts because those stupid white bars keep showing me the yellow triangle with the exclamation point and just as I finally get back online my phone rings again because my Dad wants to tell me what’s on Turner Classic Movies for the seventh time that day so I grit my teeth and pretend I’m really glad he told me and yes of course I’ll be watching it thank you very much and yes I’ll talk to you later.
Of course my train of thought is gone and I forget what the hell I was about to write which, of course, was the most brilliant thing ever written except now it’s gone forever. So I save to draft and pray for a miracle.
~
I want to write about the fun, the good stuff, my vacation to the shore (including tornado warnings and much rain), the awesomeness of finally meeting http://maryannemistretta.wordpress.com/ in person (even though I arrived fifteen minutes late because the library was so big I couldn’t find the right room – plus I had to pee. Shut up, it’s a long ride from Carteret!)then leaving (too early for my liking) to go to my niece’s baby shower (where I stood for the most part because that’s what I do) while my feet were throbbing from the inevitable sunburn I got down the shore regardless of the number 90 sunblock I used – the fair Irish skin might have something to do with that but it sure didn’t make any of my shoes less painful.
~
Dental appointments to fix the root canal a previous dentist had botched leaving 3 root tips and a foreign object in my gums weren’t very much fun but at least I finally found the root of that problem and that was totally an unintentional pun.
And did I mention I’m a routine kind of girl who hates when my apple cart gets upset and my usual go-to’s are gone? I mean even the television shows that make me happy are on hiatus and if that freaks me out imagine how freaked out I get when my usual crutch gets pulled out from under me and I’m nothing but a ball of confusion?
~
See? I’m a lunatic when I don’t write and I stupidly let myself not write.
Bad, bad, me.
I need to get back to my routine of writing every day and stop putting everything in draft and stop putting every damn person in the world ahead of me. I’m going to have to start getting a little more selfish and stop letting every thing else pull me apart like taffy.
That, my friends, is the easy part. The hard part is actually doing it.
The sand is running through the hourglass faster each day. It’s past time to kick it into gear and get on Team Me.
I also want a unicorn.
“Mothers hold their children’s hands for just a little while, and their hearts forever”~ Irish proverb ~
Someone much wiser than me recently told me my Mother flows through my veins, that every pump of my heart pushes part of her through my body and my mind, so she will always be with me. Always. It wasn’t until I was a few miles away from Cape May that I began to feel anxious the other day, uneasy almost, as if I’d left something behind when I packed my bags to head north. Which, of course, I had, when I stood alone on the slippery jetties and scattered my Mother’s ashes where she wanted them, in the Atlantic Ocean off Cape May beach.
In the last ten years or so, Mom and I started a new tradition, 2 to 3 visits a year to Cape May, just the two of us. The only rule we had was we had to stay at The Victorian and we had to stay no less than 5 days. We began to think of The Victorian as our home away from home, always warmly welcomed as Mom checked in because I couldn’t stop petting the cat all cozied up on a comfy chair purring away in tandem with the thumping of the dog’s tail. We didn’t even care if we left the room, although we did spend many hours wandering through the most beautiful town in the world. What mattered was the talking. Two best friends talking who just happened to be Mother and Daughter. Those are the times I cherish most.
Everything happens for a reason some say, and I’m still trying to figure out the reason Mother Nature decided Saint Patrick’s Day, the day I planned to bring Mom to her final resting place, was a good day to dump 7 inches of snow in Cape May while leaving the rest of NJ alone.
But I was on a mission.
After a longer than usual drive into howling wind, freezing temperatures, and snow nearly up to my knees in some drifts, I trudged my way, Mom in hand, down to the surf.
I don’t remember ever being so cold and I talked to Mom as we got closer to the waves crashing over the jetties.
My closest friend Shawn came with me so I wouldn’t have to be alone, but since she knows me so well, she understood my need to scatter Mom’s ashes by myself, but in true Best Friend Form, she walked with me to the beach, staying back just a bit so I could say my final goodbyes, just me and Mom, alone together for the last time.
Is there ever enough time to say everything you want to say to someone? Usually we put it off or hope they just know how we feel.
I am so Blessed to have a Mother who taught me to always say ‘I Love You’, so thankful that we never even ended a phone call without saying it to each other, and beyond grateful that the last words we said to each other were “I Love You”.
Is it possible to feel relief and dread at the same time? Relieved that my sweet beautiful Mother is in that good place now, yet dreading each day without her in my life. I will never say goodbye to Mom, I will say until we meet again, I will feel your presence with each breath I take, feel you watching over me as you did all my life.
And most of all, I will love you for the rest of my days, until I see you again.
Rest In Peace, my beautiful Mother.
From Buffy The Vampire Slayer ~ The Body
Anya (crying): But I don’t understand! I don’t understand how this all happens. How we go through this. I mean, I knew her, and then she’s, there’s just a body, and I don’t understand why she just can’t get back in it and not be dead anymore! It’s stupid! It’s mortal and stupid! And, and Xander’s crying and not talking, and, and I was having fruit punch, and I thought, well Joyce will never have any more fruit punch, ever, and she’ll never have eggs, or yawn or brush her hair, not ever, and no one will explain to me why. (She puts her hand over her face, crying.)
My own version of the yellow brick road, where life is magical and anything is possible.
I’ve been in my shell.
I think it started to sneak up on me the other day when I walked outside into a beautifully sunny September morning.
Fall, Autumn, whatever you want to call it, this certain time of the year has always been my favorite. For the last ten years or so, my Mom and I make sure to go to Cape May for one of our twice-a-year Mother/Daughter Getaways in September. And it’s beautiful in September.
We always go off-season, for a few reasons, one being that the rates are extremely low, another is that we love the quiet.
Everything is still open, people are still around, events continue year ’round so there’s always something to do, even if that something is nothing more than getting fish and chips from The Blue Pig, sitting on the balcony drinking tea and people watching, or just strolling along the beach
Cape May is where everything is magical and all is right with the world.
I was at ShopRite, walking toward the store to grab a cart when it hit me, I was making a mental list of things to pick up for a trip that will never be.
For that brief span of time I forgot.
I forgot that my Mom died just a little over 4 months ago.
It was a right hook to the gut.
I’m an Unashamed Member of The Mama’s Girl Club, maybe having only brothers had something to do with it, whatever reason, doesn’t matter. I just tell you this so you know she was my best friend and confidante, the person I spoke with on the phone multiple times a day, every day.
Someone I was so proud to be part of.
Because I am my Mother’s daughter, I try to take comfort in that, but I stumbled the other day and I’m having a hard time pulling myself back up this time.
Oh, I know I will, but you know how it is; it feels impossible at certain moments.
And because I have that wonderful Luck of the Irish, sarcasm intended, everything else falls apart at the same time.
Nothing important really, little gnats buzzing near your ear type of things, but when they start piling up they can knock you down flat on your face.
I know, I’m publicly whining.
Blame it on the absolute rage I’m trying to suppress because of internet peskiness the last few days including the lack thereof the aforementioned internet along with some whacky thing that fucks with your email and sends out fake stuff to anyone whose email address you ever had. Yeah, I know there’s names for those things, virus or worms or cyber-somethings, I don’t know any of that stuff, I just want to write.
I think I just babbled which may possibly be a good sign.
I just hate when I let myself sink and I crawl into my shell, it does nothing good.
But then I remember that stupid fibromyalgia and how all the distractions I’m running to and from, all the stressing out and overdoing are just begging for me to crash.
So sometimes I have to crawl into my shell I guess, but it’s not cozy in there these days.
It’s hard and oddly bright for such a dark place, and little pincers reach out and grab my bare flesh in an effort to keep me there, locked up. A prisoner.
There’s an episode of Dollhouse, the best show you’ve probably not seen because FOX doesn’t know how to schedule a good show, but point, the episode, called “Briar Rose”, at one point talks about the faerie tale and how sometimes you have to save yourself, and it’s ok, good, even.*
So I have to start climbing out of that crab shell (this time it decided to dig deep underground and hide)and grab my own reins.
And that, my friends, will begin with me doing the right thing and sleeping early so I can wake up to start checking things off my to-do list.
How can four months seem so long and so short at the same time?
*The Dollhouse episode Briar Rose, from the mind of the one and only Joss Whedon, is brilliant. I can’t do it justice with words, only watching it, and the whole series, can, and I highly recommend you give it a go (said another Joss Whedon fangirl).
kiss me on the cheek
as you push me out the door
baby no one does it better than you
whisper i’m so sweet
as you throw me to the floor
tell me what am i supposed to do
i wanna believe the things you say
the things you told me yesterday
but you know actions speak louder than words
to this captive castaway
this captive castaway
you say you like my style and you like that thing i do
a caring complication’s what i am
when you avoid my calls it only leads me to believe
that you really couldn’t give a damn
i wanna believe the things you say
the things you told me yesterday
but you know actions speak louder than words
to this captive castaway
this captive castaway
AUTHORS NOTE: I’ve been in a few bands, lead singer mostly, and I wrote a lot of songs…lyrics are just poems you sing, and i think it’s time for me to write them somewhere other than only the piles of previously blank books now filled with song lyrics, a good portion of which became songs we’d record. Anyway, I felt the need to write these lyrics here today, as I’m working on a super-not-so-secret Fiction Relay thing (I work best under pressure so I thought I’d put some pressure on myself) and I can’t split my brain in too many directions at the same time… unless maybe if I was a Doll, an Active (in Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse and if you haven’t watched the 2 seasons then go! run! get it and watch it because it’s that good) and someone could imprint my brain so I could be a cocktail of awesome, um, I uh, lost my train of thought because I can’t stop thinking about the FR and Dollhouse at the same time.
And I think what started out as just lyrics turned into something approaching rant status. So I’m gonna shut up now and go work on an exciting new writing adventure…tune in for more details to come soon. And seriously, watch Dollhouse, and sweet Cara, you made me think of these lyrics today, so thank you! xox 😀
There should be a video here; if the link doesn’t work because I did it wrong then it’s well worth the effort it takes to copy and paste that sucker and watch a few minutes of Mr. Whedon fighting a one-eyed monster as written by a kid in ‘Scary Smash’.
How could I forget?
How in the world is it possible that I forgot the Birthday of my Mental Mentor, The One, The Only, The Great Mr. Joss Whedon?
Yesterday, June 23rd, was Joss Whedon’s Birthday.
You know Joss Whedon.
Creative Genius?
Wordsmith Extraordinaire?
Creator of Awesome?
Best Character Builder in the existence of Character Building?
Person voted Most Likely To Break Your Heart By Killing Off Your Favorite Character?
Possibly also The Wisest Writer In The History Of Writers?
There’s nothing my little self could write to pay proper homage to a humble Genius such as Joss Whedon, so I shall simply say Happy Birthday Sir Joss, the grateful(ly growing) masses Thank You for the Gift of your words.
Oh and one more very important piece of advice from The Man Himself:
joannebest 