Debris Of Days at Work

"You can't have your cupcake and eat it too" ~ Michele Hirning, May 2011
(about project deadlines and timelines & priorities - and just after co-worker Kelli's baby shower, at which there were beautiful cupcakes)

Michele - "It would be like opening up Pandora's breadbox" (based on "I think it will be bigger than a bread box" and "it would be like opening up Pandora's box" ~ Iyad, VP of Engineering)

"I think the system will choke to infinity!" ~ again Iyad

Michele - "it's not my fault" & "I did my best" - you just can't expect requirements to be perfect! Only GOD is perfect, after all.....

Bad Blog Post

Its silly, no?
When a rocket blows
And everybody still wants 2 fly
Some say a man aint happy, truly
Until a man truly dies
Oh why, oh why, sign o the times

Time, time

Sign o the times mess with your mind
Hurry before it's 2 late
Lets fall in love, get married, have a baby
Well call him nate... if it's a boy
~ Prince "Sign O'The Times"

You wanna live in this lousy world? You play it cool.
~ "Cool" West Side Story

If I could, you know I would
If I could, I would let it go, this desperation, dislocation
Separation, condemnation, revelation
In temptation, isolation, desolation
~ "Bad" by U2

I look at FaceBook photos of friends who just had babies and think something like "oh great, congratulations! new baby - yay!" but then can't help but think "...and welcome baby as the next generation of misery...."

God how was I so warped into such routine matter-of-course negativity?

Or am I just twisted inside as a happily married woman who'll willfully not have children? Is it really just me & my choices all along?! I have a blog post I want to do about "Aging as a Woman Without Children" as I approach 40. Only one more year to go now! (Staring down the gun barrel of 40: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_barrel.)

Yet I also wonder - will anyone really care?!

But I do wonder seriously, how can you have a baby these days and not stop to think...at least for a moment, before evolutionary instincts to reproduce take over...about so many things - melting ice-caps and economies doing likewise, and shootings and public education in complete shambles - ADHD and the parents on anti-anxiety/depression meds when they aren't self-medicating the old-alchoholic-fashioned-way....everyone way too busy and distracted, by keeping up with daily life, how fast everything is moving these days, and then there's things like "social media" - oh FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, how we love you.

And how nothing seems to be getting any better. Does it seem to be getting any better to you?!

And now for something completely silly!

With a small shout-out to my little brother Chris, who made me a King Missle CD once. I love you so.....

So then I got this idea about driving a Cheesecake Truck...anyway, I decided that the only thing to do....but I'm not really sorry, 'Cause they were very delicious cheesecakes. You have to hear it to believe it! Click on first link below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq9sMsd7Qdg
http://www.lyricstime.com/king-missile-cheesecake-truck-spoken-lyrics.html

King Missle - Cheesecake Truck

So then I got this idea
about driving a cheesecake truck,
'Cause I figured at the end of the day,
I could take some of
the leftover cheesecake home
And I love cheesecake.
So I went to the cheesecake company
And they asked me
if I could drive a truck
And I said "yes"
And they said "You're hired!"
So the next day
I got in the truck with all
the cheesecakes
And I drove about a block
and I just had to have a cheesecake
So I pulled over and opened the truck
And I got a cheesecake
And I also took another one for later
And I took one for my friend Farm boy,
And by that time I had
Eaten one of the cheesecakes
so I took another one.
Then I figured I might as well
stop at my house
To drop off all the cheesecakes
So I take five cakes
to eat on the way
And i drive another block
and a half to my house.
Now it's lunchtime
so I eat ten cheesecakes
And a cheesecake for dessert.
I should point out by the way
That all of these cheesecakes
were very delicious.
Anyway I decided
that the only thing to do
Would be to eat all the rest
of the cheesecakes
And hide the truck somewhere
And leave town.
And I miss everybody a lot
But I'm not really sorry,
'Cause they were
very delicious cheesecakes.

angry music for angry women

I love these songs by "Hole" from the '90s - angry music for angry women! (bring it - emphasis below all mine)

I Think That I Would Die
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXxexmVHV3M
He's stupid
I'm smarting
He's stupid
I'm smarting
I want my baby, where is the baby
I want my baby
Who took my baby
Rose white and rose red, rose up in my head
Rose white, rose red
Yeah, yeah
I want some
Yeah, yeah
There is none
I want my baby, where is the baby
I want my baby, where is the baby
There is no milk
There is no milk

Rose white and rose red, roses in my head
Rose white and rose red
She lost all her innocence
Gave into a an absess
She lost all her innocence
She said, "I am not a feminist."
It's not yours
Fuck you
There is no milk
There is no milk...

Doll Parts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asVWryj00Ls
i am doll eyes
doll mouth, doll legs
i am doll arms, big veins
dog bait
yeah, they really want you
they really want you, they really do
yeah, they really want you
they really want you, and i do too
i want to be the girl with the most cake
i love it so much it just turns to hate
i fake it so true, i am beyond fake
and someday, you will ache like i ache
someday, you will ache like i ache
i am doll parts
bad skin, doll heart
it's stands for knife
for the rest of my life
yeah, they really want you
they really want you, they really do
yeah, they really want you
they really want you, and i do too
i want to be the girl with the most cake
he only loves those things because he loves
to see them break
i fake it so true i am beyond fake
and someday, you will ache like i ache
someday, you will ache like i ache
someday, you will ache like i ache
someday, you will ache like i ache
someday, you will ache like i ache

Calling All Angels

As angry as I am these days, I still have to hope. It helps me keep going. And lately HOPE has taken the form of going to church - well, some kind of church.

The Quakers in Sarasota are much like they were in Milwaukee (the church my husband belongs to & in which we were married). Very politically liberal, accepting, so-well-meaning, social justicey, granola people. And not that far from what I grew up with - the Jesuit faith found at Pacem in Terris and Round Table, in Seattle, WA circa 1975. During those mythical hippie days that I've already written about on this blog ~ http://yousurecantalkbaby.blogspot.com/2009/07/growing-up-catholic-worker.html and http://yousurecantalkbaby.blogspot.com/2009/07/day-music-died-part-three.html

The Quakers have always felt a little like the Jesuits to me, they're just not Catholic. OK not bad, the liberal politics minus the guilt, I could get into that religion - sign me up!! Except I'm not so accepting of all the so-called "liberal" politics these days - I have my own opinions formed from a lot of life lived, my husband's libertarian influence, and I just don't exactly believe that big government will save us, don't swallow all the liberal kool-aid anymore. But more on that topic for another post....

Mostly today I'm thinking about the Catholics I grew up with, and the beauty of it - my heritage - for what it is worth. And how the Catholics have a lot of stuff about the freakin Virgin Mary (madonna/whore anyone? bring it - I gots lots to say about the virgin/whore complex and what it does to women ya'll), and then too, a lot of stuff about angels. I remember my Aunt Margaret was really into angels, before she died at the far-too-young age of 59. And so this blog post is a bit of a call out to her and to all the Catholic angel-worshippers, God love 'em.

There is something to it, maybe. My Aunt Connie taught me a prayer, after I watched a movie on T.V. that scared the be-jezus out me and I was afraid to go to sleep - I guess she was baby-sitting me & my sibs that night? This "Angel Guardian" incantation she taught me gave some comfort, at least that one night.

The things that give us comfort, in any kind of healthy way, can never be bad right?

Here is the prayer:
Angel of God,
my guardian dear,
to whom God's love commits me here,
ever this day,
be at my side
to light and guard,
to rule and guide.

As well as a song I love, by Jane Siberry, about angels. And I did so love the movie "Pay it Forward" - I feel it never got its due praise or attention ~
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjkJDu0B-1U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f198pJXYZOs&feature=related

Calling All Angels
Santa Maria, Santa Teresa, Santa Anna, Santa Susannah
Santa Cecilia, Santa Copelia, Santa Dominica, Mary Angelica
Frater Achad, Frater Pietro, Julianus, Petronella
Santa, Santos, Miroslaw, Vladimir
and all the rest

a man is placed upon the steps, a baby cries
and high above the church bells start to ring
and as the heaviness the body
oh the heaviness settles in
somewhere you can hear a mother sing

then it's one foot then the other
as you step out onto the road
how much weight? how much weight?
then it's how long? and how far?
and how many times before it's too late?

calling all angels
calling all angels
walk me through this one
don't leave me alone
calling all angels
calling all angels
we're cryin' and we're hurtin'
and we're not sure why...

and every day you gaze upon the sunset
with such love and intensity
why it's...it's almost as if
if you could only crack the code
then you'd finally understand what this all means

but if you could...do you think you would
trade it in
all the pain and suffering?
ah, but then you'd miss
the beauty of the light upon this earth
and the sweetness of the leaving

calling all angels
calling all angels
walk me through this one
don't leave me alone
callin' all angels
callin' all angels
we're tryin'
we're hopin'
we're hurtin'
we're lovin'
we're cryin'
we're callin'
'cause we're not sure how this goes

Song For My Friend Andrea - And For My (Old) Self

Whenever I hear the wonderful song "Anchorage" by Michelle Shocked, I always think about my good friend Andrea and how we were young women together in Seattle, during that magical time between college and grad school. 

We were all feminist-y together and involved. We met while doing volunteer training for a battered women's shelter. We helped plan Seattle's "Take Back the Night" march, which took place in June, 1995 and I still had the framed poster from it, until David & I got rid of almost everything we owned and moved to Florida, almost 2 years ago. 

She taught me how to apply lipliner & curl my eyelashes and we went to clubs & danced to the wee hours of the morning. We had intimate talks about our pasts and how we wanted our future lives to go. And then we drove off into the sunset together (a la "Thelma & Louise") to go to WI for graduate school (she in Madison, me in Milwaukee), in August of 1995 and never looked back. We had A LOT of fun! 

I will always love this line "hey Chele/We was wild then" and it's a great video, check it out ~ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hffcyJ1GAg

Both of us are married now, both of us have step-children, and neither of us have kids of our own (on purpose). And despite having desired to be one & having done it for a while (it didn't work out so well), the line "I sound like a housewife/I think I'm a housewife" still makes me feel sad, for some reason.

Anchorage ~ by Michelle Shocked 

I took the time to write to my old friend 

I walked across the burning bridge 

I mailed my letter off to Dallas, 

but Her reply came from Anchorage, Alaska 

She said Hey girl it's about time you wrote 

It's been over two years now my old friend 

Take me back to the days of the foreign telegrams 

And the all night rock 'n rollin' 

hey Chel We was wild then 

Hey Chel you know it's kinda funny 

Texas always seems so big 

But you know you're in the largest state in the union 

When you're anchored down in Anchorage 

Hey girl I think the last time I saw you 

Was on me and Leroy's wedding day 

What was the name of that love song you played 

I forgot how it goes, 

I don't recall how it goes 

Anchorage, anchored down in Anchorage 

Anchorage, anchored down in Anchorage 

Leroy got a better job so we moved 

Kevin lost a tooth, he's starting school 

I got a brand new eight month old baby girl 

I sound like a housewife 

I think I'm a housewife 

 

Hey girl what's it like to be in New York 

New York City, imagine that, tell me 

What's it like to be a skateboard punk rocker 

Leroy says send a picture 

Leroy says hello 

Leroy says keep on rocking girl 

Yeh keep on rocking 

Hey Chel you know it's kinda funny 

Texas always seems so big 

But you know you're in the largest state in the union 

When you're anchored down in Anchorage

When My Grand-Parents Went to Rehab

They tried to make me go to rehab but I said 'no, no, no'
Yes I've been black but when I come back you'll know know know
I ain't got the time and if my daddy thinks I'm fine
He's tried to make me go to rehab but I won't go go go
~ Amy Winehouse "Rehab"

I used to get drunk to get my spark
And it used to work just fine
It made me wretched but it gave me heart
I miss Jimmy like I miss my wine
~ Shawn Colvin "The Facts About Jimmy"

I don't remember how old I was - maybe 10? When I heard about this. My aunts & uncles & my mother and I guess my Dad too, staged some kind of intervention...they were in their 60s, my maternal Grandparents.

He (Grandpa) was probably newly retired from being a GP (General Practice) doctor in Portland, OR. They don't call them that anymore, I don't think, "GP" doctors. But back then he was that "country doctor" you still remember, or wish you could remember, who made house calls, delivered babies in a pinch, and took payment in food-stuffs sometimes, or just waved it off with a "well, we'll settle that later."

He was a great man. And I thought about becoming a doctor too, thinking about him, at some point during high school when I had a really good biology teacher, and it all seemed possible. And maybe I would have done it, if not for daunting O-Chem classes at college. And the fact that I didn't really love math after all, despite winning the 8th Grade Math Award and loving my algebra teacher Ms.Marion, who was a real task-master. It took A LOT to please that woman and yet I think I somehow did, in the end. :)

So...anyways, my Grandparents. I think that my Grandfather held it together while he had to, and then after he retired well...that's another story, one that is probably not my right to tell, mostly because I have no idea what it was really like for them. But I do imagine...and have some thoughts, below...

I remember showing up in Portland after 3 hours road-trip down from Seattle, how we'd run to the deep-freezer for popsicles and their house was so big! and beautiful. How she always had cookies in that bronze tin on the counter and how did my Grandmother keep it together after her reason for living was gone? Kids all grown and grandkids only visit so often....it's a little like my own mother now and I can't exactly relate but I can certainly sympathize.

When my grandfather retired & my grandparents suddenly had all that time on their hands, you know the reward of their hard work all those years, I think it just fell apart. How bad it got I don't know, but bad enough for an "intervention" at some point and they went to rehab & stopped drinking & I guess they lived the long "good" life we all want. My sweet grandfather lived to be 87 years old and died just before his money to pay for in-home nursing care ran out.

She died first, and spent her last 5 years or so in a wheelchair - after raising 9 children (one of whom died before the age of 5 from Leukemia), I can't really blame her for wanting someone to take care of her! I still remember the last time I saw her - she was sitting in her wheelchair pulled up to the table, smoking a cigarette and looking like old-age had just crashed through her life & taken everything, her eyes so empty.

She said "I should have had more children" and when I (blanching inwardly) said "I think you had just the right amount of children" she only responded "well, I can't have any more now." I was so sad for her.

And my own mother is the same story: she's taken care of others her whole life, and now that her spouse is dead, kids all grown & gone (mostly), and she's stopped doing day-care I think she doesn't know what to do with herself.

I know you can't tell a depressed person to just "snap out of it" but I wish I could help her get a toehold in moving towards mental and physical health...by telling her this secret I think I know: it doesn't matter where you are currently, how bad it is, all your joys & sorrows, what you have lived up to this point, if you can change your thinking you can begin a new life now.

I truly believe this in my heart and will tell it to anyone I love who is suffering (including myself), whether they want to hear about it or not. So this is how I hang on, this is how I don't give up.

"I Shall Believe"
~ by Sheryl Crow
Come to me now
And lay your hands over me
Even if it's a lie
Say it will be alright
And I shall believe

I'm broken in two
And I know you're on to me
That I only come home
When I'm so all alone
But I do believe

That not everything is gonna be the way
You think it ought to be
It seems like every time I try to make it right
It all comes down on me
Please say honestly you won't give up on me
And I shall believe
And I shall believe

Open the door
And show me your face tonight
I know it's true
No one heals me like you
And you hold the key

Never again
would I turn away from you
I'm so heavy tonight
But your love is alright
And I do believe

That not everything is gonna be the way
You think it ought to be
It seems like every time I try to make it right
It all comes down on me
Please say honestly
You won't give up on me
And I shall believe
I shall believe
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/sherylcrow/ishallbelieve.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3Nnrj6i9Vk

Sophie's Choice

Lately I am wondering about my father's ancestors - Ruzika, Ruzicka or Ruziska or Ruziscka - the name our father told us before he died. Who was this man & who was this woman, who had an affair (and which one's name was it? probably his), while they were both married to other people in 1941 or 1942? And then she got pregnant, birthed my father and gave him up for adoption? Was there tons of guilt, and shame & secrecy and is this why it is going to be hard for me to find out anything more now, all these years later?

We know that our father did some research on his birth-parents back in the late '80s or early '90s but he apparently never got very far with it. I have my older brother sending me the documents from that search & once I get them I will figure out where to go from there, if I will go anywhere at all. Maybe it's best to let it go, let "sleeping dogs lie" and not stir up any ghosts?

But I am so full of questions: Were they really Romanian, like I remember my father saying? I want them to be. If only cuz I'd like some I'm-a-Gypsy-Princess fantasy to play out, like I had when I was young, hearing my father talk about his blood-ancestry, how it was all possible then because we just didn't know. But I hated how he would call himself a "bastard" - it seemed wrong to me, even as a young child, just hurtful & unfair. I guess I could sense even then, that he had some unresolved, leftover shame from it, something.

My father had done nothing wrong, he'd just been born! And then adopted by my damaged paternal grandparents. Well, *damaged* mostly just my grandmother, as I remember it. What her parents must have done to her, my poor Grandma Hirning, for her to be so angry & awful - despite the fact she died of cancer when I was only 6 years old, I still remember being afraid of her.

And I also saw up-close the number she had done on my Aunt Margaret, my father's anorexic/bulemic also-adopted younger sister. She died suddenly at the age of 59, after she'd already buried her mother, brother and father (in that exact order), and was left all alone in that most heartless place, the "city of angels" (Los Angeles, CA).

Despite the all-too-obvious damage, my Grandma Hirning, for some reason was expected to be maternal and to have & raise children - despite her barren womb and probable incapacity to truly nurture. I guess it was the times, as they say....

I look past the Hirnings, all dead now anyway (God bless them), and wonder...were they, my blood-grandparents - this scandalous mystery man & woman - somehow connected to the detritus of WW II? I want them to be. If only because I have this romanticized image of desperate people trying to "make it" in America and love the description of DPs, Displaced Persons, in one of my favorite books The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood....she SO gets the baby-boomers, that whole generation.

And also, I recently watched the movie "Sophie's Choice" and seeing Meryl's Streep's beautiful anguished face while she told her stories of what it was like to be in a concentration camp and have her children taken from her, I felt somehow connected to that history, that horror...how insane it was and how banal too. Just world politics happening and taking people with it, the broad sweep of brutality that happens to this day, it's just not quite the whole European diaspora that happened then and with such attention.

It's just that I don't know how you do this - it's "Sophie's Choice" and how do you choose?! And when it's so banal, when living as a depressed & anxious person, in wealthy America in 2011 is so painful yet so comparatively easy, what do you do with that? Life or death? My husband tells me to "Pick!" all the time and he means something else but it is the same choice.

I only know that I watched the documentary following "Sophie's Choice" and I know that I'm NOT doomed, like they said she was (and she did kill herself at the end of the movie). I'm not dead - yet. I'm still fighting and if that means I have to be angry all the time, then so be it. I'd rather be angry, at this point, than dead ("better dead than red" says the WW II & Cold War voices in my head). Hey world, life ~ bring it!

If I Could Save You

from falling off that mountain 

I would scold you to be more 

patient, and careful 

I would yell at you like 

you yelled at me when I was 

a teenager and you were so afraid 

because you saw me falling 

and I didn't know it 

my only thought was of having fun 

now, I would yell and scream and pound 

my fist like you did, my father

if you would only still be alive 

if you were, everything would be different 

if I could stop you, my brother 

from jumping off the Aurora bridge 

I'd yell and scream and tear my hair out 

and if you did jump 

anyway 

I would try to catch you 

and then 

we'd get coffee and talk 

tears and rain drops 

falling into our cups 

the rest of the world would stop 

while we discuss family history 

genetics of depression 

we can't escape it but 

it's not the death of us 

it doesn't have to be the death of us 

yet it's hard to overcome 

but yell at me and fall and fight 

all you want, but don't die 

don't die yet 

don't die 

if I could save you I could save myself

Perfect Summer ~ A Poem

The following poem based (loosely) on a poignant memory of David's, from when Trevor (his now 24-year-old son) was a little kid:
There once was a time
this magical summer
when all the kids were playing
on the lawn and
the air was warm and
life seemed good
and the adults were....

having affairs and smoking pot
and trying to
not be children
themselves

how could it have been
any better?
how could we have lost it?
and how can we go on

with knowledge of all
that was happening
underneath
all that apparent
perfection?