My Popo

Eighty-two years of living. Fifty-nine years of marriage. Laboring, sweating, building, repairing, fighting, sailing, fishing, hunting, teaching, swearing, holding, talking, loving, breathing.

Years of suffering.

Done now.

No more struggling just to breathe.

No more arguing over who did what to whom.

No more fear.

No more pain.

Rest now.

Float on the lovely ocean in my dreams.

Goodbye, Popo. I'm sorry I can't cry, but I really do love you.

If this doesn't boggle the mind, nothing will

If we destroy our planet or just ourselves, the universe won't give a shit. Just like we don't care about a random ant colony on the other side of the world.

Explain to me how our problems are supposed to be solved by talking to the sky? Clearly the sky is full and has infinitely greater things going on than our petty grievances or even than our legitimate concerns.

We only have one tiny part of the universe to use. If we're going to continue our existence, we need to stop relying on an invisible hand to bail us out of our own mistakes at the last minute and instead just fix things ourselves. Even if God does show up, He'll certainly be happier if we get our act together and behave like rational creatures than if we just make a mess and wait around for Him to clean it up. If He's up there, He is clearly busy.

My New Hero

When I gave birth in a military hospital, I had a private room all to myself (well, if by "private" you mean "sixteen different nurses, doctors, midwives, medical assistants, orderlies, and various emergency pediatric personnel." Sterilized equipment was used, along with monitors for both my contractions and baby's heart rate. Someone even came in with a what looked like a really REALLY long plastic crochet hook and burst my water for me. I'd taken classes on childbirth and how to take care of a real live baby. I had blankets and pillows, a bed that converted into a birthing chair, an bassinet with a warming pad inside it, oh and drugs (not an epidural, because I'm not a wimp, but a form of Demerol, because I'm not insane, either).

This evening my dog gave birth under my house. In the dirt. In the dark. By herself. With no prior experience, no instruction in what to do or how to do it, and no one to help her. (I didn't know what was going on until I heard the tiny cries. They sounded like cats.) The only way I can see them is to stick my camera under the house and aim it into their little hollow.

My dog is officially my new hero. Mother and babies (number unknown) appear to be doing fine, although I hope to take them to the vet this weekend if possible.

Congratulations to Xanga the Wonderdog!

In Case of Emergency

Here's something you need to know if you're living with very old people:

They don't know that they're supposed to call 9-1-1 immediately in a medical emergency.

I'm probably overgeneralizing. Maybe it's just MY grandparents, because they grew up as migrant farm workers with very little formal education. Maybe it's generational (no phones when they were kids, no 911 when they were raising kids), maybe it's because when they were young only rich people could call medics to come to the house, maybe it's just that they're senile.

Just please, explain this to them, and not just once in a while, I mean weekly: if there's a medical emergency, call 911 immediately. Don't try and revive the person yourself, don't wait a while and see if he gets better, don't half-assedly attempt to wake up someone else in the house, don't call the neighbors or the relatives and ask THEM to call an ambulance. Grandma, if something is wrong, don't wait. Call 911, and do it fast.

Grandpa will never be the same. His arm is dead, his leg is partly paralyzed, his face is stuck, he falls asleep for fifteen minutes and thinks a whole day has passed.

2007, Here I Come

I hate making New Year's resolutions, for no other reason than calling my goals "New Year's Resolutions" make them all guaranteed to fail. Seriously, it's like giving them a holiday-inspired title is like permission to slack off. "Oh, who cares, it's just a New Year's resolution, nobody keeps those."

So, my goals for the year 2007 are:

1. Get on that treadmill three times a week. But first, I should plug it in.
2. Spend more time playing with and teaching the kids and less time doing my own thing while they watch the same movie four times in a row.
3. Register my daughter for kindergarten EARLY, not at the last minute, so that she can be in Ms. C's class, just like her cousins on her father's side were.
4. Not let anyone else move into the house who I didn't give birth to. (Seriously, if one more sibling tries to slide in here...)
5. Enroll in college and see if I can work toward finishing my degree (if we have the money).
6. Attend my 10 Year high school reunion and NOT feel ashamed that I didn't do more with my life. Because really, I think I've done okay. You try making babies as pretty as mine and serving them HOMEMADE BABY FOOD.
7. Figure out my digital camera, including how to make it work with this dang computer.
8. Ease up on the swearing.
9. Make some baby blankets for some pregnant friends of mine. Preferably before they give birth.
10. Get us on track with the bills so my dad can buy a house and move out like he wants to and get married in his new house to his nice girlfriend. (I wonder if Gina will be a flower girl?)
11. Not be so mean. (Except when I'm yelling at the TV. That'll be my outlet.)
12. Take down the Christmas tree and other decorations before the end of January.

My Karl

Dearest Karlito,

It's been three years today. Life is no kinder than when you left us, but at least there's been love and happy moments.

Three years, and I still think about you all the time, and wonder what you'd make of some silly scenario, or a thing I heard about on the news, or Lisa's boyfriend, or me. Would you still laugh at our old jokes, or are we too old for that now? Would you be worried about this war, would you smile at some nonsense, would you tell me more about some book you read that explains the true nature of why something backfired and society had let yet another criminal go free? Would you tell Lisa to leave that foolish man already, because clearly he will never appreciate her the way you did when the two of you were together?

Three years, and I wonder if you'd be married by now, and to whom. Would you have a teaching job, or be working on your Master's degree? Would you still live with your parents, or would you be on your own in a bachelor pad like your brother? Would I be going to your house once or twice a month so we could cook something fun that we'd been craving? Would you be making plans to go back to Fresno to visit the families you taught during your mission? Would you still make cornbread out of sour milk? Would you still make up Quotes pages filled with all the dumb things I'd told you? Would you let me highlight your hair again? I promise, this time I won't trick you by using the big size H crochet needle instead of the little itty bitty one that comes with the highlighting cap. But really, you did look great with all that blond hair.

Would you and I still be as close as we once were? Would I come to you when my husband does some strange man thing that requires an explanation? Would my kids call you Uncle Karl? Would my husband laugh at us, and how goofy we are when we get together? (Actually, I can answer that one: yes, he would. He still does.)

Three years, and I still laugh at all our old jokes, at the pictures of us acting goofy.

Three years, and I still want to talk to you for the sheer pleasure of good conversation.

Three years, and I still love you, and there's an empty spot in my soul where you're supposed to be.

Three years, and I still don't know what to do, except go on.

Love always,
Me

P.S. HOOTERS! (Heh, you thought I forgot, didn't you!)

I wish less really was more

Dear Bizarro Dad,

You are bringing us to the brink of bankruptcy.

Stop buying lunch every day. I make more than enough dinner for you to have leftovers the next day. You accuse me of "not making enough," for you to take to work, when really you just leave it in the fridge all week, and my dad ends up throwing it out when he cleans the fridge out on Sunday.

Stop buying shit you think we "need." We don't need it. You just want it.

Stop buying excessive gifts for the kids. A game or toy once in a while is fine. But they'd be better served if we saved some of that money to use for food, or clothes, or school supplies.

We agreed upon a $40 per month allowance for each of us. That's per month, not per week. Stay within that sum, please.

You are not a rich man. Stop pretending you are.

Start asking your brother for his half of the damn Bally's membership fee. I hate paying $68 dollars a month for HIM to go to the gym. I also hate it that you signed up for Bally's AT ALL. I told you I had a bad feeling about that "free trial." Now we'll be paying for it for years, and you don't even GO to the gym.

Last month, you brought us down to a zero balance in checking with less than $50 in savings. You were sorry, you were humbled, you promised you wouldn't do it anymore. You haven't learned anything. Not a damn thing.

You keep buying tools to have for work. I'm trying to pay off your credit card, and you just keep buying shit with it. You told me when you first took this job that you wouldn't need to buy a lot of tools. Apparently that was a lie, because this is the second $400 tool shopping spree you've been on since you went to work there a few months ago.

You purposely leave me in charge of the family budget, claiming that none of the bills will get paid otherwise, then you ignore me when I say "we cannot buy ANYTHING except groceries and gas this week or the bills won't get paid," then you get all pissy when I tell you later in the month that we can't afford to go out to the movies because of said bills, and you make ME into the bad guy. You especially hate it when I point out that the reason we can't go to the movies is that you've been spending all this money.

You don't like to be treated like a child, but you keep acting like one! And I can't just let you run off doing whatever the hell you want, because we have two small kids to support! But I suppose I'm ineffective, since you clearly run off doing whatever the hell you want with our money anyway.

You put me in this position, and then you wonder why I have headaches, why I always seem sad, why money issues always result in an argument.

I hate this.

I hate you, sometimes.

Maybe if you got off your damn XBox and paid any attention to what's going on with the people around you, you might understand why I'm so upset.

(By the way, your stupid XBox 360 keeps costing us money. It wasn't enough that it cost $500 from the get-go, now you have to subscribe to XBox Live ($54) and keep buying "points" so that you can do something as trivial as change your handle ($20).)

--Me

"They say a bullet always tells the truth..."

First person to correctly identify the movie from which today's title comes from gets a gold star.

*****

My oldest, when she gets a runny nose, tells me she has "burgers" in her nose. I wonder if this is what she's been telling my youngest. It would explain why the little one likes to eat her nose pickings.

*****

My husband has discovered a new game for his XBox 360. He and his brother (who still lives with us) joined a clan on XBox Live so that they can play Chrome Hounds with this group of people all the time. They enjoy the game because it's challenging and requires tactical planning, as opposed to pointing and shooting at whoever comes their way.

I hate it. Not only have I not been able to watch my own TV for days without having to fuss about them hijacking it, but Bizarro Dad has been ignoring the children, and J wasted his time with his son this weekend by making the boy watch movies and play computer games while he, J, took turns playing the XBox. Gina has been misbehaving with the express purpose of getting her father to interact with her. ("Do I have to call your Daddy in here?" *smile* "Yes!") I go to do my Cub Scout thing one evening, and when I come back the baby is streaking and there are stickers, food, and trash strewn across the living room floor, and all the while my husband has been sitting in his rolly chair in front of the TV with the wireless headset on (to talk to his clan) and the wireless remote glued to his fingers.

XBox 360: A marvel of 21st century technology and the downfall of my family.

*****

Now that he got a new daytime job, my brother-in-law has sent his dog to live with my mother-in-law. Thank goodness. I found my family heirloom quilt lying on the floor in the dog's enclosure, with poop on it. Not amusing to me in the least.

*****

There have been a lot of highly publicized teenage killings/attempted murders around here lately. Seriously, do these kids have nothing better to do with their summers? What I thought was strange was when I heard someone say, over the weekend, that the way to stop this is to spend time talking to our kids. I would agree, except that these events occurred either at night while parents slept (during the party hours), or in the middle of the day, when parents were at work. You can't prevent violence with a 24 hour filibuster. These are teenagers, not 7-year-olds. You can tell them "this is wrong" all you want, but they will decide for themselves what they want to do with their free time. The key, I think, is giving them something else to do in addition to the sit-down talks. The Boys and Girls Club, or a summer job, or summer school, or camp, or a big project around the house, or SOMETHING. Idle hands are the devil's workshop.

Does love ever really go away?

I remember the young men I was in love with once. I remember things I liked about them, how they made me feel, sometimes even how nice they smelled. I remember quiet love, tender love, innocence, passion, all those things. I remember some things just working against us, like time, or age, or our parents, or conflicting personalities and/or goals.

And when I think of these men, something inside me whispers, Yes, I do still love them. They were special. They were part of me, part of my youth, part of my growth. It doesn't matter that things didn't work out. That doesn't make the emotions I felt any less real.

A wise man once told me that even though he and his first wife had divorced, it did not mean he stopped loving her, or that he loved his second wife any less. It only meant that he and his first wife were not able to get along, not able to communicate in a way that would make them a harmonious family.

I thought about that today, when I saw a man I had deep feelings for once, but who was never really my boyfriend. I suppose you could say we were friends, but really, he was my sunshine during a depressing time in my life. He always knew how to make me feel better. It doesn't matter why it never went further than that, because what we had was overwhelmingly positive and lovely.

I delighted in seeing him today, in joking around with him and two others our age; we were all young together once, all friends, all part of the same church, all part of each other's lives. Was I there for the nostalgia? Or for a love that has never left me? Or for both? I don't know. He is married now, as am I. I don't hold any foolish ideas about feelings he might have for me, and I have no expectations. It was enough, I think, to see him for a few minutes, to laugh with him, to stand in the hallway with our old buddies and have odd conversation.

Then I had to run, because my husband and daughters were waiting in the van. And I was happy to go to them, just as I had been happy to remain in the hall.

When was the last time you felt like this?

HANGING BY A MOMENT
by Lifehouse

desperate for changing
starving for truth
closer to where I started
chasing after you

I'm falling even more in love with you
letting go of all I've held onto
I'm standing here until you make me move
I'm hanging by a moment here with you

forgetting all I'm lacking
completely incomplete
I'll take your invitation
you take all of me now

I'm falling even more in love with you
letting go of all I've held onto
I'm standing here until you make me move
I'm hanging by a moment here with you

I'm living for the only thing I know
I'm running and not quite sure where to go
and I don't know what I'm diving into
just hanging by a moment here with you

there's nothing else to lose
there's nothing else to find
there's nothing in the world
that could change my mind
there is nothing else
there is nothing else
there is nothing else

desperate for changing
starving for truth
closer to where I started
chasing after you

I'm falling even more in love with you
letting go of all I've held onto
I'm standing here until you make me move
I'm hanging by a moment here with you

I'm living for the only thing I know
I'm running and not quite sure where to go
and I don't know what I'm diving into
just hanging by a moment here with you

just hanging by a moment
hanging by a moment
hanging by a moment
hanging by a moment here with you

I've tried to recall the exact moments when I felt such abandon of everything except for that one emotion. Images come to the surface: a phone call from a boy I was in love with at 15; a date in Hermann Park with my ex, when we made out beside the lake; the night my husband proposed to me, and I knew I didn't ever want to be any place in the world but right there next to him.

Listen to this song if you have access to it, and ask yourself when you last felt that way. Was it a long time ago, or recently? Was it about the person you're with now?

Why did I do that the way I did it?

Today, while driving some back streets to get myself back to the feeder road, I saw such a disgusting thing.

I saw a man walk across the street, go up to a woman (presumably his girlfriend), and slap her. Then, he turned around, saw me and the angry look on my face, and went back across the street.

Keep in mind, this happened in the middle of the day. In broad daylight. With other people around, some of them on that very sidewalk.

I don't know if the guy took off because he saw me (I very much doubt it). I pulled over to ask the lady if she needed help. She shook her head and sobbed "No," and kept on walking.

This woman, she didn't hit the man back or scream something like "How dare you!?" or even use the phone in her hand to call the police. She just cried, and walked away.

Now, I know, I know, that when a couple gets into a physical altercation, it is not for me to jump in and start smacking the dude upside the head with my MagLight. For one thing, he'd probably just turn around and mess me up, too, since I'm such a short little woman. But I have another reason. My grandfather once witnessed a man beating on his wife. Grandpa (who was young then, I'm sure) jumped out of his car and pulled the man off the woman. And you know what she said? "Get the hell offa him!" And she started hitting my grandpa!

So when I see something like this going on, I know that my job is to call 911 and let the cops deal with it, rather than try to insert myself into the situation.

So why didn't I call them today?

For one thing, the man, as I said, hit her once, and took off. He did not continue beating her. If he'd kept on hitting her, I would have dialed 911 without further hesitation, and possibly revved my engine menacingly so as to make the man think I was about to run him over (believe me, the thought crossed my mind). But he didn't, so I didn't. He just looked at me and left (still visibly angry). And the woman took off, too. By the time the cops arrived, both of them would have been long gone.

Still, I couldn't just leave her. Which is why I stopped to ask her if she wanted help. I could have taken her to the doctor (right around the corner), or called the cops for her, or even given her a ride home. But she didn't want my help. I also noticed that she was carrying her own cell phone in her hand. Apparently she didn't want the cops' immediate assistance, either, or she'd have called them right then and there.

So instead, I drove away slowly, thinking these thoughts:

• Should I have called 911? Should I have just immediately picked up my cell phone and started dialing
• What the heck kind of neighborhood is this? If this is the kind of thing that happens at 11:00 in the morning, what must this place be like at 10:00 at night?
• I am so never moving out here. (I should add, the neighborhood seemed made up of umpteen different apartment complexes.)
• In my own neighborhood, that kind of thing probably does happen, but the men have sense enough not to do that crap in the middle of the street, in the middle of the day.
• Then again, how would I know that, since I stay inside all day?
• My husband would so never do that to me. He's not that kind of man, which is why I married him. Plus, he knows that my dad would totally kick his a$$.
• I wonder if that lady said something that made that man mad?
• Did he stop and leave because he saw me looking at him? If I hadn't accidentally come down this road and witnessed this incident, would he have done worse?
• She probably had battered woman's syndrome, or low self-esteem, or both.
• Then again, her not hitting him back may have been the best thing to do, lest she incite him to do more damage.
• Her lip sure did look swollen, but not on the side of her face where his hand actually hit.
• That's it, there's no way I'm doing any shopping out here in Greenspoint (a.k.a. Gangspoint). I'm taking myself and my money out to Deerbrook, where it's nice and calm, and I don't care if I have to get back on the freeway to get there.

When I got home and told my family what happened, my father told me I did the right thing not getting in the middle. He didn't tell me whether I should have called 911, though. I think I'll ask him in the morning.

What would you have done, and why?

I sure hope that lady called the cops when she got home. I hope she takes out a restraining order. I hope she doesn't get back with him.

Random wonderings

How do you measure the worth of a person?

My instinct is to deny the size of their estate or the greatness of their celebrity status, but those things clearly matter to the world at large. When a poor man dies, he gets a small obituary. When a movie star dies, or a multi-millionaire, he gets his picture on the news while Tom Brokaw talks about how famous he is.

But maybe it's not so much the fame and fortune that matters, but the influence that goes with it. When President Regan died, there was all this talk about his influence on conservatism and the economy and politics in general. When great evangelists and other religious leaders die, there is talk about the influence they had on the population and on the individuals closest to them. But where does this leave the relatively unknown? Surely they have impacted lives in less obvious ways. Are they not worth just as much? Does their worth depend on what kind of influence they've had?

And what about deeds? How does that determine your value? Do you add all the good ones and subtract the bad ones? Do you get more points for saving someone's life than for talking them through a mental breakdown? Do all the small good things add up to one big thing? If you kill one person but save the lives of two others, does that put you ahead? Do the rules change if you're engaged in military combat on behalf of your country?

Are you worth more if someone believes in you? Are you worth more if you believe in yourself?