"Good Morning" said the mole!
It is a lovely day, I have the sneezles and am off to the orthodontist soon for another round of voluntary torture.
YAY!
Seriously folks.
I am ready to get these darn things off, but I will bear it as long as it takes.
In other news I am feeling very excited and full of myself today.
Wanna know why?
Of course you do.
First-Tomorrow we go to Florida and will not be back for 2(TWO) weeks(I will have my laptop with me this time)! Well Big Daddy will be flying back sooner but the girls and I will drive up when we are ready. Have I mentioned that I am soooooo very thankful that I don't have to be tied into someone else's schedule-you know one of those job thingies? Don't worry I let Big Daddy know it nearly every day.
Second-I filled up an APO AE/large flat rate USPS box with goodies for one of our boys over in Afghanistan. I mean I filled every nook and cranny of that thing with everything except the kitchen sink. You know how Christmas is my favorite holiday because I love-absolutely love giving presents? This is just like that! I picked out all these goodies with this guy in mind and that was fun, you know, trying to imagine what would be nice to get out in the middle of the desert. Fortunately I have a great imagination, tons of experience buying stuff, and Dark Cloud Nine sent me a link to a great website full of good and needful items.
I slipped in a book too.
Reading is fundamental you know.
What book you ask?
Good Omens, of course.
I have given/loaned so many copies of this book it has become rather amusing and once again I will have to acquire another copy for myself. I believe that will push the total of this title purchased by me into the double digit zone.
I can't even begin to relate to you what about, or why I love this book so much that I would foist it off on so many friends and acquaintances, and won't even try.
But if you like I will mail one of you a copy-if you promise to read it and pass it on to someone else.
Geez look at the time-I have to get my show on the road.

I am a priss.

Not a major one but I like to be pampered as much as the next gal.

I am a bit leery of non-English speaking nail spas these days and haven't found anyone I trust to keep a clean shop.
Anyway I am dying for a mani/pedi and can't bring myself to go to any of the shops I can afford.
The good news is that I can do a pretty good job myself and the Kid isn't here to help!
And that is as exciting as it is today.
Nice huh?

I had a funny story lined up I swear...

and then it struck me. He is going to war. This friend from high school is going to war. For me. For you. I don't know exactly what he will be doing or exactly where he will be. But I do exactly know him. He is not a number or an anonymous face, a name out of thousands. He is my friend. My friend. I love him. I haven't seen him in 20 years. I may never see him again. What the fuck. I have been blindsided by the immediacy of this(and notice the irony of just how immediate it is). He-his team, these men, these women, these boys and girls-he does his job, is putting his life on the line for me. He knows me. He might not know you. But the people he does know have shaped his perception of what and who he is fighting for. Am I worth dying for? Are you? Cause it could happen. And He. He knows me. I know him. I love him. I don't want another death on my conscious. Holy Hell. What a night.

The Kid is outta here!
Just for a few days.
Time enough to get the pile of detritus in her room cleared out.
Six months ago you will recall I did the same thing.
Wow has the time flown.
She is staying with her Granny and Ho dad and is, I am sure, having a wonderful time.
I will be having a wonderful time too.
My wonderful time has in fact already started.
You know how sex is sex is sex?
And how sometimes it is way better than that?
I'm smiling...
I do have some serious/fun thoughts in my head today but I need to get my ass to the gym so they will have to wait.
The good news is that I will have hours and hours of uninterrupted time to think and write.
This is a promise I am making to myself.

Fuckin' Friday

Today is a beautiful sunshiney glory to behold!
It is also the debut of my ....

BIKINI!

No I am not going to take any pictures.
I don't think.

It's also my and the Kid's "first date" with one of her little friends from preschool (and her mother of course).

Sun block, towels, lounge chairs, snacks, drinks-oh, and pool-here we come!

Jealous?

I need to find a fuckin' hat.

I Am Woman

I am my hair, my eyes, my lips
I am my chin, my neck, my shoulders
I am my breasts, my belly, my ass
I am my vagina, my legs, my toes


I am Woman


Hurt me
Wound me
Reject me
Devastate me


I am still here
Still Woman


There is no denying it
I am Woman
More than the sum of my parts
Me


Woman
Strong
Deal with it Mother Fucker


I give
I give you me
And this
You strike at my most vulnerable place


My belief in myself as a woman
Why
Why is woman not enough
Why am I not enough


Why
Here I am
Here I stay


Why
Why do I
Why do I give
Why do I want to


Because I love
When will the pain overwhelm the love?


Only time will tell
Only time
May the pain you inflict
May the pain I allow


end


Before the love dies

I did it again!

YUP! I went to the gym/treadmill place again!
It's a real gym-but I'm just using the treadmill so...
I got my heart rate up into my target zone and kept it there for the alloted time and had fun taking deep breaths, thinking about it and dropping it 15bpm in 2 seconds cause it's a fun and freaky trick to play on your nurse and what better place to practice right?
I actually even broke out in a glisten...it was amazing!
I also burped, realized that perhaps 3 cups of coffee weren't the best idea and wondered why that handle bar thing doesn't go up or down-my boobs are front and center on that thing-and I do mean on it-it's kinda funny really.
Oh and it seems that zoning on the treadmill is indeed my superpower.
I feel good.
The sun is shining.
Toodles!

What now?

DAMMIT!
I still have a pain in my neck.
The whiplash incident required that I put my dance class on hold.
That was rough-I love ballet.
And then...
Politics(not mine), gossip(I did listen), poor organization and double billing all conspired(along with injury) to end my budding dance career. For a while. There is another school of dance in town. I will be taking the Kid there when classes start up again. Hopefully they will have something for me too, and hopefully I will be in better shape by then.
In the meantime I have gained 3 fucking pounds. As obsessed as I can be, I am trying not to fixate on this but...I think it is a wake up call.

My clothes are all still fitting fine, but my wind is gone.

As a matter of fact I can tell that I am experiencing loss of muscle tone in my legs.
So yesterday I joined a gym.
I will walk on the treadmill and use other cardio equipment.
I have to do something and this may be it.
I mean, I'm a little afraid to get into any hurkey jurkey classes because of my neck.
I'm also a little afraid of lifting weights.
What ever!!!!!!!
They have some personal trainers who can help me with that stuff as I get my ass in gear.
And it is.
Getting in gear.
It's a low one but I can shift up as I go along.
So every once in awhile, ask me how it's going.
I promise I'll tell you the truth.
Now, I need to fix a couple of lunches and get ready to do a little sweaty stuff.
I think I need an MP3 player.

I'm back

And I must confess that though I had a great time in San Fransisco, I did not actually fall in love with the place. Which is funny since I loved the climate(yes I do like the medium coldness of the place), I loved the bus system, I loved the sidewalks, and I loved the different neighborhoods. Almost everyone we met was wonderfully friendly and as genuinely nice and helpful as could be.

Seriously, how can you love the parts but not the whole of a thing?

I have no explanation.

We did touristy stuff. We did non-touristy stuff. We found good places off the beaten path. We thrifted. We walked. We hung out in little local pubs, ate at little local restaurants. We rode the buses, visited a museum on Free First Sunday(Thank you Target-you saved us 24 bucks). We went and saw the Golden Gate Bridge and wondered at how-on a completely overcast day-some how golden sunshine poured down on Alcatraz for at least an hour. Big Daddy D very patiently and I must say indulgently looked on as I shopped for sensible shoes(I packed 5 pairs of shoes for 4 days of fun and not a pair of tennies in the lot-I don't know why). We hung off the trolley car and sauntered through Chinatown, loading up on cheap trinkets and reminiscing. We laughed our asses off at awful expensive food in Ghirardelli Square, toured Pier 39 before it opened and watched enthralled for nearly an hour the soap opera lives of the sea lions that live there. We listened amused beyond belief to the most hilarious verbal confrontation between a shopkeeper and a customer(Thank You!) in Little Saigon and enjoyed the crowded yet tranquil Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park. I had the best Chinese food since leaving China ten years ago, saw a dead sea lion washed up on the beach as well as a sea gull and a stranded flotilla of jelly fish, and laughed watching a dog throw a stick for himself and retrieve it over and over and then watched the sun set over the Pacific laughing some more because Big Daddy D was literally shivering with the cold and for once I was not freezing(girly fat can come in handy I guess). We drank bad coffee, ate good bread, broke the law and fed the pigeons and chickadees, froze drinking expensive cheap beer and shivered our way back to the hotel. We had fresh made noodles, greasy snacks and good beer, found mugs to replace those we have broken(alas not at the cheap price I had previously gotten them for), Ichiban Kan'ed and stocked up on bento supplies, discussed nasty public bathrooms and bums peeing in bus shelters, decided not to go to the beach again and pack our loot instead, had burgers and fries and milkshakes and fed nickels to the jukebox, waiting with bated breath til our songs came on.

We laughed, we held hands, we smiled, we were happy to be together, adventuring once again.

DON'T PANIC!

I will be offline for the most part until Wednesday or Thursday of next week.
San Fransisco won't know what hit it-or I won't know what hit me...
Either way I am planning on having a great time with Big Daddy D and NO KIDS!
Thanks Mommy!

What do you think?

After much web surfing, printing, drawing, coloring, copying, cutting, shrinking and enlarging, more cutting all followed by excessive taping I have determined the art and location of my soon to be tattoo.
The search continues for an artist but word of mouth is leading us to a shop in Hendersonville-there are so many tattoo shops here in Asheville that it is a bit overwhelming. My rough guess is that we have locally at least 10. Some good some great and some pretty bad. It's hard to know what to do. I really don't want to just go in to a place and say here do this, without knowing anything about the artist.

I could of course fly up and stay with Nej and Mot and visit the artist that did Mot's gorgeous tattoos but surprise surprise a guy who credits Dick Warsocki as a major inspiration is the dude in Hendersonville with his own shop now. Small world huh?

A little more research is in order and a visit or two to a few shops/artists and then this tattoo is a go.

What do you think?

It's time. Read at your own risk.

A friend and I were talking and suddenly she said "Mike Tyson's daughter died" I did a quick search and found the story-at the same time that she(my friend) revealed further details of the accident that resulted in that poor girl's death. I can't even begin to imagine what that family is going through and believe me-my heart is with them. Our conversation(my friend's and mine)became a little strained as I tried to share what was actually a funny and pleasant memory. After a few minutes awkwardness we ended our conversation.

The following is the letter(email)that I wrote and sent to her in an effort to explain what I had been trying to say.

Maggie did not die in a fashion similar to Mike Tyson's daughter. It had nothing to do with exercise equipment at all.

We had been to see Derek's brother and his family just a week before Maggie died and while we were there she wanted desperately to get on their treadmill and we would not let her because she was not big enough.

Mike Tyson's story made me think of that is all.

Maggie came down with croup late on a Thursday(her 3rd birthday) and Friday we took her to our doctor. There is nothing really to do about it and as he said 99.99% of children recover with no complications.

Late Friday night/early Saturday morning Derek took her into a hot shower so the steam would ease her breathing-it had been working for us all day. However when she got out of the shower she simply stopped breathing. I did infant cpr and D called 911. It took 12 minutes for them to get there and in that time Maggie's throat had seized/spasmed from her jaw to her chest and no air was going in or out for several minutes. She was immediately placed in the ambulance and actually died in it-ironically enough it caused her throat to relax and they were able to resuscitate her to a certain extent. They worked on her for I don't know how long in the ER and with who knows how much drugs were able to get her heart beating again and a machine breathing for her.

Maggie was moved to infant ICU and though they almost lost her again on the way up, she "stabilized" and our families were able to drive/fly in to be with us and see her warm and "breathing" one last time-or in the case of my father for the first time.

It was obvious and became more so over the weekend that our sweet Maggie was indeed gone and her body was experiencing the beginnings of multiple organ failure. The EEG that was performed Monday morning was conclusive. Not even a bit of static showed up on that damn test. The doctors approached us about the possibility of organ donation and we were unable to accommodate their wishes. We knew that we would have to make the decision to turn off the machines that were keeping her chained here and wanted-no-we needed to be present and hold her during our last goodbyes.

The machines were turned off and she was disconnected from them as she lay cradled in our arms. Holding her, sad and grieving, we felt that last little bit of her leave. Just like that the last bit of her presence was gone and she was free to move on to her next adventure.

We are still sad, we still grieve. I am sobbing and snotty as I write this but it is no ones fault.

Shit happens.

(blowing my nose),

Brook.

Her reply(edited for privacy) I'll share with you too.

Brook (this made me cry)

It seems that I know you well enough somehow to know that it is "just like you" to write me (about this - something that was horrific for you to go through) so that I understand that I didn't "upset you" in anyway.

You are a dear - and I'm glad you shared this with me.

Don't worry about me - I know when things come up and people feel "just awful" they usually don't get that it's "ok".

Not that I've been in your shoes - but family death/illness. I know about those.

Shit does happen.

Please do write about this in your blog. For you, but also for others. Somewhere out there, there's a mom that needs to hear what you just wrote me - for her own healing.

I'm serious. After I was attacked it wasn't therapy that helped me the most, it was BLOGS! Other people's similar stories.

I know I'm not the only one who does this.

Love,

(My Friend)

Thank you my friend for giving me a way to share this. It was time.