RSS Help Needed, Will Work for Food

March 30, 2008 | Category: Well, That Was Random

To folks who read the Corporate Mommy via RSS, could you let me know of the feed comes in properly?

I am messing with the CSS (yes, again! Deal!) and danged if I can't remember how to get this right so the feed looks nice in whatever bucket you use...

Thank, thanks, thanks. I got some leftover Peeps and a handful of black jellybeans for bribe money.

And a goofy dog who sleeps on feet. But I'm keeping her.

Oh, and ...thanks. I mentioned that, right?

P.S. I have FINALLY created a feeder page of RSS feeds to follow y'all. Anyone got some recommendations for me of blogs I should be following? I'm giddy with RSS power. GIDDY, I say.

God Loves Maxell, And God Loves Me

| Category: In My Life

I'm listening to 9 minutes and 7 seconds of nirvana. Actually, Lynard Skynard. Freebird. On Maxell noise-canceling headphones. AND DID I MENTION... LOUD?

...There's too many places I got to see.

Behind me (Don't Look) three rambunctious boys are playing some insane Wii game that includes stormtroopers, carrots, and shouting "TURN INTO A FETT GUY RIGHT NOW!!" at odd intervals. Three Boys. Two Controllers. YOU do the math.

Damnit, you looked. I TOLD you not to look. Now they're gonna want snacks or juice or some kind of refereeing before blood is shed. Do we have time for that nonsense? We do NOT! Eyes front and nod your head. C'mon now.

If I stay here with you girl, things just couldn't be the same...

Do NOT look. I tell you, they are NOT arguing for the 100th time about how to get the blue discs and the left out one isn't screaming for the GILLIONTH time that it is HIS TURN!

Here's the good part:

Why don't you fly high, Freebird (instrumental)....

I am in the midst of writing 800 words for the Australians, I'm pretty freaking sure my editor hated my last 3 articles and is waiting for me not to answer my phone so she can fire me via voice mail, and on Tuesday my sort-of-agnostic cousins are gonna renew their vows in the freezing cold somewhere off highway 90 and I'm gonna be there, BCP and all.

I have only thrown up once since Good Friday. This is a record, since I went on the new medicine last November. A huge relief, like finally being well after having the flu? It's like a little more sunshine can filter into my life. PLUS husband is feeling much better himself, which has a trickle-down effect that Reagan only could have wished for.

But still, 800 words. In the next 2 hours.

While not 30 feet away, in a land far, far too close... "No! Jump NOW!" "It's my turn!" "I said turn this way!" "My batteries are dying!" "You just SHOT ME!"

Thus?

Though this feeling I can't change.
But please don't take it badly,
'Cause Lord knows I'm to blame...

And, from our trip to Madison, WI, yesterday:

Lake Mendota, looking down from the piano bar at the Edgewater hotel JUST as the sun had set and it was so damn blue it reminded me of God:

The frozen lake, from where we were sitting noshing on hamburgers and fruity sodas, these were taken through the plate glass window and I thought not so bad:

Me, on Easter, happy... Because Jamie Curtis inspired me to just post it, ruddy cheeks, waggly chin, messy hair and all. Because happy should be beautiful, in any moment you find it. Even when you itch to Photoshop it into something not quite the same...

It might even be a true story

March 26, 2008 | Category: In My Life

I was in love, and hopelessly so. "Lin," I cried to my college suitemate as I sat with my head in her lap, crying. We were in one of the study corners in the Library. "He's never coming for me."

"No," she agreed, for the hundredth, thousandth time. "He's never coming, Elizabeth. And it's not like you've been waiting by the phone this whole time, either."

"Details," I muttered, incurably sad and needing comfort. It was an impossibly sunny day. The kind that Spring tosses at Chicago after too much rain. Deep blue skies and the rare puffy white cloud. "Get my mind off it, please. Of his beautiful eyes, and his incredible a-"

She hit me over the head with a book and left me there to read it.

A screwed up mind-games kind of book. Was she trying to tell me something? Nevertheless, I devoured it. I fell in love with the fictional island of Phraxos in Greece. I was hung over from reading too much too fast and saw stars when I finally stood and stretched. The sun had deserted us, giving way to a rainbow of dusk.

"Lin," I announced, wrapping myself around her as we walked home. "I want to go to Greece."

"Don't we all?" She laughed, kissing my hair indulgently, playfully.

A month later, I got on a plane for London with a one-way ticket and a backpack full of everything but clothes. Two weeks after that, I found a cheap vacation in the last-minute ads for some British-flavored hotel on an island in Greece.

We landed in Athens. A bus ride to a ferry to a horse-drawn carriage later, I was standing naked on a balcony overlooking impossibly beautiful water.

OK, I was wearing one of the many sheets left in a pile for me, wrapped and tucked like a big towel.

But underneath that- I was naked, and ready, and awake.

At last.

The next morning, I went downstairs for breakfast. The Englishman with impossibly long sideburns leered at me. "Alone, are you?"

"I'm looking for a fictional place that I think might be real," I said. "Phraxos."

"You are here!" The hostess exclaimed, an ex-pat with a beautiful smile.

I could hear the blood rushing in my ears. "You know what I mean?" I asked, disbelieving.

"Of course! The Magus. It was set here, in Spetses. You can rent a little motorbike to get to the school," she pointed towards the scrub-covered hills.

My anticipation rising, I raced down the lane and rented a moped (no helmet, thank you) for a couple of pound notes and attempted to drive it along the rutted lane, following the map the nice woman had drawn for me on a napkin.

But my skill with motor vehicles was overset by the sandy, uneven roads. Before I could get my balance back after a particularly sketchy slide, my wheel caught and I was propelled into a forest of pine trees.

Hanging onto the handlebars for dear life and I bounced crazily down the hill until a nicely placed log stopped my bike.

But not me.

I landed like a rag doll onto the back yard of a little house. A litter of newly born kittens mewing by my filthy face and a tall, tanned man making a shadow over me.

"You are OK?" He asked, reaching out to help me up.

"I am, I think," I answered, taking inventory of my scratched and abraded parts.

His name was Denis, and he pulled on a shirt as he boiled water to make me tea. He had band-aids and salve and heated eyes. And he didn't seem to mind that it had rained down a blond American woman onto his lawn.

His parents came with lunch, and they insisted on sharing it with me. Afterwards, one of his brothers fixed my bike while his father showed me the hull of the massive wooden boat the family was restoring. Side by side, I helped them sand down the layers of old paint, until my arms grew sore and my bruises began to ache.

After some discussion, it was decided that the prudent thing would be for the brother to ride the bike back to the rental guy while Denis walked me back to the hotel. Shoulder to shoulder we headed down the road in comfortable silence.

"You were riding for fun? When you made yourself lost?" Denis asked, finally.

"Uh, no," I laughed. "I was looking for a school, actually."

He stopped and looked up at the waning sun. "It is not so far," he told me. "But not the way to the hotel."

"You'll show me? Please?"

He thought a moment, and nodded. We changed direction and walked for a long time. The breeze kicked up, but it was welcome.

Finally, we turned a corner and there it was.

"Oh," I said. Looking at the apricot buildings and the dark waters beyond.

"Yes," Denis chuckled. "Oh."

He showed me around the campus, ending up at the shore.

The first stars came out.

"You are..." he searched for words. "Bad love?"

"Not at first," I said sadly. "But then he never came back for me."

"I would," he told me solemnly. "I would not leave. For a woman such is you."

He had a doctorate in flirting, and it felt good. A long way down the shore, bars and restaurants were beginning to light up like Christmas. I indicated the way with my jaw.

He nodded and led the way. Once we got back on the road, he reached out his hand.

I darted away, at first.

But then, I realized that there are moments. And this was one.

I walked closer to him, and gave him the half-biting-my-lip smile.

He laughed out loud and reached his hand back out to me.

And I took it.

Naked and Nameless

March 19, 2008 | Category: In My Life

First of all, there are TWO new posts up by me on the Chicago Mom's Blog. I'm excited to be writing there again, because that is one cool group (who were obviously on Crack when they invited me to join!)

I am living a very, very humble life these days. There is no one I haven't failed, no one I can look in the eye and say I did right by - even though I have been trying my very best.

When my high school class graduated, they made a banner to hang over the dais. A quote from William Ernest Henley's Invictus (Invincible):

Beyond this place of wrath and tears; Looms but the horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul.

I write this from a black chair in front of a massive old wooden desk. It is scratched and faded, like me. And sits firmly in this place of wrath and tears.

This week is traditionally a time of prayer and contemplation for me, but there is no peace for that now. Just shadows outside a fading light to fear, and a menace I can not shake or fight.

Our country is feeling the sting of the wounds that have been piling up for so many months and years. I am feeling the sting, too.

And here I sit, in this chair. After a good day. A happy one. Feeling naked and nameless.

And the opposite of unafraid.

Just back from Florida, and boy are my arms tired!

March 16, 2008 | Category: In My Life

Out of the blue a couple of weeks ago, my mother called and offered to fly me and the Bear down to Orlando to meet her for a week fun and relaxation.

Boy, howdy, ain't that a shame?

Leaving CD to his midterms and work, I packed up everything we owned and hustled the kid off to the airport, shouting 'Bye bye, honey!' as the door slammed behind us.

There is something so supremely soul-drenching to be warm in winter.

The hotel was very family-friendly, but unfortunately not business-equipped. I couldn't stop working and went a lttle crazy because there was no business center, no shared printer, and no public fax.

That said, the breakfast buffets were sublime. After 2 years now as chief cook and bottle washer, I just LOVE me some breakfast buffet. Uncaring about the dishes, tickled by all the choices.

The weather was breezy and overcast (perfect for us), and the day we spent at a water park was a blast. As an unexpected break from the usual frigid days and endless worry and work... it was a miracle.

Fake beach at the water park, but strangely warmer and cleaner than the real thing. I feel so plastic even admitting that.

Bear runs into the big wave pool. Now that he has passed into Intermediate swimming, ALL his fears about pools have faded and now he has this dolphin-like joy of the water.

Bear under the water mushroom. I have another one of these where he has this total smirk on his face. I swear, he's a Calvin Klein model waiting to happen.

Yes, even though it was cloudy - Bear and I always wear sun guards with our bathing suits. Even before we knew I had Lupus, I very easily got sunsick and Bear? Well, he can get a sunburn from a 60 watt light bulb and a bubble gum wrapper.

Mine come from Coolibar; where I also get other sun protection clothing. I am forever getting compliments and questions about them.

Children's sun/rash guards have become fairly easy to find (thank God) but we are saving up to buy CD one from the same company, because grown-up sunguard clothing is still pretty pricey.

'Cuz nothing says 'sexy' like a middle-aged domestic goddess scrubbed out by a day in a water park and being directed by her son to 'pose cool, Mommy!'.

He said to me as he took this picture, 'Wouldn't it be wonderful if the clouds could really catch you, and sad people could rest there until the hearts felt better? Because you'd be so close to God?'

No, I don't know where he gets these ideas, either.

Atonement

March 14, 2008 | Category: In My Life

Elie Weisel said that;
"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference."

I don't know the moment we went away from love, but I do know the love didn't die.

My heart expands and then aches, but never deflates. The room it made for you is still there. If you were to claim it, I don't know what I would do. It would be messy, and painful, to wake up something that's been falling asleep for so long.

In that moment, those last times we shared a laugh and a look and an intimacy that was ours...I couldn't imagine a time when it wouldn't be like that. We get older, we get wiser, but so many things we stay willfully stupid at.

Everyone leaves, eventually. But let's tuck that away in a box because there's no way to live with it written large.

You are good. You are infinitely precious. Because you live, the world is a better place. Where you inhabit, I know there is joy and meaning. I wish sometimes that I could make myself so small that you wouldn't see me, so I could be where you are and see the rich colors of your life.

As I am now, as we are, there's a white lake between us that seems impossible to cross. So I am left, once in a while, imagining. Envisioning your loud claps of laughter shared by people I wouldn't know. Creating a picture in my mind of you sipping from a steaming mug as you look out the window, or sifting through the mail as you walk in the door.

I still love you.

I will always love you.

It's nothing in your days, maybe.

But it matters to me. I am a better person because of it. A gift you gave me a lifetime ago, that I still cherish. With a quietness that is not indifference. In a new way that is not death.

The sun came out today. The world stopped to warm itself. My fingers over a phone, knowing I would never call. That was then. I live now. But I wanted you to know.