It has been a while…

Logically, I would say that is because I got the house and had much to do in order to close in just three weeks. But it wouldn’t be the whole truth.

You see, three times lately, someone has asked and/or e-mailed to ask why I am keeping this log. The e-mail query I answered at length, but received no reply. The verbal reactions to my answer were not much better…and so…I think I’ve been self-conscious about writing for the first time.

But tonight I am too tired for self-doubt and thought it might be a good time to check in.

I am a homeowner. I am a homeowner of a duplex were 10 Peruvians were living in nothing short of squalor. Hence, I have much scrubbing and repairing to do. Saturday I worked for 11 hours and saw little change. Sunday I pulled down the main floor ceiling (an attempt to save money by prepping the ceiling for the sheetrock guy) for SIX hours.

At that point, I still had nearly half of the debris to bag up, but I could barely breathe inside even with my respirator mask. So I spent another three hours of back-breaking, blister-raising labor cutting up the three weed trees I had hacked down Saturday in a fit of anger against this window repair estimator who blew off my appointment and then said he didn’t want my business. While, the yard is in MUCH disrepair, I expect you would agree with me that I should channel my energy and time into making it livable before the 25th of August—MOVING DAY. Let the yard go till later, right? Well, that is all and good, but Saturday I left myself with tree debris from sidewalk to porch that had to be cut up and bagged as well. So I sweltered outside finishing that while the air cleared inside.

Yesterday and today, I spent three hours after work bagging up the rest of the ceiling debris. I now have 25 bags waiting for next Tuesday’s pick-up.

Just to give you an idea of the squalor, I spent nearly three hours scrubbing the grease off the back door in the kitchen. I am not finished.

But the roofer, plumber, electrician, a/c installer, window repairman, and floor refinisher all have their deposits and work orders…so we will see what happens between their expertise and my elbow grease.

I do have: wood floors, original hardware on the doors including one glass knob, a fenced yard, original black and white tiny tile in the windmill pattern on the upstairs bath floor, and am within walking distance to the Metro.

And it is mine…to paint at will! Well...once I figure out how to deal with FIVE layers of peeling paint on the plaster walls...

Copy editor wins bad writing award

"On reflection, Angela perceived that her relationship with Tom had always been rocky, not quite a roller-coaster ride but more like when the toilet paper roll gets a little squashed so it hangs crooked and every time you pull some off you can hear the rest going bumpity-bumpity in its holder until you go nuts and push it back into shape, a degree of annoyance that Angela had now almost attained."

I wish I had known about this bad writing award! Perhaps, I could have submitted a few entries! As explained in the article linked above...The contest, which seeks the worst beginning to an imaginary novel, is named for Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, a British writer whose 1830 book "Paul Clifford" begins with the oft-mocked cliche, 'It was a dark and stormy night ..."

There are literary contests on campuses, and they're often deadly serious and end up producing some terrible writing," Rice said. "I thought, why not be up front and honest about it and ask for bad writing from the get-go?"

Can you think of a beginning to an imaginary novel? If so, e-mail me and I'll post it!

:)

Well, supposedly, Friday I will be given the key through a decorator's agreement. Saturday I am meeting four contractors at the duplex and next Tuesday I am spending the day there meeting six more. Contractors 11 and 12 are looking at their schedules for me. I have house insurance and gift letters and financial statements all lined up. I have a 2.5" binder filled with mortgage and contract information. I have a 1.5" binder filled with the home inspection results and plans for repairs. I have a 5"x7" spiral notebook filled with lists of repairs (and wish items) for each room of the house and then cross-listed by category of repair, i.e., plumbing, electricity. I have questions and worries and buyer's remorse oozing out my brain.

So...how is your week going?

Fancy is sleeping on my chest, her head tucked beneath my chin. She has garlic breath. She had pasta for dinner.

I wonder...do birds in the wild ever have garlic breath?

I was talking with my sister while huffing and puffing on my stair-stepper. My trainer had suggested that I wear sweats as I did my cardio and I was sweltering and desperately wanting the 60 minute mark to come. I begged my sister to take my mind off the last seven minutes.

"Why did the chicken cross the road?" she asked.

"To get to the other side," I answered automatically.

Then, inspiration came. "Why did the chicken cross the road?" I asked her.

"I don't know," she responded.

"He saw some barbecue sauce and wanted to take a dip," I quipped.

While I was pleased that I came up with my own new joke, my sister groaned and suggested that I not give up my day job.

What do you think? Do I have a career as a stand-up comic in my future?

Last year for my birthday, my parents gave me two rather splendid Henckles knives. One was a boning knife. [Can you guess where I am going with this?]

Well, tonight, I was making a sandwich when I learned just why it is called a boning knife. I was (rather foolishly) using the knife to trim the end piece of some bread (I don't like end pieces, so I was trying to make it look like a middle piece) when the knife slipped off the frozen bread and sliced into my finger down to the bone.

I was stunned at how smoothly the knife cut through my finger. I went to the ER and had x-rays. The knife actually nicked the bone! But, alas, the cut was so smooth that there is nothing to stitch. I just have to be very careful of my throbbing finger for the next couple of weeks as it (hopefully) heals.

Perhaps I shouldn't be allow near knives, eh?

I told the owners yes today.

D-day is July 26th...at 4:00 PM...

My neice is in a residential care center under suicide watch.

I would covet your prayers.

It is so hard to watch someone in that much pain at 17...with her whole life in front of her...and be helpless to do anything but love her and pray for her.

So....I now have a ratified contract. Wow!

Still, if the house doesn't pass the inspection, I will have to turn it down, because it is an "as is" property. My hope is that the inspector will just find a list of "small things" that are common to houses that are 55 years old.

It is difficult to sleep these days...

So.....the owners returned the contract with a couple of changes. I agreed to one and reworded another. If they accept my changes, the inspection is on Saturday.

Do you think that the sixth time was the charm? Or perhaps the name of the street was a portent of success: Victory Dr.?

I am still nervous...

I threw my hat into the ring on another duplex today. If I get it, two others will own a smidgen of my new home. It has beautiful wood floors... :)

I was up all last night thinking about the contract I was going to submit. I don't know why, since it wasn't a matter of not feeling peaceful about the decision. When I finally did sleep, I dreamt that I was at a camp where the campers went loco and set fire to all the cabins...perhaps Arizona and Colorado were on my mind beneath those wood floors.

Could you imagine watching your home go up in flames? What would you throw in your car if you had but a few minutes to pack and leave?

Excerpt from Shattered Memories, another story of mine...

Eileen peered into the mirror to inspect her face. Her warm breath fogged the mirror as she moved closer for a better look. The sore spot on her forehead had raised and turned red. Damn, not again! How long must I deal with this? Gingerly she touched the blemish and winced. For the hundredth time she wished she had bangs to hide her forehead, but Paul’s desire for her to keep her hair long had stayed the impulses she felt whenever near a salon. Even now. Even when she hadn’t felt his soft touch in over a year.

Staring in dismay at her collection of make-up, Eileen knew that nothing could truly hide the spot on her forehead. That her skin was porcelain white was an added difficulty. Touching the bump once more, she decided to leave it alone. Concentrating on the rest of her face, Eileen carefully finished applying her make-up and studied the results with grim satisfaction. At least the rest looks good.


Working at a design firm where all the staff were close friends had its perks, but it also meant that nearly anything was fodder for ribbing. Dates, vacations, dilemmas were all discussed, debated, and dissected over lunch, in the coffee room, or during breaks. Secrets never lasted long at Bateman, Bateman, & Watters. The office could probably pass for a soap opera or sitcom depending on which day it was.

Eileen had only been employed there for four months, but the transition had been amazingly smooth. Now it was her colleagues whose company she sought while working out or going out. They were the ones who had invited her to dinner and had opened their lives to her. No one had seemed to notice that she in turn had yet to open hers. None of them knew about Paul. None of them knew about Maia. None of them knew.

Peering once more at her face, Eileen debated trying to squeeze the bump, but decided that she should just allow nature to take its course. The thought still made her shudder. She could still hear the doctor’s words. The human body has an amazing resilience if properly supported. The scars will fade, and the glass will works its way out of your body.

The first time Eileen had seen a piece of glass erupt from a reddened bump that had risen on her forehead, she had thrown up and sank in a shivering, sweaty heap on the bathroom floor.

You are reading a book about the Civil War and begin to hear muskets firing around you. As you read, you find your fear rising as you creep across the battlefield hoping that you will not be killed or be forced to kill. You are only sixteen and already realize the glory you thought you would find by running away, lying about your age, and joining the army was but a child's dream of excitement. You did not want the excitement of seeing your fellow soldiers killed right and left, hearing their dying screams of agony. Your body is covered with the sweat of fervently hoping you will not find yourself next to them before the battle is over. It is a few moments after you set the book down, that you discover, thankfully, you are back in the twentieth century.

Is it possible to experience the Civil War first hand over a century later?

Poulet would think so…for he wrote in his 1972 essay, Criticism and the Experience of Interiority (as found in Tompkins, J. (Ed.). (1980). Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.), the following:

A book is not shut in by its contours, is not walled-up as in a fortress. It asks nothing better than to exist outside itself, or to let you exist in it. In short, the extraordinary fact in the case of a book is the falling away of the barriers between you and it. You are inside it; it is inside you; there is no longer either outside or inside. Such is the initial phenomenon produced whenever I take up a book, and begin to read it. At the precise moment that I see, surging out of the object I hold open before me, a quantity of significations which my mind grasp, I realize that what I hold in my hands is no longer just an object, or even simply a living thing. I am aware of a rational being, of a consciousness; the consciousness of another, no different from the one I automatically assume in every human being I encounter, except that in this case the consciousness is open to me, welcomes me, lets me look deep inside itself, and even allows me, with unheard-of license, to think what it thinks and feel what it feels. (43)

As soon as I replace my direct perception of reality by the words of a book, I deliver myself, bound hand and foot, to the omnipotence of fiction. I say farewell to what is, in order to feign belief in what is not. I surround myself with fictitious beings; I become the prey of language. There is no escaping this takeover. (44)

Have you ever become lost in a book? Bound hand and foot?

Well, Friday, I learned, rather unexpectedly that someone had gotten my credit card and used it at on-line gambling places. This is quite an obstacle to getting a mortgage if something comes up right away because the investigation process with the credit card company is quite lengthy and the whole fiasco has dramatically increased my debt-to-income ratio.

AND......I forgot to take my arthritis medicine both Thursday and Friday and was quite miserable by Saturday.

So, I've been spending the past few days "recovering."

Then, this morning, I walked out to my car to leave for work only to discover my car had been broken into, vandalized, and things had been stolen...INCLUDING MY GYM BAG!

I stood in shock and disbelief looking at the mess until I could remember to call the police...only I was transferred to a voice mail message which instructed me to leave my problem, name, and number whereupon an officer would return my call and take a report. I still have not received that call. I called the apartment manager to report the break-in and damage and asked that she call me back and let me know if any other cars were hit last night. She still hasn't called me back.

On a postive note, a couple of people at work helped me to learn where I could get the lock in my car door replaced and one of the mothers from the mother/daughter book club followed me to the dealership and dropped me off at work. Another mother took me back to pick up my car.

I think the worst part was driving to the dealership and seeing some of the items from my gym bag strewn alongside the road. I kept stopping to pick them up. I know I should be quite thankful that I got both of my tennis shoes back since I got them only last fall after starting at the gym.

But...still...I am quite disconcerted.

One of the women in the mother/daughter book club told me that she gave my website to one of the men in her bible study so that he could get "to know me a little bit."

AWK...I thought. Lately my entries have been... well... somewhat... blue.

House-hunting blues. Fancy's injured. My niece running away. A night terror poem. I'm tired. Light reading, eh?

I told her she should advise him to read through the archives!

On a frivolous note, I got a new cell phone a few days ago. Tonight, while working with my writing student, I kept hearing music. It would come and go. I'd listen and think, It's not the TV or the radio. It's not coming from outside or from the stairwell. It can't be coming from the one filling in my tooth because it's porcelain, not metal.

All that foolish thinking...and then it hit me...it was my cell phone! The ringer plays music!! I guess I need to read the manual,eh?

You see, on Thursday nights, we log on to download her work from e-mail. We usually just leave the connection going so that we are not disturbed from phone calls. I do not get a lot of calls per week, but they all seem to come on Thursday nights. My friends and family who call are now greeted with "Writing Lesson" instead of "Hello." Needless to say, my terse greeting makes for an extremely brief call.

Anyway, I had suggested that the caller try my cell number since I did need some information from her tonight. Hence the puzzling music.

I know...I know... You're probably saying, "Welcome to the 21st Century," with regard to music instead of a ringer. That's okay...I'll take the ribbing.

I am tired. Perhaps from the MS. Perhaps from needing a break from work. Perhaps because I am so very heart sore. Still, what I am feeling is no match to what my sister must surely being going through.

My niece ran away on the 31st. She ran away from home and has left my sister dangling in the wind ever since.

Granted, my niece has called to say she is “okay” and stopped by for clothing after nine days. But still she is living from place to place and making increasingly self-destructive decisions for both her present and her future.

Suicide is arguably the most selfish decision a person can make with regard to his/her family and friends. I cannot help but wonder if running away comes in a close second.

My sister and her husband are worried and angry, fearful of her absence and relieved at the same time because her absence also means an absence of her hostility and anger. They are battling their feelings and struggling not to take her absence out on each other. They wait each day with the hope that she might return home, return to counseling, and face her own doubts and fears that have driven her away. They wait each day with the fear that the person knocking on the door will be a police officer instead of their daughter.

From the time she was about twelve, she has seen herself as plain, even ugly, with no real talent or worth. She is, however, quite arguably beautiful. Eyes that seem to shift from hazel to gray to blue, honey golden skin, a slender, curvy figure, and hair other girls would pay great sums for…blonde, thick, and curly…though she tends to wear it straight quite often. She is musical, athletic, smart, and impressive raw talent at writing. But she has rarely seen any of these things.

My sister has never pressured her to be anything other than a good student, honest, healthy and kind. It would not matter if she were a doctor or a musician or a teacher. Her step-father has treated her as if she were his own daughter, going to her soccer games, school events, shopping, and Taco Bell. All things her birth father has rarely, if ever, done.

Yet she has chosen to turn her back on the love, support, and help my sister and her husband have offered her. She has chosen to run away.

Why is she doing this? Why is she hurting those who love her most?

How can you love someone so much and be so incredibly angry with him/her at the same time?

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- United States Roman Catholic bishops' proposed rules for disciplining clergymen accused of sexually abusing children include recommended dismissal in certain cases.

"According to a draft report to be issued Tuesday, the recommendations include defrocking priests who abuse minors in the future as well as those who have molested more than one child previously."

~www.cnn.com, 6-4-02


I read this article in absolute disbelief. No matter where you stand on the Catholic Church and what has happened, I would hope that you share my outrage that it appears that if a priest molested just one child, he would not be defrocked. How can anyone think that even one molestation is acceptable?

I also read today that the Catholic Church is searching for a PR firm to help them through this “difficult” time. Are you kidding me?

It seems that more contrition and accountability are in order rather than defense, deflection, and measured tolerance.

Made appointments to see three houses. All three sold the next day so I didn't even have an opportunity to see them. One went for cash and another sold sight unseen.

ARGH!

I want a home of my own!

another night
i lie down wondering
what the night will bring
i dream of captivity
and looking for escape
i know not why
i wake with a throat raw
from screaming
i remember not why
another morning

Happy Birthday to Me.
Happy Birthday to Me.
Happy Birthday dear Patricia.
Happy Birthday to Me!