“oh shit it's shit” ― Stephen King, Different Seasons

You know how you run and run and run and you're always doing and when you finally stop to catch your breath, things around you are all different? No? Just me?

I've been soooo very busy. What with joining a band, and the radio show, and being a minister and the 40 hour a week job and the wife and the fuzzy kids. (not in order of importance, of course)

Now spring is upon us. Well...in upstate NY that means something very different from most. We have had 3 days of blowing, bitter snow and wind. Today it's stopped and tomorrow it's suppose to be 70 degrees. If I ever wondered why I developed seasonal allergies....duh!

Sometimes I think about taking a class on meditation. But I just can't sit still long enough. It would do me good, I know that. But really, who has time? I barely have the time to stop and look around me. Seeing how time is starting to change me physically. I'm not alone. Looking at my classmates on facebook and trying to see those kids of the 80's through grey hairs and gravity. I make the mistake of using the magic magnifying mirror. It's a horrifying lesson in 'time marches on'.

Friends come and go, the changing of the guard. Some friends are moving on to parenthood, which always means us childless couples get left behind a bit, in a cloud of protesting it's not going to happen and "folks with kids" on the other end. There is always the tiny cracks in the relationship that happen. Then there is the chasm that can never be crossed again.

Been there done that.

Changes....Every year the snow melts away and green shoots through the frozen earth and every year it amazes me. Rebirth. The mysteries of mother earth. She survives another season.

I'm doing my part with my electric car. 7,000 miles with no gas and no exhaust. A red Leaf, a white Leaf, a black one, seen around town. Catching on? Maybe. We have to start somewhere, don't we? Small steps.

Less bullets to kill the kids. That's a small step that would change so much.

A court that proclaims that all people are equal and religion has no place in our constitution.

A family copes with new dynamics, once a piece is missing. Growing pains?

Changes....baby steps towards change.

Maybe I don't have to stop too long, if the changes are small. I can pause, look, and keep moving on. Nothing else is stopping. Why should I?

"Fox News Stole My Mom!" ~Cabrina

I'm a small percentage. I had parents who were supportive and encouraging and loved to take part in all my crazy ideas.

The hours they spent listening to the squawk of my clarinet lessons, the money spent on tickets to plays I flexed my theatrical muscles in, and the time spent standing on a corner waiting for me to march in a parade dressed as a lumberjack. They put in their time more than most my friends folks.

I had pretty swell parents. My friends all wanted to come to my house after school. I had a mom, raised by 50's ideals and formed by the tumultuous times of the 60's and 70's. I had a dad, who was headed down the wrong path and put himself right through the military and becoming a "self made man", unafraid of hard work and getting his hands dirty.

Together they raised three strong, independent, smart women who are beloved by their friends and praised for their honesty and loyalty.

In other words....my conservative parents created liberal children.

And with the country, overwhelmingly voting in Obama for another 4 years, my mother has gone off the deep end. Much like her conservative pals, who have forgotten that no liberals succeeded from the union when Bush Jr got in for another 4 years, is having a temper tantrum of amazing proportions!

My youngest sister, who lives with my mom in CA, reports to me about how mom is going to sell the house and move to Texas and become it's own country. (she won't get on a plane to visit me in NY, so my sisters and I are pretty comfy knowing she won't get any further than about an hour away on her own.)

Sigh......

I'm going through kind of a health scare right now. And even at 45 years of age, needing your 'mommy' still kinda creeps in. Especially when you had a GREAT mom! You never wanted for anything when you were sick in my childhood home. Juice? yes. Toast in quarters with honey? Done! Grilled cheese and cream of tomato soup? You bet! Clean sheets after a warm bath? The best.

Now I find myself waiting for a call that doesn't come for hours after my procedure cuz my mom was changing her money into foreign currency so Obama couldn't take it from her.

I got more news yesterday that the procedure they did didn't work, so now on to more drastic methods. My childhood mom would have been calling me every day to check in. My Neo-Con mom not only didn't call, but told my youngest sister that she never knows anything cuz no one calls her cuz she's a horrible mother.

What do they say about self fulling prophecies?

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” ― Leo TolstoyS

We're getting new siding for the house. While this a good thing. This is a "must do" thing. This is the kind of thing that's going to add insulation to the house and bring down the heating bills for winter.

They are doing it the week before Halloween. THEE WORST time for them to do it.

So I won't be able to put up any decorations. They will be stomping around where the grave yard goes. Pulling off the siding that the cobwebs attach to. They will be covering the bushes the peeping eyes peer from.

Disappointing? You bet cha. Maddening? Hellz ya!

I'll have to just decorate the inside, but the knowledge that I've been hamstrung by this home improvement is a serious ding to my motivation.

Boo

Worst Halloween evah

“Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.” ― Alexander Pope

There is this small window, where the Halloween stuff starts to trickle into the marketplace. The William Sonoma Collection, Michael's and the holy grail: Martha's mag finally hits the shelves.

Well....I gotta tell ya....I'm already a lil disappointed. And that doesn't bode well for my favorite holiday.

Martha's Mag was a re-tread of all her "greatest hits". Thanks for phoning it in, Stewart!

The cornerstone of my Halloween inspiration, a locally owned costume shop called Daugherty's, relocated to a mall and about one quarter of their floor space. What use to be a maze of wigs and costumes of theatrical quality and rooms of rubbery faces and forms is no more. They even had a giant gargoyle standing guard outside their stoney, castle like facade, setting the mood from the first steps through the front door. But now, the life sized ghouls and floating phantoms are lost to downsizing. Not to mention the mall air that tends to drain one of any Halloween spirit.

So you can imagine my horror when I looked up the ONLY Spirit of Halloween store they allowed to open in my area this year, and it was smack dab in the middle or our OTHER mall in town.

Ok...I can work with this. This mall is in the midst of a be re-do and there is a section that is open beams and creepy corners. I can see Spirits zombie display a midst the raw 2x4's covered in wispy spider webs.

This could work.

But alas.....there it stood, in the old CompUSA store, in all it's bright, florescence glory. Nothing but costumes. No Frankenstein's reach. No zombie's growl. No spirit alive at Spirits.

sigh.......

" Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower." ~Albert Camus

There is a moment when the air is just a lil crisper. Smokey fumes curl through the bright blue skies. The tips of the trees appear to be dulling, just a lil. And the word on the street brings a pulse to my heart that makes it skip a beat: Pumpkin Spice is at Dunkin Donuts.

I had thee most perfect pumpkin latte yesterday for breakfast. It was hot and sweet and pumpkin-y. It's the indicator that we are entering into my favorite time of year. The season that I missed out on for 30 years of my life, living in Southern California.

Most the time, when we started back to school in the beach cities, you couldn't even wear your school clothes. It was still too damn hot! There was never a time where I kicked my feet through amber, orange, yellow and blood red leaves. You could go pumpkin picking in your shorts, if you wanted. And there were NO $1 pumpkin patches where I grew up. Although you won't find those much now either. We would pay HUGE prices for a big pumpkin. And never did we go to an actual patch, wandering the vines for the perfect squash.

My dad would get the biggest one out of the "patch" (re: over priced nursery). His job was to make the scariest pumpkin. I would usually make the most interesting face. My sisters more traditional triangle eyes and smiles. Then there is my mom. She would find the oddest shaped pumpkin and then try to make it into something. One year she scored a long, oval, dark green pumpkin, she laid on it's side, and it became a school bus.

Yes...I said a school bus. I don't get my creativity off the wind ya know.

There is just something about the tradition of the pumpkins that represent the fall season for me. Even on my trip to visit, my now wife, for my first October on the east coast, sealed the deal of my moving from my seaside home. We picked pumpkins and carved them, went apple picking. (it was the most amazing thing to pluck a delicious apple from a branch and eat it on the spot) and got fresh cider pressed on the spot. And you could keep things on the porch, cuz it was cool enough!

It was like my own lil autumnal Disney World! I fell in love. Halloween has always been my favorite holiday, but to be wrapped in east coast autumn only makes it even better.

"You know, a long time ago being crazy meant something. Nowadays everybody's crazy.". ~Charles Manson

The world seems to be going crazy! I know it makes me sound old, when I can't seem to wrap my head around what the hell is going on around me. I'm one fist shake out the window and "You pesky kids got off my lawn!" from being Mrs. Kravits.

But how else can I feel?

Men on the tv telling me that there is a "nice rape" and a "forcible rape". That my body has ninja warrior secretions that can kill "criminal sperm" when it enters my body. (Where the fuck did these idiots go to school and how did they get elected?)What I can and can't do with my girly bits, cuz they say so.

Tell ya what...if they put you in jail for flipping through your fetish mags, sitting behind the locked door of your senate office, in your secretaries underwear, jerkin your gerkin and spilling millions of possible babies all over the floor...then we'll talk.

Why do old, rich, white men think they can tell women what they have a right to do with their own bodies? It makes my head feel like it's going to split open with insanity.

Last night, the wife and I, had just got done OD'ing the Maddow and the likes, and went up to bed. There was our 15 year old cat, Ringo, falling all over the floor. Usually I'm the first one to react, and dive into the throws, to fix the situation. I stood in the hall, flapped my hands by my sides and repeated like maniac, "Oh my god...what do we do....what do we do?"

A trip to the ER vet, many sheets of itemized potions and screenings, and Ringo is STILL there today. True to her nature, confusing those around her by making them think outside the box.

So I sit at work, going a little out of my mind: can't really do anything, can't get any answers from the vet, can't go see her, can't go home.

"We'll call....."

Ok...I'll be here....going a lil nutty in my four walls. I've waited 10 years for my own office and now I feel like a moth inside a Ball preserves jar, batting around, senseless and without cause.

At the height of my self proclaimed crazy session, I turn to the one place that I can escape, that brings me joy, that makes me smile: HALLOWEEN. Life has been so busy, I'm behind on pumpkinrot.com. There, among the wonder and magic that is the 31st of October, 365 days a year, is the William Sanoma holiday link.

I think a frivolous purchase of cauldron mugs, during a time when my vet bills are choking me, would be just insane enough, to make me feel, a touch, less crazy.

Human nature is above all things lazy. ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

I don't even like most the games they play in the Olympics. But there is something so strong that compels me to get a bowl of ice cream, camp on the couch in my BirkenCrocs and sit like a slob and watch amazing athletes grapple for gold.

What is it about the Olympics?

I saw, for the first time, competitive trampoline. It was the GREATEST thing EVAH! Handball....sucks. It's silly. Handball is for Al Pacino in a prison yard. One rubber ball and the hard concrete of his prison walls. That's handball people.

Dressage. Can't bare to watch it. In no other sport if the athlete breaks a leg, do they take them out and shoot them.

Gymnastics is one of those sports that none of us knows nothing about, but you watch a routine and say, "Oh mah gawd that was perfect!" and we are usually right. I also almost pass out from holding my breath cuz I just know they are going to end up with that wooden beam in their tender girly bits and it's going to H-U-R-T!

OK....volleyball I know a lil about. I'm from California so I'm partial to the beach v-ball, no doubt. We had a sand v-ball court at our high school for bejuzuz sake! And how can you not watch Misty and Kerri play for their last time and 3-pete?!?!

You have to get into it.

Everyday I can barely get out of bed to shower, make my coffee, walk the dog and head to work, again. Over and over, my personal ground hog day. To take the time out to watch beautiful bodies in motion doing one thing so perfectly, it's inspiring.

To compete on the world stage, even without the red menace to push us anymore, is still the drive that makes America great. The tearful movement of the anthem playing, the flag raising it moves us.

Pride and perfection. It's a designer drug that never goes out of style.

Birth and death; we all move between these two unknowns. ~Bryant H. McGill

It's ironic. I can see that. The day that hits me the hardest, since my dad has died, is the day of his birth.

I just spent a week in CA cleaning out 'stuff' in my mom's 'barn'. It's really not a barn. There is not one chicken or cow paying rent. It's really barn shaped garage. One that held the RV they were traveling in when my dad passed.

Now the RV is at a consignment lot, waiting for the winning bid on ebay. A curse and a blessing for my mom, I'm sure. Some of her happiest moments were traveling all over the US with my dad in that rig. But it's where he started feeling ill, suddenly. After a fun day with their traveling group.

Within 24 hours he was gone.

She wouldn't leave the RV until we had someone that would get it back home for her. How could anyone ask her to leave it behind. At that point my mom seemed like a lil girl who had left her favorite stuffed toy and didn't want to go till we found it for her.

Now the space in the barn, that the RV filled, as life continues to move forward, is finding substitutes quickly

My sister's move to England has filled space where the RV bedroom was. A car takes the place of the kitchen and bathroom. A patio set stacked neatly where my mom and dad would sit, side by side, miles of road passing under that 'rock star' size rig.

We cleaned and hauled and stacked stuff up. The Goodwill scheduled to come in two weeks and back a truck up to collect it. Things from before I was born, stashed away by my dad. And now what? Where does it go? Why can't we let it go? Why should WE keep it any longer? What would we ever do with it?

I started thinking about all the crap in my house. Who will sweep out the years of collecting when I'm gone? And they most certainly will look at it and say, "What am I suppose to do with it?" Maybe, just like me, they will feel that pull in their heart that says, "But why can't I throw it out?"

To grasp one last time at the physical, as the mental memories slip away every day. How did he use to smile? That lil chuckle he had....how did it go exactly?

Sand....draining from my hand, one grain at a time. Leaving nothing but the soft, dusty, residue clinging to my moist palms. It reminds, me my fist was filled to capacity, only moments ago.

Happy birthday dad. Your 'presence' are still in the barn.

Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life. William Faulkner

Time flies. During the in between. Where my favorite holiday is still too far off to even start dreaming of what fun things to create (not really, but I can't admit it or my wife thinks I'm insane). I try to busy myself with other things.

And busy I have been.

Life is at full speed ahead and all I'm trying to do is strap in and hold on.

My office is moving to a new location, and I'm excited at the thought of 'walls'. I've always been out in the middle of everything. Try and make a doctor's appointment for your girly bits, you'll find it is impossible. A door will be a welcome change.

I'm hoping to also decorate in football noir. I want to finally put my jerseys in cases and find a shelf for my helmet from the glory days on the grid iron. I'll dust them off and bring them up from my treasure trove (re: basement)

The new location is swanky. I'll tell you that! Polished floors, gleaming marble and granite. It's a step up and a distance away. I've been spoiled by my 3 mile drive to work. My Nissan Leaf very happy as well, with a small jog to and from. I'll have to plan accordingly if I need to get somewhere after work or during lunch.

I've insisted on an outlet by my parking space. I mean...come ohn! If you're going to have an employee who is trying to save the world on her own, the least you can do is put a plug in, right?

The wife's job, or 3 of them, keeps her busy and me holding a picture of her in my wallet to remember what she looks like. The animals run the house and destroy it a lil more everyday. (a whole other blog will be coming from that)

And in an effort to keep my sanity, I shall return to blogging. It's an outlet, no doubt. If nothing else, a fine way to count the in between days till the return of my burning grin.

"An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why." ~William Faulkner

The problem with trying to keep a blog is NOT keeping up with the blog. Then you find that there are too many topics to blog about and where does one even start?

Politics? Don't EVEN get me started! Where are we going and why am I in this hand basket?

The economy? While it looking up, I'm too broke to pay attention.

Work? I've been very busy with very little pay off in my commissions lately. And that makes momma angry.

My blog, for a long time was a place to come and spout my silly ramblings and vent my issues an I felt better. I didn't care who dropped by to see, if anyone did at all. It for me, about me, me me me. And I ask, "What's wrong with that?"

Nothing.

I guess, to cut through to the core of the matter, I don't have time for 'ME' anymore. Otherwise I would be on here shouting and stomping and kicking up dust. Maybe I would feel better if I did that. Maybe I would feel lighter and less burdened by thoughts that have no where to go than round and round my empty skull.

So a vow to myself - more blogging. More brain dumping. More letting my thoughts run free.

A man growing old becomes a child again. ~Sophocles

WOW! I flipped my calendar today and low and behold - February. I turn 45 next week.

Sigh.

I was told when I was a young thing that the older you got, the faster time sped along. Too true. Time is a blur now so I can only imagine what the next 20 years will be.

I caught Oprah's Masterclass with Jane Fonda the other night. (when you get my age you start watching things like Oprah's Masterclass) I found it fascinating. From the camera angles, to the cut-aways, to the casual feel that she was talking to the viewer. I know the older generation despises "Hanoi Jane". I found her charming and amazing during her interview. And it was so interesting to see where she had come from: her mother committing suicide and her distant father who could never really love her after that.

One of the points that stuck with me was her thought that our life is broken into thirds and she was entering into her final third, at 74 years old. I really shortened up our timeline for me. Instead of thinking of 80 individual years, if your lucky, it shrunk it down to just three wedges of time.

While I'll be smack dab in the middle of my second 'wedge' of time, my father had just started his third section when he died suddenly. And his mom, who just passed, had stretched her final third for all it's worth, at 98.

I'm at the age where the drinking age is flashed on cards with the DOB in '91 and it doesn't seem possible. Babies are being born around me by babies themselves. I think where I was in my last 20's and children weren't even a consideration for me.

Full families in their first third.

Time marches on. That's for damn sure. Sometimes it feels like it marched right over me and didn't even notice. So buckle up, put on a helmet and hold on. It only speeds up from here.