When you lose a friend...

...and a family member, it's the absence that gets you. You expect to see them come around a corner or mew in your direction.

Jez, our grey gal, lived 18 years. 16 of them were a soft life with my girl Laura. For 13 of them, she gladly accepted another momma into her routine. And I was happy her majesty allowed me.

I taught her that the brush was her friend, that treats were plentiful and that there was always time for a good, ol fashioned ear rub. I was a good servant.

She was our diva, who never had time for the other pets, but allowed them to live in her kingdom. No cat's coat was softer. She would give a mink a run for its money. Her eyes so blue it made the sky jealous.

In her last months, she grew bold and brassy. With trips out to the yard and into the afternoon sun. Who says you can't teach an old girl new tricks? She learned to use the kitty door, when she much preferred her minions open the door for her.

She stuck closer in those later days. Clung to our thighs when we sat, circled our feet when we walked, found her way back to the 'family bed', dog be damned! She went from fat cat to catwalk thin, but her appetite was huge! Don't let your finger linger when passing a treat of chicken her way. SNAP!

And when it was time...it was time. Her two mommas, who loved her so, by her side. She fell asleep, with dreams of Whisker Lickens and rubs under her chin, in that one spot, right where she loved it most.

Her eye lids drooped and she sighed the smallest of sighs. Almost to say, "If I close my eyes....I can see a plate of tuna waiting on the other side."

Long live the queen!

Come, you spirits, that tend on mortal thoughts

It seems Halloween is ALL I can think of lately. I've got it in my soul these days. Not many folks have a favorites folder, on their computer, that h0lds nothing but Halloween links. From fonts to monster building how-to sites, I have them all neatly packed, just a click away, and visit them often during the day.

I made the mistake of stopping into Target last night. The excitement that swelled in my chest, as I gazed upon all the Hallo-goodies! I tend to wait to purchase things, cuz the price goes down quick on seasonal goods. Major purchases are the day after at 75%, but then it's the luck of the draw for whatever is left. Seeing as many of the items at Target were few, I felt the need to purchase some lights. It wasn't just any string of lights...they were motion activated mini strobes on a string with sound effects!!

Come ON! How could I pass those up? I have no idea what I'm going to do with them. But I got'em!

I try my darndest to put on a yard haunt every year. My only problem is my goal is to scare the peewaddy out of the kids. My girlfriends goal is to happily hand out candy and try to get through the night without me making someone cry. Our ideas of perfect Halloweens seems to conflict.

I'm working a 4 fog machine (one of them a ground fogger) operation here! Someone better cry!

I got ground breaking zombies, I got giant spiders, I got ravens with glowing eyes! I've got a boom box in the front blasting Midnight Syndicate and I've got an ipod on an outdoor speaker cranking out Rusty Knife at the front door. Strobe lights, red traffic lights, green and blue spot lights....I've got um!

For a number of years I was a goth, rock and roll vampire, Manson contacts in my eyes and all. I'd lurk in the dark shadows by the front door and then come running out to the kids who were already inching their way up the walk.

You see....grandpa sits by the front door. A hidden fog machine sits under his chair, to give just an extra jump out of the kids that make it that far! It's all the can see at the end of the walkway. They need to walk the walk if they want the chocolate. Some of them...never make it. That's when I get to run them all the way to the street!

Last year I was grandpa. I had lulled the kiddies into a false sense of ease that grandpa was nothing more than a newspaper stuffed creation. Then up I rose! I chased kids halfway down the block, groaning and waving my kettle of candy around, "You forgot your candy!"

One kid in a group, scattering as fast as they feet would carry them, dropped his sack while running away. The other kids grabbed him, "LEAVE IT!!"

Leave it? LEAVE IT?!?! sigh....A crowning moment...truly. What kid would ever leave the holy grail, which on Halloween appears as a pillowcase stuffed with sweets, to run for their life? Only one that felt their life was in danger.

My work here....is done!

one and two and breathe and smile....

I've managed to get up two mornings in a row to work out.

You have NO idea how important that sentence is. I've been falling apart the past few months. And it scares me. I'm a youthful 42. I am. I mentally think I'm in my 30's and I'm not actually a healthy weight. I'm the opposite of anorexia...I actually THINK I'm Thin! Or at least I consider myself "functionally fat". I can play sports, hike, run around with kids under 5 for a game of tag. But movie theater seats still leave marks on my hips.

I'm only reminded of how heavy I really am when I'm passing, say a big shop window. And in the reflection, I wonder why the fat gal behind me is walking so close to me. Then it dawns on me.....that's me.

Or our vacation pics for instance. There is one picture that looks like I'm that fat guy in the Guinness World Records book for being the biggest human alive. They had to bury him in a piano case as a coffin. And yes...the angle is bad and the sofa is low and I'm not sitting up straight, but honestly...I'm Cabba the Hut in that picture!

After a series of aches and pains: tennis (bowling) elbow, plantar facitis, the inability to get off the couch after sitting for too long...I realize I'm horribly out of shape and headed downhill fast. I won't have any muscle left to save myself if I don't do something soon.

So...I rise.

Head down to the basement to the "workout pen", where we have all the equipment I need to try and turn back the hands of time and halt the decay that seems to be happening to these old bones.

Tomorrow - day 3.

If I can do it for a week, it will be habit for me. And this habit is much better than some of the other ones I've picked up along the way.

"Daddy....what's a democrat?"

So I'm standing in line, to take my turn voting in our primaries for mayor, and a dad and his darling lil girl step to the side after voting to wait for mom. We still have those old fashion voting booths where you pull a lever and the curtain closes and you flip a lil switch that punches a hole in your vote. Or at least you have to trust that it does.

As they were waiting the little girl asked her dad what the sign taped to the table said. "It says Republican ballots look like this....and Democrats look like this."

"What's a Democrat daddy?"

Daddy was a lil uneasy. He couldn't possibly say what he would like to say, as you don't really know who's standing in line.

"It's another kind of party, honey."

To his relief, mother got out of the booth and they started to leave. Not before "What's a democrat daddy?" caught fire with another little girl standing in line with her parents.

"Daddy...daddy? What's a democrat? What's a democrat, daddy?"

"I don't know honey...I'm still trying to figure that out."

To which I think he got an elbow in his rib from his wife.

It was my turn to step up to the 100 year old women at the table. I stated nice and loud, "DEMOCRAT.....GILBERT"

Hey "daddy", want I should tell you daughter what a DEMOCRAT is? It would go something like this; Democrats are open minded folks who believe that the constitution was written for everyone, not just rich, white guys, like your daddy. The Statue of Liberty is a Democrat. The book she holds in her arm says, "Bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free." Democrats are true patriots that don't want to just have it be big business as usual, they want to actually make things better. Like making sure the earth is still able to sustain life when YOU want to have children.

I'd pat her on the head and smile. And then I would smile at daddy...hoping to see just a hint of sweat on his brow.

One more time round the rotary!

A week on the Cape is just not long enough. I never even really heard of "The Cape", till I moved to upstate NY. But it does seem like, under certain laws, everyone is suppose to vacation there at some point.

We rent a house on the cheap in Yarmouth (pronouced YA-muth, by the locals). If it wasn't for this sweet deal I don't think we could afford a town were lobster dinners are the thing.

It is nice to got to Provincetown, a gay mecca, and walk down the street, holding my honey's hand and not feeling like you're going to get beat up. Rainbow flags flutter over head and every store is gay friendly. Team of 'tribe' members stroll the street, shopping in the cute lil stores or eating in the hip outdoor cafes.

You don't think about a simple thing like PDA (Public Display of Affection) until you can't do it. In every day settings LTR and I rarely touch. So when you get to P-town and reach for each other's hands, it's an odd sensation at first: holding hands in the light of day, in a public street.

Isn't that saaaad?!?! No...really....sad! We've been together 13 years and it takes a once a year vacation in a totally safe environment that we can feel free to hold hands?!?

Sad!

The weather was grey and kept us to only one beach day. That was a bummer. But as they say, crappy weather on vacation is STILL better than crappy weather at home. So I'll take what I can get.

Back to the grind this morning, it seems that time has stalled and the clock no longer moves. This after it speeding around it's pale face and stealing time from our Cape escape.

There's always next year.

It's the best state fair.. in our state

It's that time of year folks! Welcome to the Great New York State Fair.

Being a transplant from California, this was an awesome experience for me. I gotta tell ya...when funds are put into creating a giant sculpture made of out of butter or you find folks boasting they can deep fry an Oreo, you've got MY attention!

This event really is the crossroads of humanity. You've got folks that crawl out from under rocks to go to this thing; toothless, shoeless, stumbling drunk! It's worth eating a four foot long rope of fried dough, rolled in crunchy bakers sugar, on a bench near the emu barn just to watch the parade of crazy walk on by.

Duck races, stunt dog shows, chainsaw carving, the John Deer synchronized dance team...I could go on and on and on. It's a non-stop list of events that make your jaw drop and say, "Really? Who does this kinda thing?"

Among the various "circus freak show" type events is the product placement. You can do your large item shopping at the state fair as well, oh yes! Need a tractor? What about a hot tub? There must be 5 different hot tub dealers at the fair. Cuz when I'm thinking fried food till I puke, I'm also thinking about getting into a bathing suit and taking a dip!

"Damn...if I had only bought one bloomin' onion I could have bought a hot tub!"

Mops that don't absorb, multi-task choppers that never seems to do all the things they promise, ink pens you blow through to make fantastic art (and pass out due to lack of oxygen), telescoping flag poles, cell phone accessories, tiedye everything, sunglasses for $10, sunglasses for $8 or sunglasses 2 for $15.

It makes the childhood tune of "Which of these things is NOT like the other..." play over and over in my head. There are not many places you can get shit faced on draft beer and pet a giraffe all in the same day.

Thank Oprah it only comes around once a year....I'd never go home!

I've thought of all by turns, and still I lie, sleepless

For the love of Oprah it was like Grand Central last night with all the noise and shocking dreaming I was doing. I didn't sleep a wink!

I hadn't even gone to bed yet, when at 11ish, a white van with two adults (which is still being debated) and some kids, came down the street SCREAMING! No...reallly....it was the fight to end all fights on our sleepy lil street. And god forbid they might push on the gas pedal and get off our block. It was like some slow moving screaming parade!

"Don't you lay a hand on me!"

::::smack smack::::::

"Shut up bitch

::::smack smack:::::

"Don't you call me bitch when I gots my keedz in the car!"

::::smack smack smack::::

I finally shouted, in my 'man voice', "Shut the hell up!" I stripped my vocal cords cuz I figured if I didn't put a lil mustard on the volume they would never hear me over their own screaming.

In the midst of dreams where men were pulling me from the car to attack me, which caused me to bolt upright from my stuttering slumber, and dreams of my childhood dog having seizures, I heard a noise.

clang clang clang!

It worked into my dream at first. I wasn't even sure it was really happening. I thought a metal bell was sounding somewhere in my misty dream world. Then Roxy 'woofed' and I shook off the dream cobwebs holding my consciousness down.

clang clang clang clang clang!

I, of course, had to get up and look. There was a yellow security light rotating through the neighborhood to the right. I would have to go to the office to see anything. 2:34am as I passed the clock on the other side of the bed.

Without my glasses and sleep still fuzzy in my vision, I made out a truck of some kind. Two people stood on the parkway by the curb with a long pole in the ground. They were sticking it with a hammer.

Then I saw my next door neighbor come on her porch. "You can smell it over here!" One of the guys that was hammering walked over and sniffed the side of the house. "That's a release valve. You would smell something there."

I some how put together that the neighbors had a gas leak and they were trying to turn off the shutoff valve at the street. They just replaced our city gas line with some "high powered" one. Now I'm worried ours is going to have problems!

Great.....I suppose I won't get any sleep worrying over that now.

Hopped up on psychic goofballs

I was reading a book, by Deepak, about how there are no coincidences. That everything happens due to a combined consciousness that we all share. But somewhere we forget we are connected.

Lately I've been "tuned in". Things that I would just assume were coincidences, I'm looking at a lil more closely.

Last week I saw a license plate frame that said "Tucker Auto" on it. It just stood out for some reason. Then in the paper was a letter to the editor relating how the Tucker car played some importance locally. I didn't relate the two.

Then my sales rep brought me art to do for Tucker Automotive. Both the other things clicked in my head, like a reminder, "See...told you this was coming."

Last night I was dreaming, and I'll keep it short cuz there is nothing more boring then hearing about someone elses dreams, that I was on the hood of a semi truck (lots of car images lately). Over the radio I heard that a president had died...or someone of political importance. I woke to find out that Senator Kennedy had died.

I feel like I'm plugged in lately. Not sure if that can happen. Or if maybe I'm just becoming more aware of my "talents". But it's kind of shocking to dream something and then have it happen.

So much for spontaneity.

"Is this room....actually stretching?"

I can NOT express how excited I got when my favorite artist, Shag, got commissioned to do the art for the Haunted Mansion's 40th Anniversary at Disneyland.

Now...if you know anything about me, you know my favorites include: Halloween, Disneyland & Shag. A lot of pee came out on that! You couldn't hold me down with that news. I was "beyond"! Out of my human shell and over the moon.

Then I found the preview of the items that would be released for sale. I need the win the lotto so I can own each and every one of them.

I mean....they made an URN Cookie Jar people!! That's freakin' AWESOME!!! Who wouldn't want that? It's the ultimate Halloween item: Shag's rendition of the hitchhiking ghosts on a urn that's a blessed, fucking cookie jar?

I think more pee just came out!

The list goes on...all your(my) favorite moments in the haunted mansion ride are done by Shag as well. They released the items on Aug 9th at Disneyland and Shag (Josh Angle) was there to sign stuff. If only I wasn't 3000 miles away, that would have been a :::cough cough::: sick day fer shure!

The irony of my fascination with the Haunted Mansion is that as a kid, we would go on "Telephone Employee night", an annual event put on by my dad's union, and it would be a fight to try and get me INTO the Haunted Mansion.

As a tyke it scared the bejesus out of me and I swore to never go back into it. So my poor mother was forced to relive Small World for YEARS do to my phobia. (which included fits of crying and stomping of feet)

Then one year, on a girl scout trip to the Magical Kingdom, the troop was headed to the Hunted Mansion. Well I couldn't be the only pusscake that won't go on the ride!! So I toughed it out. Maybe it was my age, maybe it was just that it wasn't as scary as my childhood nightmares had remembered....but now I LOVED IT!!!

At about that age I became fascinated with home haunts during Halloween as well. And so my favorite holiday was born!

So it's no mystery when I say one of my favorite movies is Nightmare Before Christmas! It's an equal thrill to go to Disneyland at xmas time and see Jack and the gang as they live in the Haunted Mansion for the holidays.

I'm saving all my allowance, just in case, they have some left over items from the anniversary celebration. I wonder if I can carry on an urn on the plane?

It's so hard to find good help these days.

So my honey had a kidney operation and it turned into a weeks worth of "R&R" in ye ol' hospital, rather than the two days, promised by her surgeon.


It was scary. To see your soulmate in so much pain. And there ain't a goddamn thing you can do about it!


I'm a "trouble shooter". I see a problem and I get on it. I figure it out. If there is an issue with a person, I cut right to the chase and ask what the deal is. Shoot from the hip. It's like my super power.


Hospitals are my kryptonite.


All I could do is hold her hand and try to hold back tears that burned to leak out everytime I saw her vision go fuzzy from the pain and she would check out. It could have been the horse size shots of morphine they gave her, or it was just easier to go to her happy place as the pain seared through her abdomen. But to look into her eyeS, so filled with pain and suffering. It killed me.


I couldn't fix it.

I swear by Apollo, the healer

Hospitals are funny things. Not unlike an ant hill of activity: Nurses and doctors up and down the halls. Patients, shuffling with their chrome rolling posts, decorated with plastic bags of various liquids, swaying in time with their efforts to put one foot in front of another. Digital boxes hanging by the bed side, beeping like droids, with pressures, dosages, and heart beats.

Medical staff is reduced to uniforms of linen type pants with ties instead of buttons. Some try to bring a lil character to their drab uniforms with decorative scrubs: butterflies and smiley faces.

"Starting January 1st, we have to all be in dark blue," said one nurse. "We hate it."

It seems for a job where you clean up body fluids, hear the moaning and pain of so many people day in and day out, you'd give them the 'happy' scrubs.

You're put into a room, with no personality, but all the needs for functionality. Wall plugs galore, oxygen spigots in the walls, sinks and sanitizers. Cabinets full of patches and tape. Even the restroom is functional for wheelchair or walker access, hand rails and emergency rip cords, if assistance is needed.

Sometimes you get a roommate and the only separation is a curtain. Which the staff pulls dutifully almost like they believe it will actually create privacy. While your room mate can't see your nether-bits, the nurse will expose them for everyone to see on your side of the room.

"I'll have to expose your chest."

"Oh...no one tied your back side up."

"I just need to look under your gown."

The old saying that no one sleeps at the hospital is true. You no sooner close your eyes than someone wakes you up to check on you, poke you, roll you over or feed you food that's not fit for human consumption.

And what about HIPA? Does that not pertain to people in the hospital? Your room mate knows your business. Your nurses are talking so loud it sounds like shouting about your 'issues'. All the world knows what's going on with you.

Hospitals, built for healing people, appear to be the worst place for someone to heal!

Privacy my ass...literlly...it's hanging out my gown!