Have you actually met me before?

My mother made her weekly Thursday night call to see if I am still alive or have disappeared again. I don't know why she continues to do this, except that six years ago I left town and no one noticed for three months. Then again, it could be because she wants to make sure I don't know what is going on in the rest of my family by asking pointed questions or simply leaving pregnant pauses to see if I fill them indiscriminately in by telling her what I know. I gave that up a long time ago. I have found you learn more by listening than by talking.

Once again she mentioned my journals, writings I have kept in a myriad different plain bound and wire bound books of blank pages where I put down my thoughts, musings and feelings -- feelings no one in my family seemed over worried about or they would have asked. She went on and on about one journal she picked up, thinking that it was some book, only to find that it had no dust jacket, copyright or publishing information, and was liberally studded with earthier language than I usually use. She reiterated that she did not know it was one of my journals, despite the fact that she continues to tell me she is gathering them all together to send to me and she read halfway through the journal written in long hand before she figured out it was not a novel.

She was, she said, appalled by the language. "You are much more intelligent than that," she said. "And you have a much larger vocabulary. Why did you feel the need to write such filth?"

Well, without actually seeing the journal in question -- the one she mistook for a published book -- I can only say that sometimes when I am angry or hurt or writing about earthier subjects I do descend to using street language, the vernacular of the common man. Despite her haranguing me on several occasions about my hoity toity language and usage of foreign words she doesn't understand or know in order to put her down and remind her she is so much less sophisticated and continental than I am, she reminds me I don't have to use such language.

"Why I never used that language and it was around me growing up. I didn't know anything about lesbians or homosexuals, but I knew those words. I have never used them though," she reminds me yet again.

So what was the purpose of this particular Thursday night discussion? To tell me that I should have my journals published -- not the earthier parts of course. She went on and on about the way I see the world, about how I illustrate what I experience, view and know in ways she never knew were possible.

I explained that famous people's journals are worth publishing, but the musings and haunted days and nights I chronicled in those 50+ journals of various sizes, shapes, colors, and decorative bindings are not the words of a famous person. "Well, you might be famous some day," she said.

"Then someone will have them published when that happens," I replied.

Every few months my mother and I go through this dance about my journals. Those who read this journal and my other online blogs have had a taste of what those journals contain -- minus the sexual descriptions and experiences I keep for my paper journals. During these conversations nothing is ever solved. The words are pretty much the same and the outcome predictable.

Last night was different.

"I didn't know you were so unhappy," she said almost in a whisper. "You should have told us. We are your parents."

This from the woman who still gives me clothes and jewelry I wouldn't take to Goodwill or throw out in the trash. This from the woman who when I asked for a simple silver or gold chain sent me Mr. T's chains.

Maybe she couldn't tell how unhappy I was and didn't notice that I asked for pain pills though I won't even take aspirin and refused to take anything stronger than Tylenol #3 after major surgery. She never saw my eyes swollen and red from crying. She didn't notice that I seldom called or came by, and she certainly wouldn't have noticed since she came to my home twice in over 15 years. She never saw the suicide notes or knew how I planned my own death on several occasions. She didn't see me in the midst of the family, silent and fading into the wallpaper while everyone else stood in front of me. She evidently didn't read too far into my journals when she found out they really weren't about her but about the depth and darkness of my failing belief in love and life. She just didn't open her eyes and see me.

To this day, I wonder if she ever actually met me before or if she knows only the idea of me, a thought born when I was a small child or a teenager who kept getting in the way when she was focusing on her other children, the ones that needed all her time and attention when I could obviously take care of myself -- and did.

It is a sad truth that we notice the problem children, the negative press, the people who stretch and/or destroy society's patience and limits. We don't notice the people who pay their bills on time, win awards for spelling, writing, or citizenship, or the people who live, breathe and die in silent obscurity. We're too busy watching the fireworks to see the cinders crushed under our feet -- until bare skin touches their dying heat.

I told Beanie when I entrusted my journals to her that if anything happened to me to burn them. My mother got hold of them first. In a way, she is responsible for me keeping a journal online. Not because I expect people to pay attention or that a publisher will read what I write and decide it is worth publishing, but because I decided not to keep my pain, my joy, my adventures and my life between the mold-speckled pages of fraying journals packed away in forgotten dusty boxes for some stranger or relative yet to be born to find.

My mother doesn't have internet access and she doesn't surf the web. She knows about this blog and the others, but she only reads what I print out and send or what one of my relatives finds, reads and passes on in hopes of causing trouble.

There is only one good thing about her reading my journals. Maybe, finally, she will discover she has not actually met me before.

Cold morning

It's cold this morning after a warm Indian summer day yesterday. The wind is shouting through the trees and shaking the tenuously clinging yellow leaves to the ground, along with branches that do not have a tight enough grip on the parent tree. The sky is frosty white and the mountains a hazy shadow in the distance. There is a winter storm advisory for today with the threat of snow, broken branches and power outages like an inconstant lover shaking an angered fist in a once beloved's face before walking out and raining freezing destruction. This morning, I know how that feels.

With the annular solar eclipse just passed on the 3rd and a lunar eclipse to come on the 17th I wonder if the ancients are not right in believing them to be dire warnings of harm and sadness to come. Should we be ever on the watch for danger and ill wishing from all quarters or should we trust in the seeming benevolence of the world around us? Trusting, like expectations, lead to sadness and pain, and the optimists among us assure us there is indeed a horse beneath the mountain of manure. Is it better to have no expectations and be always surprised when someone does something nice or should we venture onto that shaky fraying rope bridge while someone saws at the anchor ropes positive we can cross the bottomless chasm before the bridge falls when even a chance misstep will mean death and destruction?

Sometimes I remember the silence and solitude of the cabin with fondness when the phone didn't ring off the hook and people didn't stop by. My life was quiet and predictable like a calm lake glowing gold and pink in the rising sun. Life now is fraught with lurking shadows, venomous blowguns at the ready, as I move out of the safety of my windowed aerie to spend time with friends, new and old, ready to hold out my hand to greet strangers and get to know them. Now I wonder if it is worth the effort to reach out when there are those who have already decided my nature before I open my mouth.

C'est la vie.

Social conduct

There are many social conventions I flagrantly flout, but there are some that I was brought up with that still remain. Problem is that I'm not sure if I am alone in believing that certain niceties be preserved or if I have somehow slipped out of the loop into a limbo where social conventions are as difficult to define and maintain as holding sand in your hand.

Case in point: I sent a birthday card to someone I know casually, but someone who is facing a big milestone with a lot of doubt and questions in their mind. Some friends encouraged me to celebrate her birthday with a card and I felt I knew the person well enough to do so. I chose a card, wrote a little something positive and sent it winging out into the virtual world. It was picked up; I got an email informing me it had. There was, however, no email from the recipient to thank me or acknowledge the card.

Maybe I am too old-fashioned in this way. I have been taught that a gift, even a card, is noteworthy enough to be acknowledged with a thank you or a nod or something tangible to let you know your wishes and gift were received and appreciated. This leads me to believe that my card was not appreciated, even though I know it was received.

In the days when snail mail was all the rage, you never knew when or if a gift or card was received. Before phones, the only way to know if your missive had been received was with a return missive of some sort, even if it was a small thank you card. In this age of virtual worlds and speedy communication, as well as return receipts and notifications, we almost always know when something we've sent has reached its destination. There is no reason to send a card or letter to let the giver know. But is there a social reason for letting someone know their gift/card was received and appreciated?

Am I being overly sensitive or am I just that old-fashioned and should wrap myself in a dusty shawl, let the silver grow out and wrap it into a netted bun, and sit in my rocking chair on the old folks' home porch and realize that common courtesy is a thing of the cobwebbed and distant past?

I have gotten used to -- and when I'm angry and frustrated use -- profanity everywhere. I have become inured to displays of disrespect from people who haven't the time or interest in using disrespect instead of diss. I have hardened myself to accept the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune without too much fuss and I rarely take it to heart when people claiming friendship smile in my face and plunge a knife up to the hilt in my back. I have survived much worse. But it is difficult for me to accept the death of the last social convention I have always happily embraced -- common courtesy.

It is said that for evil to flourish it takes nothing more than that a good man remain silent. The loss of common courtesy is not blackest evil, but it is a sign that gracious and polite behavior is as rare as hen's teeth and going the way of the dinosaurs. I wonder if I will be able to go quietly into that good night without losing my last shred of dignity.

I'll shut up now.

Stuff

It's nearly that time again when writers all over the world race to finish a novel during the month of November. I have to decide if I'm going to give it a shot again this year. With work the way it is, maybe not. I don't have the time to do that many things at once. Besides, I'm sure there's someone's work I can steal instead. (just a joke)

I've been working about 20 hours a day and yesterday a male friend came over and kidnapped me. He felt I was working too hard and needed a break. I guess I took a little too long making up my mind about going out with him. Serves me right for making him wait so long.

Anyway, the past few days have been full of work and getting ready for another weekend of fun and frolic -- not to mention a little bit of ham radio action. It's time to VE again. I've gotten rather used to being the only female around and soaking up all the male attention - and they give the nicest hugs. Of course this weekend will be a bit different since I'll spend some time with the president of the local amateur radio club to discuss me taking over editing and producing their newsletter. I fell into that one quickly when I spent a Sunday working on helping to raise an antenna tower for another local ham. The help was paid for in a trip to Denny's and a bit of sun and sweat, but there are lots worse ways to spend a Sunday.

I've also been working on a new ham project: learning about RISC architecture and PIC-ELs. If you're not electronic savvy, I'll be putting together and programming a board to do all kinds of interesting functions. A friend worked on it last year when I was studying for my ham licensing exams but gave it up when I made Extra. He asked if I was still interested and offered to go back to the beginning and see if he could keep up with me. I got my board and some of the parts on Monday and I've been working on the course ever since. I'm still trying to decide whether I want to wait until the end of October to buy a parts kit or bite the bullet and buy the parts (a whole lot of extra parts, too) from electronic suppliers and fill out the rest by a trip to the local OEM. Haven't quite made up my mind and I haven't had a chance to run the numbers yet.

Besides, there is that fella who is taking up some of my time lately -- and he's not the only one. The ladies have been stopping by and going to discussion groups with me then kidnapping me for moonlight drives in the Garden of the Gods and trawling over at Denny's for hot chocolate that turns into grand slam breakfasts and such. Lately I never know what is going to happen from one day to the next, and that is a far cry from the way it has been over the past few weeks. Nothing like spontaneous friends and fellas to take my mind off the mundane and predictable. And I have been working a lot lately. I need more than one break

Around here, I never know what will happen next and I like the surprises -- so far. Some Monday night a group of us are going to play Drag Queen Bingo. I wonder if I can pull off the Victor/Victoria deal for a night or two. Psycho Ken and a couple other friends are hitching a ride and I will be helping with costuming and makeup. My costume and makeup will be in very good hands.

And there are offers to help me put up my antenna and get me on the air to field. Haven't decided yet which gentleman I'll give the nod. Should be interesting.

In the meantime, time to go hit the button a few hundred more times and see if I can catch some work today. I want to get done early so I can take a shower and be fresh and ready for those spontaneous drive-bys.

That is all. Disperse.

Family

Being adopted gives you a keen sense of family, a yearning and a need to know where you come from and where you belong. Those who were raised by family or in orphanages and foster home, no matter how they deny it, feel that same urge, the need to know who you are, where you belong and why you were given away, why you weren't wanted. There is a palpable need for connections, for family, to belong somewhere to someone, to a family.

We all crave a sense of family, a need to know where we belong, where we fit in. For those of us who have rocky pasts, a history pock marked with pain, trouble and alienation, we gather family around us or cling to what family we create, no matter what. We grasp at familial straws, determined to keep some sense of family around us even when that family is dysfunctional.

A friend told me about a movie he had seen a couple weeks ago: Antwone Fisher, directed by Denzel Washington and starring Derek Luke. It's the story of a young Navy man who gets into a fight with one of his shipmates and is sent for psychiatric evaluation. He has a problem with anger, striking out with his fists to cover the pain and alienation he carries like the rock he says he crawled out from under. His father died two months before he was born while his mother was in prison. The movie is the story of his search for himself and to find where he belongs.

What resonates most is his stony silence and his tentative reaching for connections as he strives to better himself by learning Japanese, drawing, reading and writing poetry. It is a moving tale, one that shines a search light on the loneliness of not knowing where you belong.

I am lucky in some ways; I know part of my family. There is still a big hole inside me, a gaping chasm where family ties should have been to weave me wholly together. I do not know my father's side of the family and every time I have begun to look what family I do know turn my need to know into a battle for possession of my soul and my heart, a battle I choose not to fight. Instead I back away and wait. It seems I have been waiting my whole life for a moment when I can reach back into the past and find my connections to the family I never knew.

I am alone with few connections -- real family connections. I have gathered family around me, finding connections in shared experiences and knowledge. Like Antwone, who wrote the story behind the movie, I am afraid of making those connections, afraid of rejection, afraid of the look that I have seen in so many eyes over the years, the look that says I'm not good enough, simply not enough, that I do not belong. It is in moments like watching Antwone Fisher's journey unfold, I find another connection, another person searching for the place where they belong. It is something I also share with my friend, a friend who has become more than family, who is my connection, the one who didn't reject me, who sees in me what I see in him -- family.

Free at last!

Anyway, I promised a friend I'd let him know about the Golden Corral, so I'll throw in yesterday's jaunts as well.

I found the restaurant with not too much trouble and even though it is a buffet style place the food was good -- at least what I had of it. I was delighted to find they had liver and onions. It's not the way grandma made it but it was pretty good -- at least the liver part. I didn't have any of the onions. They were a little too fresh. Didn't want to fumigate my friends' car. The lemon meringue pie was a little disappointing since they used fresh whipped cream (really good, btw) instead of an honest-to-goodness baked meringue topping and the lemon came from a can, but it was passable. The greens and vegetables were fresh and not overcooked and the broccoli was excellent. The fried okra was very good, fresh and not the least bit slimy -- as it tends to be when cooked too long or in the wrong way. The rolls smelled hot and fresh, warmly yeasty. I didn't try everything they had to offer, obviously or I couldn't have walked out of there, but if everything else was as good as what I had, it was well worth $6. I had water instead of soda otherwise it would have been $8.37 or thereabouts.

After lunch, the ladies kidnapped me and forced me to ride up into the mountains while listening to and singing along with the oldies station -- until we couldn't get the oldies station any more. They then tortured me with a Johnny Cash CD with songs I have known since I was a child and my grandfather played them. Horrible people -- ;-) As we drove up through Ute Pass and on through Woodland Park and points west, we arrived in Florissant and I thought we were going to the fossil beds, but they didn't even slow down to let me find out why the gates were closed. It was after 5 by then. We zipped past Florissant and further into the mountains to Cripple Creek past shaggy llama herds, tongues of yellow-flamed aspens among the spiky green pines, mirrored mountain ponds and bloody ragged cliff faces. We drove down through the middle of Cripple Creek between the armed bandits of casinos blaring their jackpot winners between the well preserved streets left from its mining legacy and out through the outskirts of town past shotgun shacks, grand old Victorian ladies, trailer homes and sundry architectural mish-mash on a winding road through the most gloriously beautiful scenery full of red, gold and orange aspen groves tucked in between rock falls, sere brown plains, mirrored ponds and pine stands. It took my breath away and brought tears to my eyes, reminding me why I love living in Colorado so much.

When we got back to town by some occult and circuitous route, we stopped at the ladies' townhouse just long enough for me to race to the bathroom and drain out the reservoir for a few minutes, only to be dragged kicking and screaming back into the car, along another tortuous route and into downtown where I was forcibly prodded along to Michelle's to gawp at the luscious confections, find a seat in the back and wait to be served a flaming volcano -- complete with flames -- and thus become the envied center of attention, surrounded by oohing and aahing men, women and children, one of whom inquired about my marital status and availability.

I was eventually set free next to my car and quickly got in and drove away, only to get lost on the way home. I did manage finally to find a recognizable landmark and get safely home, but I have been informed I am to be invaded again this evening for some nefarious purpose. There are two of them and one of me and they are taller and bigger, so I guess I should just go quietly along and not cause a scene.

What do you think?

I'll shut up now.

SNEAK ATTACK

I'm not a fan of labels and have fought against them my whole life, but there is one label I have come to trust -- ORGANIC.

Hi,
Thought you might find this interesting.

The Organic Consumers Association (OCA) needs your immediate help to stop Congress and the Bush administration from seriously degrading organic standards. After 35 years of hard work, the U.S. organic community has built up a multi-billion dollar alternative to industrial agriculture, based upon strict organic standards and organic community control over modification to these standards.

Now, large corporations such as Kraft & Dean Foods--aided and abetted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), are moving to lower organic standards by allowing a Bush appointee to create a list of synthetic ingredients that would be allowed organic production. Even worse these proposed regulatory changes will reduce future public discussion and input and take away the National Organic Standards Board's (NOSB) traditional lead jurisdiction in setting standards. What this means, in blunt terms. is that USDA bureaucrats and industry lobbyists, not consumers, will now have more control over what can go into organic foods and products.

This week, acting in haste and near-total secrecy, the U.S. Senate will vote on a "rider" to the 2006 Agriculture Appropriations Bill that will reduce control over organic standards from the National Standards Board and put this control in the hands of federal bureaucrats in the USDA (remember the USDA proposal in 1997-98 that said that genetic engineering, toxic sludge, and food irradiation would be OK on organic farms, or USDA suggestions in 2004 that heretofore banned pesticides, hormones, tainted feeds, and animal drugs would be OK?).

For the past week in Washington, OCA has been urging members of the Senate not to reopen and subvert the federal statute that governs U.S. Organic standards (the Organic Food Production Act - OFPA), but rather to let the organic community and the National Organic Standards resolve our differences over issues like synthetics and animal feed internally, and then proceed to a open public comment period. Unfortunately most Senators seem to be listening to industry lobbyists more closely than to us. We need to raise our voices.

In the past, grassroots mobilization and mass pressure by organic consumers have been able to stop the USDA and Congress from degrading organic standards. This time Washington insiders tell us that the "fix is is already in." So we must take decisive action now. We need you to call your U.S. Senators today. We need you to sign the following petition and send it to everyone you know. We also desperately need funds to head off this attack in the weeks and months to come. Thank you for your support. Together we will take back citizen control over organic standards and preserve organic integrity.

Take action here

I don't know about you, but lowering the standards on what goes into cattle feed and the addition of hormones, antibiotics and other goodies to livestock and food animals is what has led to mad cow disease and super bugs that antibiotics cannot touch. Is this the kind of future you want to live in? Is this what you want to give your children? Are you ready to let the FDA loose on the last bastion of healthy, untainted, unmolested foodstuffs and see another massive rise in new diseases and cancers? Think about it.

That is all. Disperse.

Fresh air

The air always smells cleaner and fresher after a good hard storm. You can see farther and there is a sense of renewed hope that goes with such unbridled natural displays. The problem is that more often than not such powerful storms destroy everything in their path, forcing us to rebuild and reinvent our lives, ourselves and our homes.

Troy was once a powerful city that stood for centuries unconquered by many civilizations and armies until they were tricked into taking a wooden horse through the guarded gates and into the heart of their protected city. They were destroyed from within, giving rise to the warning about Trojan horses and the inherent devastation they contained.

We always fail to look the gift horse in the mouth and take what is pleasing and even ragged to our hearts and into our homes because it looks so innocent and needs our strength to help bring them inside. That is not to say that all wooden horses -- or seeming victims -- contain the death of our lives and the devastation of our hopes, dreams and generosity, but more often than not...

Troy was restored many times. Victim of earthquakes and nature's worst, Troy rose ever grander and higher and more beautiful each time it was knocked down. The Greeks made sure Troy would never rise again. The terrible storm that gripped Troy in its screaming, heaving wake would not allow the city to rise like a phoenix from the ashes an eighth time to mock their victory over the once formidable opponent. The Greeks sowed the fields with salt, enslaved the women and children and killed the warriors, leaving none to tell the tale. Yet the tale survives even today.

When all seems lost and destroyed, as long as there is an ear to hear the forbidden whispers of long lost grandeur and a tongue left to tell the tale. Even when the fields are sown with salt eventually the lashing rains and bitter winds will leech the salt from the earth and flowers will bloom again.

A friend told me once that the only way to keep a secret is never to tell anyone. When you tell one person, no matter how long it takes, the secret will leak out and the world will know what was hidden. People are social animals and they need the contact of other people. They need to feel a connection to the past as well as the present, and curiosity is in their genes. Apathy unfortunately keeps most people locked in their dark cages, but there will always be one person, one curious individual unable to leave the past in silence. They will find a way to make a connection and bring the darkness into the light. It will always be so as long as there are humans on this or any other planet. Curiosity drives us to know the truth.

Even had no one survived to tell of Troy's grandeur, the victors would have trumped their tale of conquest of the unconquerable to increase the admiration of their peers and the fear of their enemies. One way or another, despite destroying Troy and stealing away all its assets and treasures, the tale of Troy's great and glorious past would live. And it did.

The tale of Troy's fall is a cautionary tale but it is also a tale of hope. Humans are resilient. No matter how many times you knock them down, bloody their noses, black their eyes and drag their names through the mud and blood, they will rebuild. They may carp about it, but they will rebuild.

No matter what storms and devastation are visited upon us, we, like Troy, will rise from the ashes and breathe the sweet fresh air of freedom and truth.

Count on it.

Oh, the webs we weave...

There is a lie going around outside of LiveJournal that began with minnalavendar and it is time for me to tell what really happened.

Last year I offered to edit -- for free -- one of Mattie's books because she said she couldn't afford to have it done. Just after I received the book, which took two tries to get here -- some postage issue on her end was the trouble -- I was informed by my doctor's office that they mistakenly told me my last mammogram was negative when in fact it showed I had cancer. They had waited six months to let me know. "We're sorry about the clerical error." Right.

During this time I was emotionally distraught and having a really hard time coping with the knowledge that I had breast cancer and it had had six months to get a good hold on me. I wasn't thinking about Mattie's manuscript. Meanwhile, Mattie was on a very long cruise and vacation, but the minute she got back she asked about her manuscript. I explained the situation and she said she didn't care about what I was going through and that she wanted her manuscript edited and returned. I did so and sent it back. She told me she didn't get it.

Because of problems with mail not reaching its destination, and specifically because of the snafu on this particular manuscript, I took the time and my materials and had made a copy of the manuscript just in case. When the manuscript still didn't get to Mattie, I offered to take the copy (printed on the back of a first draft of one of my novels) and redo the editing. Mattie told me to just throw it away. I explained that, despite what I was going through with the doctors and waiting for my appointment for themammogram and biopsy to be redone the following month, I wanted to finish what I started. She again told me to just throw it away, asking me why I bothered to offer to help when I had no intention of doing so. Feeling very snarky and not a little narked, I wrote her back with a very flip remark. "Because I wanted to steal your book and have it published under my name." I went on to explain, yet again, that I had wanted to help her but my own situation with breast cancer got in the way.

Mattie didn't want to hear it. She said she didn't care what I was going through and she went on to say I was no friend and that I would get what I deserved. She said again to throw away the manuscript. She didn't want it back.

By this point, I was angry and I won't work on anyone's manuscript when I can no longer maintain my objectivity and neutrality. I threw away the copy I had. I never mentioned it to my friends and I didn't give it a second thought. In my mind, the situation was ended.

Not so.

I have heard rumors and whispers from several sources that Mattie has spent the intervening months painting me in deepest black and accusing me of stealing her manuscript. Please. She accused me of trashing her book. If she never got it, how could she know what I did to it. I didn't trash her book. I suggested that she get into the story at the heart of the action instead of taking the long and winding road through the protagonist's personal history and angst. She could weave the threads of the history into the rest of the story once she got into it, but begin the book with the murder and how the protagonist was involved first. The rest of it was grammar and sentence structure and clearing up a lot of passive voice. I have never trashed anyone's book, story or writing. I have, however, gone straight to the heart of the matter and pulled no punches when dealing with sentence structure, grammar, passive voice and characterization. People pay me for my professional opinion not to be their glad-handing, back-patting friend. If you don't want my honest PROFESSIONAL opinion, have your buddies and family edit your work. I don't have the time.

Now I am hearing that I have stolen another author's work and plan to publish it under my own name from people outside of LJ in the real world. And I know where it comes from. It comes from elementalmuse. How do I know? Because several people told me what she has been saying about me just last night. For four hours I listened to the laundry list litany of my sins and how some of these people, who had been told about my evil doings, were so afraid of crossing my path (probably for fear I would blast them with a spell to turn their brains to mush -- something it seems has already been accomplished without me lifting a finger or casting a wand in their direction) they didn't go to the metaphysical fair that was held over the weekend. Like one of the people said, I am indeed a powerful force to cause so much fear.

For anyone to take an offhand comment made with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek as gospel, someone who supposedly knows me and has been the recipient of many favors done and gifts exchanged, things they said they couldn't afford and I happened to have and not using, they must be either high on drugs, need their anti-depressant dose increased, or are just plain stupid. I'm sure the real cause is that I didn't make my smiley face big enough or noticeable enough -- or, more than likely, I left it completely off.

If, after reading this, you believe that I am capable of stealing another author's work, this is not the place for you to be. If you have helped to perpetuate this lie, please remove yourself from my friends list. If you cannot tell fact from fiction, I feel sorry for you. If you believe that I would take any author's work as my own, especially someone who writes fantasies about LA bartenders who are part elf and thrust into the middle of a murder in their bar, you need to find somewhere else to be. I don't write that kind of fantasy and I don't need to steal anyone's work. I have enough of my own written and in progress that stealing someone else's work, especially when it needs so much rewriting and editing, would be a waste of my time and energy when I could take that same time and write it from word one.

I have kept quiet about this situation, and many others involving these two people, long enough. I have apologized and been slapped in the face over and over and yet I remained a good friend, finally being forced to walk away and wishing them both well. I have not lied about either one of them, but the persist in perpetuating lies about me to people who have never met me and don't know me. Some of those people took the time to find out the truth. You now have a piece of the truth. If you want to know the rest of it, ask me. I have nothing to hide. For the most part, I write everything in public and I don't hide behind a friends only journal or concoct dramas to make people feel sorry for me. I don't wear masks and I am not different from one day to the next or from LiveJournal to real life. I don't say anything behind someone's back I won't say to their face. I do keep confidences when asked and I don't do or write anything that isn't true. This is my life as I live it and I make no apologies for it. I only apologize when I'm wrong -- and I am wrong more often than you think.

If you are going to judge me -- and many of you have judged and pronounced sentence on me without both sides of the story or giving me my day in court -- you need to get both sides of the story first. Don't settle for just my side or only someone else's side. Don't take as gospel (that means good news, btw) what someone who was not involved says, but has heard second or third hand. Do what those people did yesterday: take the time to dig a little further and seek the truth for yourself. Sometimes a lie is woven out of the dusty spider threads of half truths that might contain a small microscopic fragment of the truth. Ask questions. Listen to the answers. Take nothing at face value. Weigh and measure the stories carefully and pay attention to where they differ and where they are the same. Ask yourself if the person seems to always be in the midst of a drama and playing the victim.

If I am a victim, it is of my own making. Had I not been angry and upset I would not have made such a sarcastic reply that was taken to be true by someone who should have known better, should have known me better. I have been tried and hung in the court of whispers behind my back and without a chance to defend myself. How would you feel?

Oh, and one more thing... I find it difficult to believe that someone who spent many tedious hours talking about so-called friends to me behind their backs can be believed when they say they don't talk about me behind my back. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. If strangers who never met you, don't know you and were not involved in the coven when I was still there can recite chapter and verse of all my evil doings, they don't have accounts on LJ and do not know Mattie at all suddenly come to me out of the blue should I believe that their only link to me -- the muse -- is not talking behind my back (some of whom joined the group within the past one month) or should I believe they pulled my name and stories about me I never spoke of to anyone before, except the one person involved, out of thin air? The air in Colorado Springs is thin, but not that thin.

And btw, in order to be convicted of slander or libel the accuser must prove that the information is false and has cost them standing in the community, damage to their reputation and/or loss of revenue to their business and/or livelihood. The key is that the information must be false and the intent malicious. Telling the truth, even in a public venue or in print, is not slander or libel. Want to test it? File charges and let the court decide. I'm ready. Are you?

The truth of myth

We ought always to deal justly, not only with those who are just to us, but likewise to those who endeavor to injure us; and this, for fear lest by rendering them evil for evil, we should fall into the same vice.
~Heirocles

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
~Edmund Burke

For too long I have been silent and I am guilty of allowing evil -- or at least wrong -- to triumph. This morning an email changed that.

Over the past few months I have lost my zeal for LiveJournal -- or any of my journals -- because of personal attacks on me. I allowed their lies and prejudices to stand because I believed that the people who truly knew me would know the truth from the lies and they would stand by me. I was partly right. Many people have stood by me, but people I trusted and believed in did not. They took the venomous words spewed by someone they knew longer as gospel and failed to realize there was no good news in them. In particular, one person who has always believed and stated that if you had nothing good to say about anyone you should stay silent. He silently departed without a word of warning or an explanation when I privately emailed and asked for one. And so I sank slowly into the west without a plan to rise again in the east. Instead, I threw myself into work and other pursuits in order to fill the gap in my life left by writing and LJ and my LJ friends. After all, if so many people were leaving this burning ship maybe they were right and I was wrong. It has happened before, although not in recent memory.

The email this morning told me something I already knew, that someone I openly gave the hand of friendship over numerous rocky trails and seemingly bottomless chasms has spent the past few months trashing me publicly, on list and to people who knew me and did not know me, all in an attempt to blacken my name. She was not alone. Someone for whom she has little respect, regard or liking has joined her unaware that he, too, has been trashed by her. I believed by walking away and not looking back all that would end and the evil they perpetrated would die. It has not and it will not until I stop doing nothing. That ends now.

Yes, this is a little bit of drama. So bow out if you'd rather not know. But beware.

What I learned this morning is that I have been accused of evil, theft and adultery. I have also been likened to a role model and standard for evil, and this from two people who have spent most of their time bashing and trashing people they called friends -- and not just me. So, here is the truth.

I cannot refute the charge of evil because I do not know what evils I am being accused of, other than theft and adultery. I cannot claim I have never stolen anything because that would be a lie. I have, however, when I have stolen anything, either returned it and apologized or paid for the object in question. I have had my weak moments but I have always paid for my moments of weakness honestly and openly. In that respect, maybe I am evil.

As for the charge of adultery, it is completely false. Never at any time during either of my marriages did I commit adultery. For those of you who are unaware of the definition, you have to be married to someone to commit adultery.

The accusation of adultery coming from my "friend" is laughable at best but deeply saddening, especially coming from someone who has been involved in a relationship with a married man for nine years, part of that time when she was still married. She is not guilty of adultery in fact, but definitely guilty of adultery in her heart because she was married when he first contacted her. She did wait until her husband was out of the picture to fly to Alabama to spend a weekend with him and she wasn't married when she drove down to see him earlier this year and become intimate with him. I don't say this to excuse myself, but to put my accuser's statements in context. It is a very clear case of the pot calling the kettle black.

As for her companion in blackening my name and reputation, he is not without his faults either. He has propositioned both of us and asked us to be his mistresses in a BDSM sense. Both of us unequivocally answered no, I because I am otherwise involved and she because he disgusts her. She has said many times she would never get involved with a black man -- and certainly not with him. She tells him it is because she is otherwise involved as well, but she has no problems having sex with other guys she has met and has known for years when the itch becomes unbearable.

I stood by and listened while she trashed someone she called her best friend, reading private emails sent to her by the friend and helping her rid herself of the negative influence she feels that friend magickally cast in her direction. I spent many hours weaving counter spells and shielding her from further harm. After what I have learned over the past months, and particularly this morning, I realize that any negatives in her life she has drawn to herself through her own actions.

She called me one Saturday morning screaming and yelling at me that she would have to leave Colorado Springs because I had destroyed her reputation by my accusations. Aside from relating the facts of what had happened between us here and privately to a few select friends, her name has not come up, except when she calls or emails her attacks. I have been content to let this sometimes sleeping dog lie, but it looks as though the damage continues and runs deep enough for two concerned souls to seek me out and ask me to meet with them so they can see the truth for themselves, to view the evil incarnate that resides inside of me. When we meet I will tell them what I have written here. I am not perfect. I never claimed to be perfect. I am a flawed human who has chosen true love over social conventions and religious morals to which I do not subscribe. I do not apologize for my past because if you take away even one of those moments -- good, bad or indifferent -- you change who I am at this moment. I cease to exist as I am and I become another person, maybe a worse or better person, but not who I am. I prefer to remain as I am, warts and all, because it is this ME to whom people come because they say they feel compelled to meet me. These strangers see in me what my one time friend should have known over the years we shared and walked this rocky trail of life.

Be sure your sins will find you out.
~Luke 23:32-43
~Numbers 32:23

My sins never have a chance to find me out because I face them head on and admit them openly. It's like being completely open and honest. It doesn't always go down well with people in today's world, but you never need to worry if I am who I say I am or if I am hiding something because it is all here in black and white. It's up to you to decide what to believe, but at least you know that even when I seem harsh, stern or abrasive in my views and my writing that it is the real me and not crap dressed up in sugar and spice and everything false.

State of the Union

Want to talk about gas?

I don't mean the intestinal kind either.

I don't have time for much, but...

...I do have time to give you a look at the new meds coming your way soon.


For what ails you

D A M N I T O L
Take 2 and the rest of the world can go to hell for up
to 8 full hours.

ST. M O M M A'S W O R T
Plant extract that treats mom's depression by
rendering preschoolers unconscious for up to two days.


E M P T Y N E S T R O G E N
Suppository that eliminates melancholy and loneliness
by reminding you of how awful they were as teenagers
and how you couldn't wait till they moved out.

P E P T O B I M B O
Liquid silicone drink for single women. Two full cups
swallowed before an evening out increases breast size,
decreases intelligence, and prevents conception.

D U M B E R O L
When taken with Peptobimbo, can cause dangerously low
IQ, resulting in enjoyment of country music and pickup
trucks.

F L I P I T O R
Increases life expectancy of commuters by controlling
road rage and the urge to flip off other drivers.

M E N I C I L L I N
Potent anti-boy-otic for older women. Increases
resistance to such lethal lines as, "You make me want
to be a better person. Can we get naked now?

BUYAGRA
Injectable stimulant taken prior to shopping Increases
potency, duration, and credit limit of spending spree.


J A C K A S S P I R I N
Relieves headache caused by a man who can't remember
your birthday, anniversary, phone number, or to lift
the toilet seat.

A N T I-T A L K S I D E N T
A spray carried in a purse or wallet to be used on
anyone too eager to share their life stories with
total strangers in elevators.


N A G A M E T
When administered to a boyfriend or husband, provides
the same irritation level as nagging him.

Now I'm off to take a shower and get my eco-friendly canvas bags to shop for my picnic tomorrow with that special man in my life. Nothing like a little domesticity to get the energy flowing and the creative cooking ideas working. Go have a picnic with someone you love tomorrow. It's good for the soul and for the heart.

That is all. Disperse.

Working for a living...

...is cramping my style -- my writing style. There is none.

Life moves by so quickly that a day turns into a week and a week turns into nearly a month. It is if time has become a speeding bullet train flashing over the landscape and glimpses are the only touch with reality and friends and life. And all for the sake of earning a living.

I wonder sometimes if it is all worth it? The quest for money to pay rent and buy food and the necessities of life (movies, essential oils, more movies, and trips back to the silence and peace of the past, as well as ham radio swap meets and greets) takes up more and more of my time as I chase the elusive operative report from the roiling tank of frenzied medical transcriptionists feeding like piranha on a dwindling supply of thrashing kittens. I've been told the company is picking up more hospitals in the system, but evidently that hasn't happened yet and I'm tired of waiting, tired of working all hours of the day and night. Yet that is now my life and my fate.

I do venture out as often as possible to shop for food and breathe deeply of the fresh air, but it's not enough. I long for those long meandering days when writing what I wanted when I wanted was all that lay before me. I miss the slow turn of the sun as it rose, climbed and fell behind the trees, painting the world in crimson, lavender and gold, flashing like living fire between the dark slate grey clouds full of rain and snow. It isn't that I don't appreciate my life now or see the beauty of blooded mountains outside my window each morning and night or hear the tick, tick ticking of a cricket in the moonlight or the raucous call of crows in the trees, but that I have only moments to soak them up like water in the desert before I am forced back into the fray.

Still, despite it all, life is good and it is full of happiness, friends and love. After all, it could be better -- but it could also be a whole lot worse. Busy isn't so bad.

Is it?

The myth of ice...

How long ago did glaciologists and environmentalists begin to worry about global warming? How many scientists have battled over the earth's future, one group believing in nuclear winter and the other a world that makes the vision of Soylent Green, where our planet is a dry roated peanut where one tree is a sight only the rich may see, a reality?

Now comes this from the BBC and the scientists. Do they realize what they have said or are they really that stupid?

Peter Jennings --

...the other side of the coin.

For those of you interested in some of the legacy Jennings left that is not politically correct, look further.

I know it is not good form to speak ill of the dead. But given that he sided with terrorists - .... This brief summation is provided by Isralert lest other "journalists" think we easily forget.



The Bias of Mr Jennings
by David on August 8, 2005 08:28AM (IDT)
Isralert.com source: Isralert subscriber Janet Levy



As you are already no doubt aware, ABC anchor Peter Jennings has succumbed to lung cancer at the age of 67.

Reading through his obituary at CNN. I was struck by the following passage:"Jennings became a foreign correspondent for the network, covering such stories as the 1972 Summer Olympic Games in Munich, Germany, when members of the Arab terrorist group Black September seized the Israeli compound and took athletes hostage and later killed them."

What struck me about this was the fact that he covered one of the most brutal and momentous terrorist attacks committed by PLO Arab terrorists. (By attacking Olympic athletes, the terrorists not only attacked Israeli citizens, but also the whole idea of the brotherhood of man). I would have assumed that covering such a callous attack might influence his views on the Arab-Israeli conflict, and galvanize a staunchly anti-terror viewpoint.

However, it seems that even during the Munich terrorist attack, Jennings was on the side of the terrorists - setting a precedent in both attitude and lexicon for today's mainstream media.Jennings established his record of pro-Palestinian coverage early in his career. In 1972, as a reporter covering the Palestinian murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, Jennings would not refer to the murderers as "terrorists." Instead he called them "guerrillas" and "commandos."

Martin Peretz, publisher of The New Republic, wrote (Sept. 13, 2001):

"I first saw Jennings on ABC when, as a young TV journalist, he reported from the Munich Olympics. And I was filled with disgust that his subsequent career has only deepened. At Munich -- I still remember it, 30 years later -- Jennings tried to explain away the abductions and massacre of the young Israeli athletes. His theme: The Palestinians were helpless and desperate. Ipso facto, they were driven to murder. That's life..."

In Sept. 2002, when ABC News aired a retrospective on the Olympic Massacre, Jennings unabashedly said that Israel should stop regarding the Palestinians as terrorists as a result of the Olympic Massacre of three decades ago. Jennings dismissed the continual barrage of thousands of Palestinian terror attacks against Israelis, not only before, but also since the 72 Olympics.

Thus set the stage for a lifetime of pro-PLO bias.

I cannot fathom any decent human being covering the callous murder of innocent athletes, and sympathizing with the terrorists. But that is precisely what Jennings did. What drove him to sympathize with the PLO Arab terrorists? By some accounts, it might be as simple as Jennings being led by his loins.

In response, television critic Tom Shales wrote in the Washington Post (Sept. 17, 2001):

"[Jennings] hosted what looked like a little intercontinental tea party for alleged experts on the Middle East, one of whom was professional Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi, whom Jennings hailed as 'widely known in the United States.' Also widely disliked. Jennings and Ashrawi greeted each other like old pals, with broad smiles and warm greetings.

"Jennings wanted to know, he said, how anyone could hate America so much that they would launch this kind of vicious, calamitous attack. Ashrawi blamed U.S. foreign policy (for having 'fought Arab nationalism') and, predictably for her, Israel. Ashrawi complained that 'Israel is given preferential treatment, treated as a country above the law, as part of her condemnation.' Jennings deferred to Ashrawi, as usual, and let her filibuster. It was a nauseating display..."

In a critique of the same Jennings broadcast, TVspy reports (Sept. 20, 2001):

"It's no surprise that ABC News anchor Peter Jennings allowed Palestinian proselytizer Hanan Ashrawi to peddle propaganda on his program -- she used to be his girlfriend."

U.S. News World Report noted in 1991: "In the early 1970s, when he was single and head of the ABC bureau in Beirut, Jennings dated Ashrawi, who at the time was also single and a graduate student in literature at the American University in the Lebanese capital. Jennings was introduced to Ashrawi's parents and sisters and became part of her circle of friends.

"In 1995, Denver Rocky Mountain News international editor Holger Jensen... [wrote] about staying at the Commodore Hotel in Beirut while covering events in war-torn Lebanon. Jensen recalled that Jennings stayed there as well, 'courting a long succession of Palestinian lovelies including Hanan Ashrawi.'" *

I know it is not good form to speak ill of the dead. But given that he sided with terrorists - and thus was clearly such an enemy of the ideal of the sanctity of human life - I don't feel the need to sugar coat his legacy now that his has been taken.

* Wow. That Ashrawi sure gets around.

Links on Jenning's Bias:

Jennings' Jerusalem Jihad

No Terrorist Hamas in Peter Jennings' Wonderland

Peter's Pro-Palestinian Spin

The Peter Jennings Bias Show

Palestine Pete

Peter Jennings: 20 Years Of Liberal Bias

That is all. Disperse.

Another week...

...another post.

I've read all your posts, but haven't had time to more than comment here and there. I am working my fingers to the bone with work. And there have been movies to watch, friends to see and hobnob, not to mention books to read. Doesn't leave time for much of anything else.

So, here I sit on another Saturday morning with the fresh cool breeze beckoning to me through the windows while cars cruise the quiet streets looking for a parking space to get close to the Farmer's Market. The Mexicans are singing in the pit across the street where a house will be going up. I counter their voices with my own, raised in joyful celebration of another day. The skies are clear but they won't be for long if the weather casters are right. It has been raining for three days, off and on but mostly on. The breathless heat has given way to 55-degree temps and the cool wet touch of nature-laundered winds. I'm relaxed and I can't help smiling.

Last Sunday was a blazing day. In shorts and a halter top I took an armload of books, journals and various bits and pieces of crystal paraphernalia downstairs to sit on the deck and bask in the morning sun. I wanted color on my pale legs. When I got downstairs I realized I forgot my tanning lotion and I was too comfortable so I left it upstairs for later. I got down to the business of a quick journal entry and dove into my book on scents. Nello came down to do her laundry and Pastor restlessly shifted from one patch of shade to another to find some semi-cool spot. The sun felt like a warm balm but it was insidiously venting its spleen on the left side of my neck and shoulders, something I didn't discover until much later in the day.

By the time the landlady came back from her jaunt in my old neighborhood, lolling around on a massage table while someone else worked for a change, basked in lake spray on a cabin cruiser and dealing with 71-year-old Victorian boarding house owners who have only the worst traits of Basil Fawlty, and fending off her friend's perpetual motion of talk and walk hoping to find a few moments of quiet and peace, the warm pink skin of my shoulders, neck and back were an angry red. I finally had a chance to meet the landlady's friend out on the deck under the fading rays of the insidious sun over a glass of Merlot. After her friend left, we sat out on the deck in the gathering shadows and cooling darkness talking and enjoying the fragrant cooling warmth of the summer breezes that kept blowing out the tea light on the table. We quit relighting the candle and sat companionably in the darkness and laughed and talked until nature called me to the porcelain to release some pent up fluids and head up the stairs to another night of work.

All night my body battled against the prickling itching and burning untiL I was forced to check the damage. My blood-red skin was tight and swollen and hot. The next morning after I took a little nap when I finished working, I gingerly put on bra and shirt over my roasted flesh and headed for Mountain Mama's for lavender oil. By the time I got home all I wanted was to rip off my clothes and dive headlong into an ice bath. I opted for two drops of lavender oil gingerly soothed into my thirsty hot skin. I put the rose water and glycerin and the lavender flower water in the fridge, anxiously waiting for it to cool down enough for me to feel its cold dripping comfort. For the next two days I soothed a few more drops of lavender oil into the burn and gladly winced under the cold touch of spray from the fridge. And it worked. I now have soft bronze where angry red stretched from neck to shoulder.

In the midst of my agony I enjoyed the delicious sound of falling rain, at first a thunderous pounding that put out the lights and then the steady susurration of hours-long, earth drenching rain. Around here people pray for, talk about and praise the moisture. To me moisture is dampness, a little bit of spit. Rain is drenchingly, soakingly wet with winds that take your breath away. It rained for three blissful days.

Last night the gray skies and veiling clouds that hid the mountains outside my windows from me muttered and grumbled as they grudgingly let more rain fall on the thirsty earth while I opened a box Beanie sent me. I already knew what was inside. She didn't tell me. I just knew. When I asked her if she had sent me Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince she told me to get out of her mind. Some people would be grateful for a connection like ours, but she was feeling bratty that day and ordered me to stop reading her thoughts. I couldn't help it. The info was just there in the air between us. I had ordered my own copy. I know someone who will enjoy their own copy when mine gets here. Can't give them the copy Beanie sent me since it is inscribed with a beautiful sentiment from one sister and best friend to another. Having the book does change my plans for today a little.

As soon as I finish here, I'll get a quick shower, put clothes on over my bronzed skin, go to the Farmer's Market and bring back some of its summer color and heady aromas, get in the car and drive over to the theater for a feast of Sky High and Must Love Dogs while I eat cheddar popcorn or trial mix full of nuts and fruit and sip water from home, and then come home and finish HP sitting outside as I do the laundry downstairs and enjoy the tantalizing tastes of summer.

Busy as a buzzing bee

Today's post is brought to you by the music of Chely Wright, Lee Ann Womack's I Hope You Dance and Jo Dee Messina who sings my favorite song, My Give a Damn's Busted.

I'm listening to some cowgirl music this morning while the streets are filled with strolling Farmer's Market visits in shorts and T-shirts of every color of the rainbow and a few that don't occur in nature -- and I don't mean their hair color either. It's cool and the mountains out the window are green and beautifully fuzzy against a periwinkle blue sky. There's a big hole across the street containing a wooden platform, but the beep beep beep of the monster digging machines is gone and has been gone since they finished digging the basement of the planned house on Thursday. The landlady said she doesn't see the house finished and roosting there between the dog that lives on the leash in all weathers and the fancy old house where the family takes their big old stylish camper out every other weekend. And a lot has changed in the past couple weeks in my little neighborhood.

The tree hating orc wench's husband came back from Iraq but hadn't been seen, except for one appearance at 3:00 Thursday morning staggering from the inside of an SUV packed with hoarsely hooting he-men and tripping up the sidewalk into the darkened house. On the other side, the college age guys with the revolving door girlfriends are moving out because the house is on the market. That explains the two cleaning crews that ran screaming down the walk and out between the over grown bushes to stand cowering and shaking in the hot sunshine, staring back at the house with its blind eyes and gaping wound of a door.

We have had three days of rain this week and the rain lasted all day and most of the night on Wednesday. The heat has cooled to bearable ranges and the ground greedily sucked up the rain like a sun-crazed lunatic who just crossed the Gobi desert on hands and knees. Need to pray to the rain gods and see if they will grant us a further reprieve.

I received an early check and took it out for a trip to the grocery store and a little meander through Celebration for a silver chain for my Aztec amulet, some candles, a bit of incense, a few stones and a book. Of course I could have bought more, but decided to pace myself. It's easy to drop $50 in a heartbeat even with the small stuff. I did look over some pendulums for a friend who asked me about mine and scanned some possibilities for a birthday gift for Nello next door, but decided to keep a few dollars in my pocket for the essentials -- sandwiches, TP, and Celtic sea salt from Mountain Mama's and maybe a bit of food from the grocery store. (I didn't get as much work this pay period as I could because it just wasn't there. The docs need another ultimatum for them to get dictating, lazy sods.)

There's something about the rain lately. Beanie and her family were rained out on their camping vacation trip earlier this week, but she said she was glad because of the daddy longlegs infesting their camp site. I guess it would get pretty tiring having your family standing up inside your tent at the four corners to keep the roof pushed out so the rain doesn't bring the roof down to your sleeping bag while you sleep on a slowly leaking air mattress. Some people just can't take really rugged living.

My brother turned 45 to match the flour mixed in with what's left of his dishwater blond hair and celebrated his 22nd wedding anniversary. I guess it does pay to get married on your birthday so you can remember your anniversaries. The next day was Beanie's 20th wedding anniversary -- or maybe it was the 21st. I can't keep track any more. She should have been married on her 23rd birthday, too, so I could keep track by a little quick subtraction, but some people are so thoughtless.

In a few hours I will be with my weekend fella. A moonlight walk is planned tonight and tomorrow night before I give in and start working again and we'll dine together outside -- weather depending. However, he is just a transitional fella since I have someone in the wings who has moved forward onto center stage. After all, the problem with fellas like the one this weekend is that they aren't capable of sticking around for the long haul. You can't have a silver or gold anniversary with a long-haired German Shepard. Still, they're wonderful to have around and love to be petted, scratched and hugged, thus satisfying the need to touch, especially if you don't mind being knocked down by enthusiasm or licked in the face. There are worse things.

Time to go shower and get ready for a fun weekend. Disperse.

Just goes to show

I received an email from Vicki Ward about Life's Spices for Seasoned Sistahs, an anthology that contains a story I wrote. We received the Los Angeles Black Book Expo Anthology Award for 2005. The book contains stories about love and life by mature women of color.

If you haven't checked it out, check it out now.

Waiting for Dogot

Actually, I'm waiting for the weekend. Normally I don't wish away the time because I enjoy every moment so much, but I have a male guest coming to spend the whole weekend and I'm looking forward to his company. I've known him for a while and we get along very well, but this coming weekend it will just be us.

He loves walking in the moonlight and early in the morning after a long night together and I'm looking forward to seeing the neighborhood through his eyes and spending the time together. Nothing better than a strong fella at my side to make me feel safe and protected. Someone to share meals with and talk to and spend two whole days with is going to be sheer heaven. I don't think this will be the last time either. There is already talk of more times together. Moving here was a great idea.

I am nearly at my personal goal of 700 reports in ten days. If I make this, 800 reports cannot be far behind and then it's just a matter of maintaining the pace. I have figured out if I have fairly decent reports I can type about 90-95 reports a day and that far exceeds 800 every 10 days and that is good. Looks like it is paying off to work nights instead of during the day and there are a lot fewer distractions. I am finally getting used to sleeping during the day now that I unplug the phone while I sleep and it hasn't been so hot. Pretty soon it will be normal for me to be a vampire again, as I was for so many years. I miss the hottest part of the day in sleep and hot dreams and get the cool of the night while I work. Teenagers and kids' voices drift up through my open windows well past midnight, reminding me of my youth when summers meant no curfews and no 9:00 bedtimes. Train whistles haunt the night when it's darkest just before the sky begins to pale for the sun's rise and the mountains outside my windows begin to bleed crimson fire that burns gold as the sun glances off the rocks and trees. Mostly, it is quiet and peaceful in the night and there are fewer things to pull my attention away from the tasks at hand. I'm still writing mostly during the day, but at night just before I sign on to work I am my most productive. Must be the music of the night that inspires me.

As I think about the kids walking and skipping and riding and prowling through the streets, I am reminded of the days when my mother told me never to walk down the alleys at night. One particular evening the sun sped like a comet into the horizon leaving no trail of fire and light in its wake. I was late. It would have taken an extra few minutes to take the long way home and the alley would have made me a lot less late. I hate being late and my mother wasn't going to be thrilled either because I was expected home for dinner with their friends. It didn't take me long to decide as I jogged down the alley, eyes focused on the road ahead.

Some of the lights had burned out and the lights over the neighbors' garages were broken, jagged milky glass like claws unsheathed toward the murky shadows, glass glittering in the rocks and dirt. I noted the difference, but it didn't make sense until a clot of shadow unfolded from around the corner of a garage and barred my path with a knife shining dully in the rising moon's light. He grabbed my arm and pulled me against him, the reek of him like spicy salami gone rancid in the heat.

"Take off your clothes," he rasped in my ear.

Fear dug icy talons in my heart and dripped through my veins. This is why I wasn't supposed to go through the alley at night. From some deep and silent trickle of strength inside me, I forced my fingers to unbutton my blouse without shaking. "Sure," I quipped. He pushed me away and spun me around to watch me undress. I took my time, was almost seductively slow as I smiled up at him with a mischievous grin. "Could we hurry this up?" I asked as I nodded toward his belt. "I need to get home to call the free clinic before they close. I think I have a dose of the clap and it cuts into my money when I can't work." I reached for his belt and he pulled away, knife glinting in his shaking hand.

"The clap?" he asked.

"Yeah, you know. Burning, itching, dripping and pain?"

"The clap?" he repeated.

I unfastened the snap on my jeans and started to push them down when I heard the skitter of gravel beneath running feet. I looked up. He was gone.

I snapped my jeans and buttoned my shirt as I headed home, calm and steady as a preacher on Sunday morning. A few minutes later I closed the gate behind me and walked up to the back door and let myself in. Mom started carping at me the minute I walked through the door and into the kitchen. The rest is all a blur until I was upstairs in my bedroom changing clothes and getting ready to go back downstairs and pass through the gauntlet of my parents friends when I started shaking and crying, all the emotions I'd held carefully at bay flooding me with hot daggers of tears and wrenching sobs I buried in my pillow.

I'll never know what came over me in that alley or how I got away so easily, but every time I walk past an alley or walk down an alley in the dusk -- like tonight on my way to the library -- I remember that night and my mother's warning not to venture down those dark and dangerous ways. I still walk down alleys, but nothing bad has ever happened to me since that time. I guess I'm too old and too much of a challenge these days. Must be the keys sticking through the fingers of my right hand always ready to strike back. Or maybe there are just better lights. I guess I'll never know.

The rest of the story...

Wednesday before I went to the movies a flock of blue jays flew into the trees in front of my window. Blue jays with their dark Mohawk top knots fluttered, squawked and roosted in the trees for several minutes and then, as one entity, they flew off, scattering in different directions. It's summer. Blue jays don't migrate at this time of the year.

I was stunned and delighted by their antics and the surprise of so many birds in the trees in front of me. Unusual? Yes. Very unusual. But not nearly as unusual as what happened the next day.

I had just finished a very long night of typing operative reports and was checking my email. I had some music playing on the computer and was singing, stretching my vocal cords and calming myself for sleep. I looked out the window just as a huge flock of crows flew into the same trees the blue jays had occupied exactly 24 hours before. The trees, leafy and green, were suddenly black with crows, the air full of their raucous cries. They hopped, twittered and chattered at each other. Just as suddenly as they arrived, the flock took off in a cloud of shining ebony feathers, scattering to the four winds as they flew.

Psycho Ken says when he looks at this house when he comes over he sees a white light surrounding it, blazing with pure white brilliance. Ever since I first walked into this house I have felt at home, resonating with the energy at a deep level. I belong here. The landlady and my next door neighbor, Nello, share my beliefs and feelings about this place. In many ways we are a family, looking out for each other and yet knowing there are times when we need our own space and silence. We share meals and histories and thoughts.

I shared my birds with Nello and she gave me a book to read about totem animals and their meanings. Blue jays and crows/ravens are of the same family. Blue jays signify magic and dabbling in magic. Crows are powerful magical signs and they straddle the unseen and seen worlds. In some Native American cultures crows are believed to have helped create the world. The crow can also be a trickster, harbinger of magic and the touch of the Great Spirit. It is said that once the crow was all white but was changed to black when he gave the wrong message to Apollo.

Whatever this miraculous appearance of birds means, it is magic to me, a gift, just as finding this place was a gift.

My wish for the rest of the world is that they open their eyes to the magic in the world all around them and not to get so caught up in the day to day problems and details that they forget to look around them and accept the gifts of the Almighty.

That first blue jay I saw when I moved here was a welcome sight, a gift and a reminder that though I was far from the cabin where I spent two peaceful and wondrous years the sights and sounds of the natural world were still around me in the song of the birds that greet the morning, the beautiful huge fluttering yellow butterflies I first mistook for falling leaves, and the squirrel porn performed in the crook of the tree just outside my window. All of it is a gift to enjoy every single day if we only take the time to stop and look.