Monday, Monday

April 25th, 2005

Since I am still reeling from the party extravaganza of my father’s 70th birthday party, I have not much to say. Or actually, I don’t have the brain power to really form much of a sentence. You see, it is almost 7:00 pm, I have not eaten dinner yet, I have drank one glass of wine (and feel’n it, I am such a cheap lay), the baby is in bed, the others are watching TV, and we did go to swimming lessons this afternoon. Good god, three small children in a large pool area, swimming…it is enough to give even the most hard-asses of mothers a rung out, need to have a drink, help me please sort of feeling.

So, what I have for all my homies today are two funny links.

Thanks to my husband for sharing this funny little link about being fugly. I like these girls!

Thanks to the Fugly girls for letting me find this movie link. I love the add…Pajiba (rhymes with vagina): worth a link just because of that.

You gotta love the internet.

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Ode to Coffee

April 21st, 2005

Oh sweet coffee
You are my morning
My afternoon too
Without you I am a hollow shell
You bring me to life
I feel your warmth inside me
Ye brown enticing water
Oh, how I love you

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…in time.

March 23rd, 2005

Late fall last year, I had my own “just one average night” sort of experience. Below is an excerpt from a correspondence in which I wrote about it. It is written the day after witnessing a semi slam into a series of cars that were waiting to merge onto a different intersate…

The breaking sun flooding in from the east through the rear window of my Honda, over my shoulder, revealing fingerprints on the windshield. Cool Minnesota morning. Windows down. The hairs on my arms up. Memories appear in first person: “My kid is a Cooper Honor student,” the bumper sticker on the car in front of me says. I am stopped on Interstate 394 waiting in a metered-merge lane for Interstate 494. Is cooper still a high school? I thought to myself. Didn’t it close? I am going to make my 8:00 AM meeting. I am relaxed, unconcerned about the morning congestion. I reach out for the stereo to switch from the radio to the cd player. I watch my hand as it finds the button on the dash.

BAM!

No screech, no scream. Just metal on metal. A silent picture show in my rearview mirror—a white semi-tractor with half its face ripped off. Its trailer rising up like the hair on the back of a cat. A car spinning toward the shoulder, another jammed forward into the middle lane of traffic. The look of horror in my own reflection. A pain in my back. I was not hit. Out of my car. Standing on the tarmac with my cell phone at my ear. The words of the 911 operator—the only thing tying me into the reality of the situation. The entire Interstate in front of me has come to a stop. Four lanes frozen in shock and sunlight. The glitter of broken glass is magical. “There is a physician on the scene,” the operator’s voice forcing itself into my head.

“What should I do?”

“Get back into your car. Get off the Interstate.”

“Should I leave?”

“Yes. Leave.”

Three minutes later I am pulling into a corporate parking garage, take the elevator to the fourth floor and walk into a conference room. I am now 5 minutes late. The meeting has started without me. The topic is how to best move large volumes of financial data from the Dallas office to the Minneapolis office on a nightly basis.

The next day I drive to work in a shroud of sadness—anxious as I squeeze between a cement truck and an eighteen-wheeler as I change lanes in the Lowry Tunnel. As I pass the scene of the accident, I slow to examine the skid marks on the highway. He did try to stop. I wonder what happened to him. Did he live? God, the recovery must be excruciating. Time is different today. I should have lunch with Adam. I shouldn’t waste a single moment. Who will I lose in a car accident? in an oxygen tent? in the night? in time.

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Blogging Changes Everything

March 21st, 2005

Since accepting my assignment as guest host on circuslunch, my days have appeared a bit different to me. I have allowed my mind to wander, noticing and languishing on the small parts of the day: The terse, guarded words exchanged between the couple behind me at the bakery, the length of traffic lights on the freeway entrances, the panty lines of the woman at the paint store, the smell of Clementine oranges under my finger nails, the sun moving across the dinning of room wall, the dry cracked knuckles of the hand I am holding—the shape of things and movements of life. Blogging is a bit like a breathing exercise. As you breathe in you suddenly become aware of the things that you normally take for granted. The most transparent things—time and air—become primary. Your chest fills with air and you count the moments until you take your next breath. You become very present. Connected with your body and the small space you occupy in the world. And in the exhaling, as in the writing, there is a rush. Time seems to accelerate for a few brief moments and the world is more vivid–revealing the nature of things rather than just the surface of them. You are pulled into the experience of simply living again. Maybe even living better.

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Random thoughts

January 28th, 2005

I have no problem putting a pink bib on my little baby boy, but I am feeling a bit guilty about the pink socks we put on this morning.