I wish...

I was nicer
it didn't depend on how others treated me
I felt good enough for that to be enough
my roof didn't leak
my yard never needed mowing
I had unlimited time to show my kids how much I adore them
I exhibited more grace... and less confusion
There was such thing as time travel
And that I wouldn't screw it up, if there were
there was time to sew everyone who was cold a nice, warm quilt
no one was plagued by fear
everyone had enough to eat
shoes were free
shopping for bras didn't cause aneurisms
Mulder and Scully never "hooked up"
there was no such thing as (you fill this one in)

But if wishes were horses... we'd all be knee deep in crap (thank you, Romano)

I'm sitting here at (checks clock) 2:26am, wishing there was no such thing as writer's block coupled with deadlines. Sometimes, the words just won't come. I'm currently in training to write on demand, although it's more speechwriting than actual "writing" writing. Once a week I have to prepare a speech of sorts, and I write the script beforehand. I like the structure of the script, although I really need to get away from that because it's usually so stale by the time it's delivered. And stale don't move people.

I think the difficulty (I use the term loosely -- not many of us truly have "difficult" lives...) of my task is compounded by the recent speed reading I applied to a nifty little book entitled Leadership and Self-Deception Getting out of the Box. What a great book --but it's pretty profound, and it's temporarily vice-gripped my mind. Can't stop thinking about it. I highly recommend it to anyone. Period. Anything you do in life can be positively influenced by the principles contained in this slim yet impactful book. (Yeah, "impactful" doesn't sound like a word to me either but what do you expect --it's after 2am)

That was the end of this evening's PSA

Here's a modern day tale: Once upon a time, there was a person who wanted more than anything to be a writer. But deadlines caused performance anxiety, which led to the crippling fear that nothing would issue forth from the fingertips, which became a self-fulfilling prophecy for the Writer to Be, and the WtB changed courses... embarking on a mad voyage down the paths of least resistance. WtB realized years later what could have been but fought indecision and fear in enbarking on the long forgotten dream of the past. Caught up in the inertia of self-doubt, the WtB felt powerless to change the patterns of the past.

Moral? Don't be like WtB. Wishes may be exercises in futility...or they can be the bridge to something greater than you've ever imagined. Never stop wishing.

Peace; and good night.

Time Passages

Every year around the end of October, I get pensive and tend to dwell too much on the past. My mother passed away at the end of October. So every year around that time, I start taking stock of my life...

I think mostly about guys. Yeah, typical. I'm sorry I cannot report a fixation on the more profound topics like politics or religion... Nope; for me it all comes down to the dudes.

Not just any dudes, either. No -- this is the short list of Guys Who've Had Significant Influence On My Life.

Mostly, I remember one guy in particular... but this isn't just one of the guys on the Short List... no this was the Big One. The First Love guy. Every woman's romantic journey starts somewhere, and most of us mark it by the first guy we dated, or the first guy we crushed on. And that's okay. When I compartmentalize them into neat little categories I have to name Patrick Phelan as the Point A on my romantic Odyssey. Even if we were only nine at the time... and he "liked" my friend more than me. Okay, he didn't know I was alive; but let's not split hairs.
And then there was Richard. The first...okay, the ONLY, high school relationship. But that was more an experiment in endurance than anything else; the central theme being who could get out alive, through the haze of smoke (both the legal and the illicit) and the after-effects of ill-gotten beer.

No; for the real Point A in my journey of sexual awakening, I'd have to give that honor to someone I never even kissed. No, really. And I was 17 when I met him, too -- well-past the age when a kiss is any big deal.

This guy towered over me -- I'm pretty short (5'0") and he was easily 6'4. He was a lot older than me ("but well within range," my fevered teen-aged inner romantic always whispered) and he was the counselor at a private school I attended in my last year of High School.

Oh, man I fell so hard for that guy. I would dream up reasons to go and have "office time" with him... which wasn't hard to do, as I was from a pretty unstable background and lived in a youth home at the time I met him. And before I go any further let me clarify: no, "office time" isn't a euphemism for sex. (Hey, man, I'm talking spiritual stuff here...)

He was patient and kind, and listened with longsuffering endurance to my breathless ramblings... and it didn't hurt that he was gorgeous and in a band, and had longish hair, and had biceps that were cut like a lumberjack's (only without all the dirt and grime.)

Long story short, I graduated, and his band hit lean times, so I didn't see too much of him for a while.

Until I went to a small two-year college in a Dallas suburb, and in the middle of my - oh, who am I kidding, I don't remember which semester- Suffice to say, that he ended up on a construction crew on campus, the offices of which were located in a trailer which I could see right out my dorm bedroom window.

Oh, the misty-haloed fantasies the view of that trailer sparked... white steeds, armored Knight -- something along the line of Buttercup's jump from the window at the end of Princess Bride...(only, not into Andre' the Giant's waiting arms...)

I visited him every.single.day. And brought him a loaf of my homemade banana bread with me... because it was his favorite. It didn't hurt that he wore those sleeveless undershirts almost every day (Oh! I got to see so much of his skin!) due to the hot working conditions. And he looked like a bronze god from working in the sun all day... and his brown hair now had natural blonde highlights in it the likes of which would make Bon Jovi fire his hairstylist...

But... it was his soul I was falling for; no, really! It just came in a really. fine. package.

And just when I was at my absolute worst point -- too far gone for any kind of therapy-- his job ended, and he was no longer outside my dorm room window.

But that wasn't the end...

We attended the same stadium-sized church, and he was on the youth staff there. So, yeah. I saw a lot of him still... And the memory is fuzzy, yes, but I recall getting more than one phone call from him at the dorm payphone (we weren't allowed phones in our dorms).

One in particular, I'll never forget. It was when he called to tell me that he was moving on... going back home out west. I was so crushed that he was leaving, and being the stoic that I am, I couldn't let him know I would be hurt by this knowledge, so I basically told him to have a nice life, and hung up on him. Nice, huh?

I went on to dodge a couple more phone calls from him after I'd graduated and gone back to the youth home... including one in which he'd tried to tell me he was getting married. Our mutual friend filled me in, though... letting me know that his intended was the same height...had the same hair color...and even the same first name as mine...

Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe he was just trying to bury the memory of the besotted little teen-aged girl whose attentions made him feel like Superman.

I mean, what guy doesn't want to be Superman, right?

first days

I've been through this before; I should be jaded and take it in stride this time around. In some ways, I am; the feelings are dulled, a little bit. I've been in the same position before, although with the oldest one, not the youngest. I'm still the same person, repeating half-remembered rituals of pick up and drop off... and yet, this time is so much more poignant. Even though the "shine" may be off the experience, this is the last time I will have this "first."

Today, our baby went to Kindergarten.

(Well... yesterday, actually as I got interrupted while trying to write this.)

She loves it, too. And now that our baby, our youngest, has successfully entered the dawn of her school career, I realize that we are on the downward slope of life -- blink and we'll miss something.

Remember that scene at the end of the movie Parenthood? (love that movie, btw) The scene where Gil and Karen's youngest child has just ruined their daughter's school play? And there is a montage of all the family members enjoying the simulated roller coaster sensation? I never got that. Well, I got it...but with this being the last time I'll send a child off to kindergarten, I finally get a deeper meaning of the whole "roller coaster ride that is life" thing, and it is this:

The slowest part of the ride is also the shortest -- the ascent. When you are up fifteen times a night with a newborn, and bombarded by an endless cascade of diapers and teething, and just get one (reluctantly!) out of diapers when another is on the way... Well, you get the picture; it seems this phase of your life is an eternity, and you wonder if you'll ever get a good night's sleep again... And it does seem like the longest stretch of time in your life... until you get the last one in kindergarten, and before you really clear the sleep (deprivation) from your eyes, you've hit the top of the ascent...

And there is this breathless moment, where time seems to stand still for the tiniest moment... and then WHOOSH! your flinging down the technically longest part of the ride... but it doesn't feel that way because it goes by so damn fast.

I used to shrug off the advice of people who would tell me, "enjoy them while they're little, dear; they will be grown before you know it..." and I'd think, "yeah, yeah; I got it..."

Boy, was I arrogant. Seriously.

Oh, I tried; I did... up until my youngest hit the terrible two's (from which she has yet to emerge, imo.) and from then, everything but this moment has been a blur. I just sent my baby off to kindergarten...

And I feel a... breathless sensation...

Maiden voyage

First time blog....and my mind is a blank. Typical. Too many thoughts, usually. Can't get mental peace enough to fall asleep. Hopefully this will change, as I'm usually un-shut-up-able.