Power came on at noon.

Holy hell...

(and hellish it was.)

No one mentions more than the heat and eternal damnation of hell much,

but I am entirely certain hell also has 100% humidity and mosquitoes.

I wondered

as we were going on week 3 with no power

how long it would be

before one's mind acclimated to the discomfort?

I wasn't sure.

Well
only sure
that it sure as hell takes longer than a couple of weeks to acclimate to sudden changes in physical levels of comfort.

This called to mind
how different this is
from how long it takes to acclimate yourself to mental levels of discomfort...

Which in turn made me realize
you can't make the same distinction about mental discomfort
because most levels of mental discomfort don't come on suddenly...

those kinds are sneakier
I mean they are
for me anyway...
it's been a long slow process
I suppose.

I don't recommend in either case experiencing both kinds at the same time though...

You wind up making really sorry assed blogposts for one thing.



Normally,
(and I use that word loosely in references where I am involved )

I consider myself fairly low maintenance.
I don't have a lot of things that I need to make me happy in the worldly sense and I can put up with hassles, things breaking, not having something in the house work (member the sink? guess who's still screwing with that??)

and seriously.
No fancy haircuts, manicures or pedicures.
Not a big shopper.
Not a shopper period.
Not a jewelry hound
I think I have been given flowers twice in the last 16 years of marriage and 3 of dating.

.................
........


I wonder though if I am high maintenance in the mind sense?


It's starting to occur to me that I just might be.

I'm lousy at hanging in without some sort of feedback from my significant other.
I'm resentful at his attempts when it is so obviously herniating and dis pleasuring him when he does make one.

Truth: I am really pissed Tony had us stay for the storm. I did my best to mitigate my fear by being prepared,

but--
ack...
I was afraid for me and the kids
and thoroughly pissed that he couldn't see it
or very disappointed that he wouldn't
and that he didn't factor that into his decision,
when that is always what I do when I make decisions where he is concerned.

I frankly feel stupid for doing it--
not because of the give and take of it,

but because handling him this way may not be what he values in the first place.

Operating under this kind of false assumption puts me on the short school bus.
No lie.

Making sacrifices,
learning
stretching
bending
reaching

to do things or see things

or even accept things

that make no difference to him
one way or the other.

It feels pretty fucking stupid.

Obviously I have a serious problem with feeling not just stupid--

but
FUCKING STUPID.


I'll think about this more in AC and see if the analysis is any less harsh or potty mouthed.

I suspect it might be.

Though I wonder if it is because I'm being bought off by the change in my worldly state (read here humidity/temperature levels)

or a change in my mental one...snort.

which I will no further delve into today.

Still living in a no power, no news bubble.
Coupled with poor marital communication
and a general sense that even the suckiness of living
and learning shit and maybe needing to learn it again...
hell
and again and AGAIN--

can't last forever.

...right?

I mean---

right?

go ahead

humor me.

While God in any previously religious format
holds nothing for me now
I do think about this poem from time to time
and about being able to empty yourself to a higher power

and okay
so I question that idea often
and hold anything that involves submission or acquiesence suspect,
I do go back to this prayer from time to time
as its tone conveys a sense of where I find myself
as I claw my way through midlife.

grimly determined and hopeful that you get some sort of space in the Universe for making a damn effort.

My Lord God
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following
your will does not mean
that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that my desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope that I have that desire
in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything
apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this
you will lead me by the right road
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always
though I may seem to be lost
and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear,
for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me
to face my perils alone.
Thomas Merton (1915-1968)

Dear Officers, Deputy Sheriffs & Linemen,

I'm sorry you have to serve sorry ass, self entitled whiners.

I'm sorry you have to listen to self-absorbed, unprepared wastes of space who refuse to do anything about their predicament, but make sarcastic, unkind remarks about how you are doing your job.

I'm sorry you have to put up with that in lieu of looking after the homes you lost or that were damaged.

I'm sorry you can't be with your wife or husband taking care of the needs your family has.

I'm sorry people have so little number sense they can't get what 4.3 million people out without power really means.

I'm sorry you have to grit your teeth and let all the nasty comments about where you should really be or what you should be doing and not give some of these folks, barely evolved past apes, a piece of your mind or at the very least a well deserved punch in the mouth.

I want to thank you for standing out in a store parking lot to make sure people get in safely and fairly.

I want to thank you for standing out in the middle of a busy intersection with no water directing traffic for hours at a time.

I want to thank you for pulling double shifts, sleeping at work and eating out of cans and boxes so there are enough of you to man a work crew or patrol for looters round the clock.

I want to thank you for stopping to help that little old lady down the street get her groceries out of the car and taking the branches off the playground equipment so the kids in the neighborhood could play.

I want you to thank you for answering the same damn questions over and over without passing out from exasperation. Surely you risk neurons working with some of us.

You all hear a lot in a day, but somehow I don't think you hear enough thank yous.

So.

Thank you.

This has to be short...it's a race against the generator...

I stole a flag today.

You know now that I think about it.

Stole is such an ugly word.

I prefer rescue.

I rescued a US flag today.

better.

I was driving down a feeder road and noticed Old Glory on a flag pole that was laying at about a thrity degree angle to the ground...the flag itself was in knots and shreds.

Without another thought other than grade A pissed off ones
I pulled into the Chevron and went in looking for the owner.

"Is that ya'lls flag pole there on the corner?

"What? oh...Yes."

"Hey man, you can't just leave our flag out there like that. It's not right."

Thick middle Eastern accent...
"Madam we are in a hurricane, we have no time for that."

"Oh yeah?
You have time to sell warm beer and soda to Americans
and you took time to come here and run a business in America...
what say you go on out there and take care of that American flag you took the time to fly?"

"Madam we have been very busy--

I interrupt him...

You can't be too busy that hurricane was three days ago
and I know for a fact your doors were open right after noon on Saturday...man! That's three days that flag has been left out there like that. Show some respect!"

"If you don't like it lady (yup he was mad I went from Madam to Lady) you go take it down"

"No problem, I'll be happy to help you."

"Never mind! NEver mind I will do it!"

"When?"

"Do not bother me, lady, I am very busy."

"YOU BETTER TAKE DOWN THAT FLAG!"

Hope leaves, but not before she notices she had a little audience and not just any audience, but homeschool mama audience..."hello Hope, umm so how are things???mind you I have been off homeschool radar for about a three months so this hope sighting will precede me, I am sure...poor woman was pretty mortified, but I was feeling GREAT!!

I hadn't chewed anyone's ass in a while...ahhhh

It's like riding a bike.

So anyway I go home find my camera, scissors and come back to the scene of the desecration.

I manage to reach the bottom clip of the flag and get that down, but the top part I have to jump up and grab the pole to reach...then I put an ankle over the pole to hold it down low enough to reach it with my other hand.

I'm pretty pleased with how things ar going and notice that the two utility guys waiting to use the phone are pretty pleased, too.

I grin.
Hop down.

Walk to the car and put the flag through the open window of my car.
Still smiling conspiratorily at my witnesses I walk around, get in and drive off.

I figure I had to take it.
If that asshole didnt' know how to fly our flag properly,
he sure as hell wouldn't know how to discard it either.

So Marci, see there??
I told you sooner or later I'd have to make a scene somewhere.
It was only a matter of time...

I went to bed last night for the first time
in a way I hadn't in a long time.

I went before:

I was completely tapped out
and wouldn't remember the walk to my bedroom

I had passed out on the couch

or

did the slow fade during the middle of a book or movie.

It was just me and my brain
and
while that may seem particularly scary to those who know me IRL
I have to say
it was moderately--
(ok pretty damn)
for me, too.

Not just because of the company I have to keep,
(me and my brain),
but because

I
hate
hate
hate
the dark.

hate.
it.

With no power
not only is it dark,
but it's deathly quiet.
even the crickets weren't doing their usually chirpy jibber jabber.

That black forbidding background
against a mind dying to process the day
is not a prospect I was enthused over.

To combat my predicament
I texted a friend who I knew would be as unsupportive
as I was of myself in this disgusting situation--

I said I hate being afraid of the dark
I only hate more that I have made no inroads with this weakness in the last forty years.

So I texted
and
okay
okay
I admit it...
texting gave me a little light from the LCD...

so anyway

The texts went back and forth
and
after I was through asserting I was pretty sure the flesh eating zombies were far more interested in cocky, arrogant prototypical jarhead meat than they would ever be of Texas mama meat,

I wondered if said friend would be equally disgusted to know
he inadvertantly offered some aid and comfort
by the very act of pushing "send"?
when he texted advice to "look out for what was behind me" or when he said there were "reports of undead roaming the streets of Houston" did it occur to him that the screen lit RIGHT UP...haaa.

I'll say it for him..."daaaaaaaamit.."

soon after

while I laid at the foot of the bed
and a breeze blew in from the window over me,

I noticed the cool air also cut through to my mind
and all the thoughts that I hadn't had time to do much with
in the middle of meal making,
or recon trips to see
what was open,
what roads were clear
and if friends and families' homes were okay.

I laid there straining to make out objects in the dark
and slowly began to focus and be grateful for the breeze
and how perfectly it seemed to be reaching through the window
and laying hands on me, hot and damp
in spite of a
a tank and running shorts and favorite poncho liner...(google that...everyone should have a poncho liner)

the air seemed to soften me up like a masseuse might after a long run
or a tough workout on the mats
it reminded me I was grateful for a few other things
and so I pulled a Pollyana
and put my mind to ticking through the 'glads'
Doing this afforded me an ability to
and set aside
just how much the dark was trying to fold in on me.

I thought about how well stocked we had been
how the children had had hot meals and snacks and a mama unworried about providing.

My mind went to the long line I had seen which had gone from the front door of a conveneinece store to the street selling warm beer--seems there was an altercation because there were also three police cruisers and an ambulance hauling someone away... How is this a 'glad'??

Well I'm glad I'm not so fucked up
I'll stand in a long freaking line for hot beer
in broad daylight
in front of God and everybody
advertising that fact
much less be willing to get my ass kicked over it

and I'm glad that when this stuff happened over gas a few days earlier
I was able to jump out of the way and
not get hit by a highly pissed off citizen still enraged over loosing his place in the gas line...
only thing that sob said when I took my hands off the hood of his car
and my feet landed back on the cement was,
"oh man, that coulda been expensive..."
I wanted to punch him in his liver.
(yeah yeah,but for me violent thoughts can BE a 'glad'. It just all depends.)

I thought about the looters I chased off with my car and how there was a part of me that scared me when I realized how much that part of me wanted to run them over with my car. (refer back to previous scenario...it's aaallllll about the payback.)

Finally, I thought about all the times being fit,
or having taken the time to plan and think through what was going on
or about to happen with this hurricane
had made the road a little more smooth for us.
Contingency plans make me quiver I tell ya!
Hey, I can jump Crown Vic bumpers can't I? I'm getting fitted for my cape anyday...

(It's amazing to note just how collectively we as a community ride the line between order and chaos--but that is another post.)

Anyway after all those glads...I must have fallen asleep.

Deep sleep.


I dreamed about guns and livers and all manner of slayed zombies.

8:32pm, Saturday

It's black outside.

They say at least 3 millon people on the Texas Coast are without power.

I can't vouch for 3 million, but I can for the folks around here...it is pitch black...
cept for us...
we have a generator.

We also have houses that are still standing and minds and bodies a little tired, but blessed nonetheless.

I had Tony get this computer hooked up to the generator and so I sit here in this unearthly glow answering email and posting so that I can say thank you to all the folks that commented.

To be sure, I was really surprised.
Sage...thanks guy. You were kind to post about it.
I would like to think all the good wishes on and off blog were the stuff that gave us such a good outcome...in spite of the ragged lead gutted night.

I have lots of stories to tell and I will tomorrow...the generator needs rest..lol...

but one thing I will say now...
and that is that it occurred to me as I was working and doing all the things you do when you have kids and move through the day,
how lucky we are to be able to flip a switch,
run a bath, wash out a kids booboo,
eat a hot meal,
not worry about bad guys taking from us
and just know what time and day of the week it is
because your mind isn't ovvupied with just surviving something or the other ...

It's trite to say this sort of thing makes you think
because really saying that suggests maybe you don't enough.

I work a lot of mil support for Marines...and everytime someone in the neighborhood complained about the heat or having to do an ordinary thing in an extraordinary way I thought of those jarheads and what they do day in and day out.

I made some mental notes and again...I'll save them for tomorrow.

Goodnight.

It's so freaking hot.

Oven hot.

Even before a 1/2 mile warm up I can feel sweat pooling between my shoulder blades and breasts.

Other Crossfitters in the class ahead are finishing their last rounds.
I hate watching.
I love watching.
In an hour I'll be where they are.
Not on the mat
or with the same weight
or scuff marks.
just where they are
Worn to your very middle self.
Raw.
Singed.
Ticking.
High.

Then I think,
I bet if I sneak out right now no one would miss me--
'cept my other two personalities who would get into a fight in my head over just what kind of loser I am,
sorry
or
sorry assed.

I stay.

6 rounds and 300 reps
of weight slinging and ground pounding later
with only 5 of us sick SOBs
who pick late Friday afternoon to workout,
the head trainer turns his attention on me
and the weight I'm about to pick up.

It's 30 pounds I had either been squatting, sitting up or stepping up on a 28 inch box with.

After 6 rounds
30 pounds feels like 100 pounds
and the step up box has taken on Mt. Fuji-like proportions
and in fact, I was just thinking these very things
when the attention I keep bitching about not getting from anyone
settles on me in my most ass beaten state.

Figures.

Carlos, head Nazi--er trainer...head trainer nods at the 50 pounds sitting next to the 30 I had been using and says with a half smile and glint in his eye, "Hey, why don't you try using the 50, you're ready... it's only one more round." He grinned again and reached for the weight confident that I was in.

Crap.
I was.
Asshole.

Holy hell...who's walking away from that???
Not me.
I'm retarded.
and at the time without enough breath to do more than nod.

No.
Not retarded.
Hammered down like that to your most distilled--
it's like a clean drunk--
You say and do exactly what you are thinking...you are too exhausted for bullshit.

He had to keep me from falling off the box a few times. I think my quivering quads and the tendons standing out on my neck may have given me away.

Still...he was right, I was ready and I hadn't thought I was.

second from the left.

I started another blog--


for about a week.
Way too much lamentation though.


I am not even sure what the reasoning was, but it just seemed too hard to put up here or to even address at all..


These things... they have been hard for awhile.


but,


I think I am in some sort of remission now. I don't know if I stopped struggling or the struggle stopped in me.
*smallish shrug/smaller smile

I do know, if I don't take care of some fundamental issues things will just come back and bite me on the ass sooner or later and when I don't know again-- I get reminded and the reminders are starting to hurt the back of my head...where they slap me. Hard.

I'm a slow learner.


but then, I guess they do for all of us--
bite us I mean...


some things you see coming


and some you don't


or maybe sometimes you just don't want to see it coming when it is

or see it coming when it really isn't...



but--
It's been raining down on my head intermittently for as long as I can remember.


I liken it to being chased by a beast intent on eating you alive.


See beast.
Run.
Don't look back.
Just run like hell.
Feel the blood pumping,
the burn in your lungs
you just go
and pretty soon
the beast gets tired and
moves on to someone or something else


nothing in life, good or bad, is as focused on you as your own paranoia would have you believe--as focused as you can be on you.


only it doesn't matter if you know this or not
because


you are still running


just running


and running


and in the process


you grow pretty confident in your ability to outrun it


and you don't give a shit

if it's still behind you or not anymore.


it becomes immaterial in light of the fact that


now you feel safe in the knowledge


you are fine as long as you


are running.


it's stupid

and

flawed

and exquisitely safe.


or was--

was because it was a false sense of security,
feeling on top of things because one is moving.

I don't think that tactic is entriely without merit...a moving target is harder to get to, but no matter what that mindset still makes me a target. I make myself a target.

This summer...

exhaling

it was the worst one I ever had.

No point in getting into all the gory details, I was pretty through trying to figure out how to live and be a good mom/person/wife though.

I won't say it's all better, but I think it could be. If I keep my own mitts out of it so much. I tried to tell those around me I trusted just how bad it was getting but, I couldn't seem to get my voice to carry through this clear sound proof bubble I was hunkered down in. Really I was resentful no one who supposedly cared about me bothered to learn to read lips or take up sign language in their free time. WTF?!

And I wonder if tempting the current to carry me away in the middle of a moonlit night or not being able to tell the most important people in my life just how bad it was getting was a function of feeling Godless or untethered/forsaken...I don't know. I only know that I didn't do it, but I had never wanted out--just out as much as I did this summer.


There's a line in a Gary Paulsen book called Hatchet. The main character in the book, faces utter desolation when he watches his rescue plane flying away leaving him to fend for himself in the Canadian wilderness. After he deals with the absolute desire to no longer live-- he found, left in the indelible groove his own attempts at self destruction made in his being, this realization:

"He had to find new ways to be what he had become."


Find. new. ways.

I think I have--

while storming around like a bull in a china shop--

maybe found some new ways

or maybe been given some new ways is more accurate.

I don't pray for things to happenso much anymore. I pray for the clarity to see when they are happening because more likely they are happening all the time in perfection and only skewed when I get my mitts on them...

so things are maybe clearer, I think?

Working again.

Using my mind at a profession,

Using my body in a gym-- a hard place-- figuratively and literally. I never go there thinking I can really do it and I always come out wondering how the hell I did.

cherishing my friends...

Sarah, Lisa and Chris who always have my back without asking for a job description.

Jeanni, Marci and Lana--who know who I am, who I want to be and the parts of me I hate-- you all know.

Ken and Jolie-- You've been there and you keep reminding me it's all part of the process. Man! I'm glad you have senses of humor and short term memory problems so I can keep repeating myself.

To J'son--you don't lie. I don't always like what you have to say, but I always trust it.

To Mike. What can I say that wouldn't be redundant? Only don't let it all go to your head, boy, 'cause you are not only a brother, but also proof positive I am a masochist.

and finally Tony, my husband. You remain unwavering and dedicated and loving.

New ways...and old ways made new.