Dreams: Day 4

The prompt for day one of NaBloPoMo18 was "What's your dream?" When I read the prompt I was sitting on a small stool at the farmer's market where I work one of my part-time jobs. Rain was pounding the corrugated plastic roof and customers were scarce. I realized dreams -- the kind where you wish for something, not the sleeping kind -- are something I rarely think about. They don't matter much to me at this stage of my life. Or maybe it's just that I've been teased by them too often. I don't tend to tempt fate with dreams these days. I know that sounds cynical, but I'm more likely to deal with what's in front of me than to imagine that things could be different. So here is my dream poem. What would yours look like?

Dreams

Bleached fish bones

Musty towels, forgotten in the washer

Chewing gum stuck to the bottom of a school desk

Spill of sour milk

Torn paper bag

Empty toilet paper tube

Cup of cold coffee

Cheating boyfriend

Dried-up bottle of Chanel perfume

Frayed rope swing

Alarm clock set to the wrong time

Rusty roller skate

Lonely clown

Damp wadded tissue

Faded for-sale sign

Pair of deuces

Smear of rancid butter

Blood on a clean white sheet

Backed up toilet

Moldy Wonder bread

Unresolved chord

Squirrel-eaten November jack-o-lantern

Missed shot at the final buzzer

Scratchy moth-eaten wool sweater

Flat tire and no spare in the trunk

Toilet paper stuck to the bottom of a shoe

Torn ear on a feral cat

A surprise package in the mail.

Our special today is vaginas. Day 3

My posts have been pretty serious so far this month. All two of them. So here's something a little more light-hearted.

I have a file of saved posts on Facebook -- a collection they call it -- where I save interesting things I might want to share or write about here. Those of you who have been reading for a while will probably not be surprised that one topic dominates my reticulated collection. Did you guess politics? If you said yes, you haven't been reading here long enough. If you guessed vaginas ..... Ding! Ding! Ding!

It kind of bothers me, if I'm being honest, that vaginas have become so trendy, because I am the one who writes about vaginas. (Emphasis mine.) That's my niche. Check out my  labias labels and see how many posts I've written about vaginas. Oh, sure, Eve Ensler wrote The Vagina Monologues and inappropriately forced the poor vagina to represent the entirety of the female lady bits, much to every feminist's dismay. But I'm pretty sure I was the first person to inappropriately blog about vaginas with such dedicated regularity. Not my own vagina, thank you very much, but everybody else's. And now the vagina has become an actual trend. A trend I can only assume I started.

Don't believe me? Let me offer a couple of examples.

Enough said.

How about this incredibly ugly vagina shawl, which makes the wearer look like her head is sticking out of a large, pink vagina? OK, to be fair, I don't think this scarf was meant to look like a vagina. It also comes (no pun intended) in blue (do not let your kids talk you into googling "blue waffle," no matter how much they beg) and red (which would make your head look like it's coming out of a period vagina). I suppose if you want to walk around looking like you're constantly being reborn, you could spend 750 pounds ($973.65) on this fur baby, but are you really that stupid? Be a trend-setter, not a trend-follower. Resist the vagina shawl.

Anyway ... Any beer drinkers in the house? I see your hands going up. Any vagina-beer drinkers in the house? Anybody? Bueller?



Turns out these guys can make beer with the "lactic acid bacteria" found in a Czech model's vagina. Or from your girlfriend's vagina. Or, I would assume, your own vagina, should you want to drink your own vagina. And by consuming this magical beer, you will achieve ..... I'm not sure. I'm confused by the entire concept. Somehow by drinking beer made from the magical vaginal bacteria of this one Czech model a person will .... what? Feel like a sexy magical Czech model? Feel like they've fucked a magical Czech model? Become attractive to women who look like magical Czech models? Get drunk? I don't get it and this is my trend!

I don't understand the purpose of vagina beer. And that's a problem, because I've written a lot about vaginas and I have a vagina, so I know vaginas. Vagina  beer is simply trying too hard. Grow the fuck up.

Obviously I've started a trend, which is a double-edged sword. On the plus side, my Facebook file will be fat with potential vagina fodder. OTOH, maybe you're getting bored with vaginas and you're ready to move on to the next cutting edge topic and you're looking to me to start something. Something that can top even vaginas.

I fear I'm a one-trend woman. I'm not sure I have two trends in me. Vaginas have been so good to me that I haven't been hungry. I haven't been looking for the next never-trendy topic that no other blogger will touch.

In other words, we might be stuck with vaginas, my friends. Stuck with, I said, not stuck in. Where was your mind?

Anyway, you never forget your first, so feel free to continue sending me interesting vagina stories. (You know who you are.) And I will continue to write about them until I feel the next .... oh .... oh ..... oh .... YES ..... trend coming on.

The last time: Day 2

I joined a support group on Facebook for bloggers who are doing NaBloPoMo, and today was my day to suggest a prompt to the group. I chose this one: Write about a last time that you didn't know would be the last. I've been thinking a lot about last times over the past couple of months.

The last time I talked to my mom on the phone she had called to tell me my cousin, two years older than me, had died. We didn't talk long. I was fixing dinner and she was watching one of her shows, but we promised we'd talk longer soon.

The last time I saw her before her final stroke was when I was home for her birthday party, which I wrote about yesterday. I'm grateful for that. It was a practically perfect trip, but if I'd known it was the last time .... I can't really think of anything I'd have done different.

Mostly over the past couple of months I've thought about the last times I am aware of. Cleaning out Mom's house and knowing it was not only the last time I'd sit at her kitchen table, but possibly the last time I'd go home. Funny how I couldn't wait to leave that little town in SW Iowa when I was 17, but it never stopped being home to me. 

And so overlying the grief of my mom's death has been this second shadow of grief over the things I'll probably never do again in my hometown.

I'll never scoop the loop uptown. Back when gas was a quarter we spent hours riding around, and many of those hours were spent circling that square with the county courthouse in the center. I'm told the kids are no longer allowed to scoop the loop. The police make them turn off if they go around too often. I call bullshit, but I don't live there. And the square that used to be so busy isn't any more anyway. The grocery store and dime stores are gone. A chain grocery store and cheap discount store stand where the high school used to be, a few blocks from the square. And there's even a Dollar Store on the edge of town. I tell myself scooping the loop was already a memory that couldn't really be relived anyway.

There are other things I'll never do again. Take Coraline to the park to play on the horse swings I played on when I was a little girl. Drive by the house I grew up in, which looks about a third the size it used to. Visit my parents' and grandparents' graves. Not that I did that much anyway. They live in my heart, not in the cemetery. I'll never go back to the Methodist church that formed my liberal beliefs. Never pick up the Adair County Free Press and read names of people I knew decades ago. It was bought out by a corporate publisher who fired all the local reporters and doesn't print local news anyway. 

I'll never go out drinking again with my friends from high school who still live in the area. Not that we have over the decades anyway. Most of my trips home were brief and spent with family. Still, I wish we'd been able to go out one more time and get crazy at the bars. We keep in touch on Facebook. I guess that will have to be enough.

I'll never wonder again if I'll ever run into that old boyfriend. You know. That one. The one who wasn't really a very good boyfriend, but I loved him and for a while I believed him when he said we'd get married after he graduated from college. I hear some news about him from time to time, but I haven't talked to him since I told him I was getting married ... to someone else. I think he's had a good life though, and probably never thinks about me anyway. Still, a girl can't help wondering what it would be like ....

I'll never stop by the Tiger's Den, which was called Dunk's the three years I worked there in high school, for an ice cream cone. I learned a strong work ethic there, and I can still cook a mean burger and polish the hell out of some stainless steel.

I'll never drive out to the Nodaway Lake and park at the top of Reefer Hill and .... nevermind. I don't do that any more. Or lie on the hood of a car wondering how many stars are shining over me. I can't see stars here in the city, or not many. I can read a newspaper in my backyard from all the ambient light around me here. I miss the dark and the stars and the quiet of the water at that little lake where my grandfather helped dam the river when he was a young man.

All these years I've felt tethered to that small town, that one square mile, even though I didn't go back that often and I never stayed that long and a lot has changed there over the years. But now I feel like something has been severed. It's still home, but it's not. When I drove through town and headed toward I-80 on highway 92 just two and a half weeks ago, it may have been the last time I will ever drive past the hospital on the edge of town where I was born. So many lasts.

I'm not sure there's much difference between knowing it could be the last time and not knowing. It's just life, and as the Buddha tells us, we can't hold on. There are times in our lives when the impermanence of every single fucking thing hits us harder than usual though, and that's where I'm at. I know time will soften the edges of this grief, but for now, I carry it inside me and give it the space it will take whether I want it or not.

Do you have any last times to share? Did you know it would be the last?

I can do this! Day 1

I start this, my 8th NaBloPoMo (National Blog Post Month), with significant trepidation. Pretty much like I do every November 1 when I look at my busy life and I doubt I'll fulfill my commitment to post every day of the month. And yet, somehow I reach the finish line every. Single. Year. Or so I thought until I looked back at last year.

In that way our brains have of telling us the story we want to tell ourselves, I thought I had successfully finished NaBloPoMo all of the last seven years. I forgot my epic failure of 2017 when I flew home to Iowa for my mom's 80th birthday party in the middle of the month and didn't post another NaBloPoMo post after. I wanted to. I took my laptop and my intentions, but once I got there, spending time with my family and sleep seemed more important. So I enjoyed Mom's birthday party and our family Thanksgiving the next day, flew back home to Dayton and did Thanksgiving here and then .... I have no idea what happened to the rest of the month.

Epic fail. And yet, I have no regrets. My mom died this year on September 5, just a few weeks ago, and I'm glad I spent my time celebrating her life with her last year instead of trying to keep up here.

This year will be tougher though. I'm raising my 7-year-old granddaughter Coraline, my daughter Elvira moved in with us temporarily (although not as temporarily as we thought) with her two dogs and two cats just a couple of weeks before my mom had her last stroke. I flew to Iowa for two weeks to be with Mom as she died and for the funeral, then drove the 700 miles back to divide up her belongings and clean out the house and such not long after. I spent three out of six weeks in the towns where I grew up while trying to keep running on the treadmill that is my life, and I still haven't had a chance to really process (I kind of hate that word, but I can't think of a better one) my mom's death. I just know I miss her, and I'm glad I could be with her when she passed on from this life.

So I expect I will write about that experience. And I also expect I will toss out a few rants about politics, because everything is about fucking politics these days. One of the reasons I haven't been writing here much is because I don't know how to write about the things I love to write about -- vaginas and handy-penises and stupid humans -- while the Titanic is tanking all around me and life is so very serious. I will try though. I'm making the promise, even though I don't have much faith in my ability to keep it. I don't function as well on four hours of sleep as I used to. 

One thing that helps me and inspires me is your comments. Most of them end up on Facebook these days, which is cool and gratifying and, hey, I just like knowing somebody is reading my little words. It's lonely here at my computer by myself late at night. However, those comments aren't permanent like the ones you post right here below my posts. I promise I will answer each and every one .... but no pressure. Nope. No pressure at all.

Also, if there's a topic you'd like to see me weigh in on, let me know. I'll do my best.

Right now, like a lot of people, I'm just doing the best I can and trying not to beat myself up about the many things that fall through the cracks. Between my various part-time jobs and single parenting and all these pooping and eating animals and the hours I spend in my van every day and Netflix (oh, c'mon. You watched The Haunting of Hill House too) and the occasional party and karaoke night and why did I buy this big old house again? And the hot flashes .... oh, don't even get me started. And now I'm doing this?

I need another glass of wine. See you tomorrow.

Reticula out.

The best ones are always taken

Photo credit: Stole from the internet (sorry)

I've decided Nick Offerman is my new celebrity crush, even though he's technically too young for me, which possibly makes me a cougar. Not only does he have a very sexy eyebrow, he's a woodworker, which probably means he has a handypenis. That's all I'm really looking for in a man, although his dry delivery and 2-toned beard don't hurt. Also I recently saw him in Hearts Beat Loud at the Neon, which I loved, and in which he also shows off his musicianship. (Criterion number 2 for the love of my life, right after handypenis.) Then coincidentally tonight I caught him in a new reality show called Making It, which isn't nearly as sexy as it sounds, at least so far, but does showcase criterion #3, a sense of humor.

Of course he's married, as are all my celebrity crushes. (Kim Coates, you broke my heart. As did you, Tom Selleck. Don't even mention Kevin Bacon.) And apparently he's madly in love with his wife, Megan Mullally, who is only a few months younger than I am, so also a cougar, but who apparently looks like Cher after they have sex. Ugh. TMI, new celebrity crush. Also Cher is 70, so maybe I'm not really a cougar. I mean, they are so married they've even written an audio book together about their super wonderful relationship. Gag.

I can't feel too sorry for myself though after hearing one man's story on Making It. The challenge was to craft a family heirloom, and one contestant confessed he has a husband, but he doesn't really have any other family. Turns out his family didn't approve of him being gay. So much so his parents sent a black funeral wreath to his workplace with the message, "In memory of our son who died." I was stunned. Who would do a thing like that? Those people are the devil.

Anyway, I'm looking for a new unmarried celebrity crush. That's about the closest I care to get to dating.

Who is your celebrity crush? Is yours married, and if not, do you want to trade?