hey
heard you say
you could use another drink
i dunno if another one will get
me through
this time
do you remember
that time?
we lived for a time
in a hotel
watching the time
stagger and unconscious
around us

hey
why don't you read another book?
as i lay dying is too depressing
for this time of year
leaves falling and snow
melting before it hits the ground
what am i without you?

hey
watch while i preserve you
even though it's clear i don't deserve
you
or anyone but me
really
there's some strange
danger
hurry up
lemme spray my face
real quick
with make-up
eye lined and bottom lined
the bottom line

hey
take some time and think
spin another line we can all pretend
we had a good time
remember that time?
someone let me ring their bell
we were living in that room
without windows
fuckin and fighting
someone else did the dishes
that time

hey
my memory
there's something
on my hands
laughter or blood
happy ever after
stringing up a heart
and letting is wring
from the rafters
what am i without
you?

My nights...

Molly falls asleep first, and then, just Cash and I...Johnny Walker might have been a better name yeah? yeaaaaaaaah.




And I'm relatively obsessed with Amy Wineburg and the song "rehab" and everyone I share it with are like: Are you an alcoholic? And the first time in a long time I'M NOT this makes me wonder...

The little one is doing like stuff we didn't do until we were 17/18 and by we I mean Patricia by 17 and me...um, never cause I was perfect and sweet and completely academic...Really, seriously...I know I've made up for it and such but STILL...AND I'm in Winnipeg in December and do you KNOW HOW COLD WINNIPEG is in December? It's hideous! Why did I trade Shenzhen in for this? So if anyone is free for puppy duty let me know and I will make it worth your while...

Things are good.

And I'm not bored.

Also good.

I am TIRED.

And yet...

I'm still awake???

How is that FAIR??

I PROMISE these are the last ones...

So.

Long few days. 2.5 hours at the passport office, plus a skip the line pass to GO back today with some form properly signed. Purolator cannot, for reasons beyond me and 3 phone calls later, find my parents house which I must say is RIGHT OFF THE HIGHWAY. So I have to drive to freakin Niagara-on-the-lake and get a very important package that I need in order to drop a very important document off on Friday. Annie for 3 days...she's actually growing into some quirkiness and is very funny. In the midst of working on this lead management thing, and attempting to make it some sort of tangible felt board something something, Cash's old owner emails me and asks how he's doing.

And I, for all my ability or seemingly inability to write struggle with what to say.

First, I struggle with people who have the ability to give up a dog. Especially a really cute dog, (I mean c'mon, some of the dogs at the park, NOT CUTE not even close) but a really cute dog who's only 6 months old. When I went to get Cash, to the little house in Tonawanda, she said that he destroys everything, eats everything, is rough with the kids, always hungry blah blah blah, barks at everyone and everything...which freaked me out frankly.

He does still bark, but really, not as much. He is the MOST gentle dog I have ever ever seen in my entire life. Really. I can get Molly going well enough that she will inadvertently nip me, but not Cash. No matter what. Him and Molly play so well together, run so well together, just everything is so so easy. He has not destroyed anything. I did find him head first in a jar of peanut butter, and there was the regular butter incident, but y'know my fault for leaving it there.

So then I'm thinking, as I read all these Ceasar Milan books, and consciously assert calm assertiveness when around the dogs...that some people, really just shouldn't have dogs. I mean the poor thing lived in a back yard, which some might say well, you live in an apartment, atleast in the back yard he got to run around...I never understood what that does to a dog...but it makes them kinda anti-social and destructive and bored. Now, the 2 hour to hour and a half walks a day, and the all day runs around the ranch in Fort Erie, the dog SLEEPS when he's home, or chews on a pig ear for a bit.

And he's been hit and yelled at. You can tell. Why I don't know. He's just such a good freakin dog.

People come over, see me with the dogs, and the dogs with me and say that they are so lucky to have me, but I and I do understand this, am so lucky to have THEM. Both good good dogs.

But then I think that maybe, it's not really so much about the dogs as the owners. I never really thought this before, which is weird for an educator...I don't know if I believe there are "bad" dogs...I think they just kinda act out and the way they're raised dictates how they act. Kinda like kids huh?

Anyway, my days are full, and my nights are cosy and snuggly. Cash opts for the spooning spot next to me, while Molly prefers under the covers, at my feet.

The second picture cracks me up. They look like Cheech and Chong.

In the late 1990's I think, there was a movies called Mr. Holland's Opus which I fell in love with. I loved everything about. The time it was set through, the story, the high school experience...and at the end, Mr. Holland, a music teacher, is retiring after cuts to the arts, and a student gets up and says that for years there had been rumours that Mr. Holland was working on a symphony...anyway, I don't want to be Mr. Holland, and those of you who are around, know that I'm writing...so here's Ch. 1...although I'm totally re-working it...

tell me if it's shit.

It was the act of getting there, the slow, cautious walk towards the small crowd, dominating her thoughts this morning. And so she placed, foot over foot, slow and deliberate. Her black high heeled strides keeping a mixed up double timed beat to his quick miniature 6 year old strides. They walked, with deep conscious purpose toward where they were supposed to be. Supposed like it was obligatory, but really, from the day she met him, there was, never would, be anything obligatory. Except Aedan. That was an obligation without pretence. She couldn’t blame him, especially now. She could still feel the overwhelming force of guilt towards him for not knowing. Or herself, for not knowing he should know. She looked down, clutching his hand, little curls of blond randomly hit with rain, springing as he walked, his eyes a mixture of ocean blue and stormy gray, darting up and back, trying to catch the voyage of each drop falling from each curl, knowing by his Mother’s expression, black suit, and the umbrella they stopped to buy on the way (he had never seen his Mother with anything as reasonable as an umbrella in the rain), that this was sombre. Like church. But without his books or kneelers to kick with toe of shoe making his Mother break into the devilish grin she used when he was funny but shouldn’t be. He would have to be both quiet and seemingly fascinated with the events. He knew this. And yet, also knew, was conscious, of a feeling down below, between stomach and knees, that this was a day he needed to remember.

She knew it started at 11:00. She also knew she didn’t want to go to the church. Couldn’t be forced, by conscious or unconscious drive or sense of duty to go to the church. She had prepared herself just as she had prepared herself for this day. Knowing this day would arrive, prepared for this day to arrive, but unaware, had no knowledge of the timing. She knew, had prepared, this second dutiful good-bye. Would make it better than the first, she knew. Though it didn’t matter now. Really. Her eyes darting over the paper, reading the name once, twice, three times, before allowing herself, to understand that it was him. His name, the name she had muttered, uttered, moaned a million times, 57, died at home, blah blah she read over and over and over and somehow for some reason had cut it out, and placed it above her bed, scotch taped it next to the picture he always hated but she loved and moved with her carefully from place to place town to town to the old farmhouse that was too warm in the summer and too cold in the winter with its sounds and noises at night, keeping Aedan asleep and her dumbly wide awake. The house he would have loved, had he seen, but probably had seen. She had thought she saw, his car outside, nights before, just sitting. Knowing she knew he was there and she knowing he was there, the collective consciousness she had never felt with anyone before or since, allowing them to know each other’s thoughts at the precise moment of thought, sometimes before the other realized they were thinking together.

She knew every thought, every utterance, every love laced sigh.

She walked, with Aedan, hand clenched through the rain (and why does it always rain at these things?) thinking of Vancouver, over perfectly trimmed grass they only ever have in cemeteries and ball parks, some retired cop and his ride on lawnmower every Wednesday, looking briefly and without interest at random, dried out and withered arrangements left by families who’ve already done today, thinking of love and loss and death and forgiveness and anything but him and anything but today, the small crowd coming into vision, she looked down at her son, at their son, who with the impeccable timing of his father, squeezed her hand, looked up, with that same tired smile, and said “Come on Mom. We’ll miss it.”

you call
and i know
you sound
drunk with
impatience
permeating
discomfort
and i don't
know
why it always
comes to this
a hello
irritation
a sigh
and ends with
whatever.

all my loves
go away
ending
with
whatever.

it's like that ron white joke...about being at the airbase, performing for like 9,000 airmen or something, and the lady from the back yells out "Yeah, and every one of them's a bad lay" and ron says, after the 8,999, wouldn't you think...

maybe it's me?

maybe it's me?

i mean really. maybe i'm destined to love and be loved by puggles and friends and maybe that's as good as it's gonna get...

'Earn headier lush.'

http://www.anagramgenius.com/server.html

Early morning walks. Lonnnnnng walks. The zoom button is clearly beyond me. But it's COLD. My little fingers chatter their teeth...

Calliope is back.

A foul-mouthed (sometimes) black haired (sometimes) hippy chick who smokes an incredible amount of cigarettes.

When drain'd is the nectar which gladdens the bowl,
How vain is the effort delight to prolong!
When cold is the beauty which dwelt in my soul,
What magic of Fancy can lengthen my song?

Can the lips sing of Love in the desert alone,
Of kisses and smiles which they now must resign ?
Or dwell with delight on the hours that are flown ?
Ah, no! for those hours can no longer be mine.

Can they speak of the friends that I lived but to love?
Ah, surely Affection ennobles the strain!
But how can my numbers in sympathy move,
When I scarcely can hope to behold them again?

Byron (obvious)

But you, but you...

You write such pretty words
But life's no storybook
Love's an excuse to get hurt
And to hurt.
Do you like to hurt?
I do, I do

Then hurt me...

A Lover I don't have to Love, Bright Eyes

First there was Molly Bloom.
She was cute and well behaved and working through the incontinence. But one day...

She jumped on my bed and said:

"Psssssst"
"Molllllllllyyyyy I'm sleeping. Go back to bed"
"Ok Ok but I have to tell you something, I had a terrible dream"
"Ok, what?"
"I dreamed I was alone."
"Well, we're all alone dude."
"Don't call me dude. No, I mean really alone. What if I didn't have Hershey to play with? And I get so SAD when I leave the Ranch! And you know when you stop talking to COI then I don't get to play with Blaze annnnnnd we NEVER see GOB and Jasper and and and..."
"What about TJ?"
"TJ? THE MENTALLY HANDICAPPED SHEPARD AT THE PARK? Good grief, he should wear a helmet."
"That's not nice. He was overbred."
"We eat the dogs like that you know. Ok LISTEN."
"Stop yelling"
"I want a little brother"
"Good god NO! You're FINE"
"PLLLLLLLLLEEEAAASE I'll be really good with him and love him and play with him and you know if you have one dog what's the difference with two? HUH? Come on..."
"Ask GOB what she thinks"
"Ok"

Type type type type type...AIM BLEEEEEEMP sound...

"GOB said yes she thinks I need a little brother and SHE KNOWS BECAUSE SHE HAS KIDS"
"I'll think about it"
"And I want to name him Johnny Cash. We can call him Cash."
"No. Then he'll develop a drug habit, and wave his little middle paw at me, plus Molly Bloom would never ever ever hang around someone like Johnny Cash"
"Seriously. I insist. I don't want him if I don't get to name him."

I'm a sucker for puppy rationalization. Dammit.

They are HAPPY...Look at the little smiling Molly face...




Then SLEEPY...

Molly and I spent her first Halloween struggling through the HUGE pile of Johnny Depp movies Penny has somehow acquired. We chose Secret Window which is not really mentionable except that it appears to be a pretty normal kinda cliche movie UNTIL you get to the end which is also cliche but only in the way that if you've read a lot of Palahniuk or Philip K Dick or maybe even Koontz you would find it cliche. The non-readers would find it, I suppose, an insanely good ending, that they never saw coming...(God I'm pretentious sometimes)...however, the one part toward the end that I did like although it was CRAZY contrived...there's a guy throughout the movie called "Shooter" but at the end, carved into the walls is "Shoot Her" which I SHOULD have caught but didn't and was like wooooooow that's pretty cool.

BUT the part that was most enjoyable by Molly and myself...was that Johnny Depp, a hermit writer, spends the majority of his time, staring at his computer screen, re reading sentences his written aloud, then there's an overdub of his "editor" voice saying "that's just bad writing. that's all it is"...taking naps in the middle of the day, and talking to his dog as if he's a person.

Molly and I found this to be quite...applicable to our own days and ways.

There weren't many kids around last night, I don't know why, I suppose the apartments drive them to the suburbs, residential areas, which is weird to me. As a teen driving to St. Catharines or Toronto and wandering the streets on Halloween was...the best.

I'm going to go to do some rather boring work now I think. Sigh. My existence is becoming spreadsheets and expensive medical equipment.