overheard
shaky baby at shaky mommy’s beloved former supervisor’s desk, as the two were contentedly coloring and sniffing scented markers:
what’s that say?
shaky mommy’s beloved former supervisor:
that says, a woman for president.
Hah!
If I falter in my indoctrination I know my coworkers will lend a hand in Starting my baby out Right!!
damned if I wouldn’t go to church on sundy
So when we got to the show, shivering in the delicious October chill of Louisville, slightly warm from a couple of glasses at dinner at the wonderful, wonderful Indian restaurant we always go to up there, some guy recognized my husband’s ancient Southern Rock Opera t-shirt. He was probably drunk (the dude, not my husband), but he made a big deal out of it and I felt like visiting royalty. We were at the ‘world premiere’ at the Nick lo these many years ago.
While the DBT’s were playing World of Hurt I took a tearful minute to scribble in the notebook I keep in my purse. It’s barely legible, but it says, in effect, the DBTs run over you like honey and it’s an effort just to breathe even though you know it doesn’t have to be that way. There was other scribbling as well… but I’m still talking to myself about that.
That show was one of the most precious experiences I’ve had in a while.
I finally had time to revisit it– inspired by listening to Sinkhole in the car this afternoon. I remembered with a happy jolt that they played it in the show. “Bury his body in the old sinkhole, bury his body in the old sink hole…” Delicious!
I also scribbled the names of the songs they played that meant lots to me– Uncle Frank, Outfit, Ronnie and Neil, Whiskey without Women, Gravity’s Gone, Shutup and Get on the Plane (companion to Angels and Fuselage).
Gravity’s Gone is a work of genius. “I’ll meet you at the bottom if there really is one, they always told me when you hit it you’ll know it/But I’ve been falling so long it feels like gravity’s gone and I’m just floatin.” While the angels were evidently protecting me when I was at my stupidest, and I’m far from dissipated now — that is, far from as dissipated as I wish I were, I love the feel and tone of that song. I have so been there.
Likewise Women Without Whiskey– granted I’m a girl, but I can’t tell you how sweetly and sadly the words ‘Tell me how to tell when I’ve had enough’ resonate for me.
In their songs there are always many layers– first the actual story– murder, suicide, jilting, drinking, drugging, dying, loving, losing, hurting– , then the emotions and the sometimes slightly cheesy lyrics, then the great fun or the huge negative pleasure or even delicious rage– and then rippling underneath, inaudible but solid and real, this drone or emotional subtext that seems to say, yep, this is life– amongst the screamin’ guitars [and Mike Cooley and Jason Isbell are really, really, really good], the buddha smiles. I think that sweet, transcending observation and acceptance, amongst all the rococo, gothic, tawdry, backerds, throwback, inbred, torrid, drama, not to mention true love and loss, is actually the true essence of The Southern Thing.
the best 80’s movies ever
My twenty year reunion is coming up. Yes. Twenty freaking years. \
What the hell happened? I guess I need to adjust my idea of what it means to be 37. Because I am still young and hip as hell. (And I have some weight to lose before I go to that reunion. I was anorexic in H.S. How can I get back to that? [And yes, that's some of that there irony. Well at least half of it is irony.])
I went to high school in redneckland but I still think it would be cool to watch all those old movies before I go back. And some newer ones, too– Grosse Pointe Blank is about our era, people our age, right? That needs to be our first stop.
Then there’s Valley Girl, and Pretty in Pink, and Breakfast Club, and Sixteen Candles, and…
What else?
If you say Romancing the Stone I’m going to say no way.
But seriously. What else?
redneck speak
Tonight the ice dispenser on our freezer wasn’t working. It was set to cubed, but it was limping along dropping a few miserable crushed.
I told my husband it was stove up.
It just popped out… and I always feel this secret relief when it comes out without a conscious effort. You know, the appalachian speak.
Now, stove up, is like, too much stuff trying to get out through a too small hole.
It’s different from ‘bowed up’ which is a past tense verb and goes with ‘and stopped.’
As in, she bowed up and stopped and the car behind her– well, you see.
It gives a very satisfying visual image, doesn’t it? Can’t you just see it bowing up?
why (bad word-ing) now, for chrissakes?
My home town is now home to a fallen hero from Iraq.
He had just turned 21 and that was the day he made his last phone call home.
He had two sons, four and two.
Hundreds of little flags stuck in the ground in the shape of the letters of his name surround the sign for the elementary school he attended.
My thoughts are not new, but I just happened to hear about this young man’s death and it prompted me to say something.
What the f—?
This is so clear to me. Why doesn’t anyone else wonder about this?
Why does he have to DIE to get that kind of love? And is it doing him any good? No.
When are we going to learn to love and respect people BEFORE they die? When are we going to love and respect human life instead of morbidly glorifying their ‘ultimate sacrifice?’
These young people have mothers, fathers, wives , husbands, children. The kind of hole ripped in the heart of those left behind is unimaginable.
How can we send our loved ones so lightly into this lightly taken on and poorly run war?
I once asked a friend of mine, if women, mothers, ran the world, would it be different. She answered unequivocally, yes.
It’s just a rare mother who would willingly, if she thought she had any choice whatsoever, sacrifice her child’s wellbeing for a distant cause. Isn’t it? I mean, saving Muslim women from repeated gang rape in the former Yugoslavia would have been a better use of the lives of American youth, I believe.
I don’t mean to take away the solace a parent might have when a child is lost in war, as they think about the child bravely serving their country.
I also don’t mean to say that if our administration had been in the least competent, I wouldn’t have supported the overarching mission of the invasion– depose Saddam and restore democracy.
In fact, I think anyone who has not been affected by the tragedy should just keep their mouths shut in the presence of those mourning parents– even if they hate the war and the policy that leads to this senseless death. Be careful not to get lovely negative pleasure out of bemoaning the death of our soldiers and reviling our government.
But at this remove, imagining what that loss must feel like and even worse imagining the terror and pain and perhaps grief if they have time before they die to know what’s happening to them, of those killed and injured in war at that fatal moment, makes me ill. My father didn’t have to tell me twice how terrified and traumatized he was when he was shot in the foot in Viet Nam. How much worse must it be for some of our soldiers?
And I can’t believe we as a nation, the greatest nation in the world, right? are okay with embracing that.
I don’t want to take the name in vain but
I am completely sincere in my praise when I say ‘Praise Jesus it’s FRIDAY!’
I am in a workshop today, and this is lunch time, so I can post.
It’s pissing down rain, as they say, a nice day to be *out* of my office and inside a cozy academic library, in the computer training lab specifically, learning how to use RSS/Feeds.
I’m ashamed to admit that I had no idea, before.
During hands on time I even put a feed button on this here blog. How cool is that! I’m syndicated! Or, am I? I’m still new at this.
I’d also like to create a news feed that would automatically bring up headlines relevant to shaky’s concerns. Because the subjects of my thoughts are so freakishly intertwined or eclectic, this requires some very careful choices of keywords.
Any suggestions? Words so unique that they can’t fail to bring up something truly interesting to me/us/you my readers?
I know it sounds like torture, sitting around trying to find just the right key words to bring up truly interesting and relevant news stories in a little aggregator on this blog. But have you forgotten? I am a librarian and that, if anything at all, is truly my thing. Or, it’s one of my many things. It’s one of those things that maybe most people don’t think about that I do. Or that librarians do.
The Big Question– what search terms to use, or what words to use to identify content quickly and briefly for retrieval later– has been around a lot longer than the internet… but I think it is simultaneously less and more of an issue now that we do so much through keyword, social indexing, and random surfing and so much less through print.
I am old enough to remember that these questions simply have absolutely no bearing on real life, and just how much of a *dork* thinking about this makes me. Or would once have made me–not sure. Probably dork then, dork now.
Well class is starting back, and the teacher is great so I don’t want to be disrespectful by continuing to post, so I’ll go now.
more on (or moron) marriage
I’ve been wanting to talk about this for a while, but I haven’t had time. But here is a portion of my answer to our dialog on my thought for today post [click on the course of true love category to revisit my thoughts and readers' comments on marriage].
In the absence of abuse (abuse defined however the abusee needs to define
it, whether verbal, emotional, physical, etc.) I think that we pick our
partners differently depending on how we see marriage.
That is, if you see it as a true commitment and vow, you (perhaps subconsciously) pick someone you think you can stick it out with… If you see it as a financial
institution, and a partnership that, while precious, can be dissolved in the presence of incompatibility or unfair division of labor or myriad other social injustices and compromises of the heart, as I always have, you may not pick as carefully.
Marriage was a truly short term thing for me. I always wanted to marry… but, as my first soul mate hurtfully put it very early in my dating life, I just wanted to get married and it almost didn’t matter who. I saw marriage as something, I dunno, definitely, infinitely, desirable, but sick, or doomed. I was cool with not doing it until later in life– hindsight is 20 20 and boy would it have been a failure!! But I still desired it so much.
I didn’t see marriage as something that truly could and must be for life. I always had in the back of my head that niggling conviction that marriage gives women the short end of the stick, and results in greater happiness for men than for women. That’s partly baggage from feminism, partly what I observed in my impressionable childhood, and partly statistical fact (whether statistics=truth is another story, of course).
I thought that perhaps some couples did overcome this and have a happy marriage, but that the nature of the institution, in our society, dooms it to failure without some pretty extreme adjustments, honesty, and emotional presence of mind on the part of the spouses– of which most spouses probably just aren’t capable.
As a side note… I am of course pro gay marriage, but I don’t think this
changes the dynamic. I think in any marital or relationship situation, there is still a dynamic and it will be a hurtful one that will suck one partner dry unless it’s addressed or prevented.
So, when I got pregnant in my thirties with the latest of an endless string of boyfriends, I looked at him– good looking, provider, good with cars, already had two very smart beautiful children, friend– looked at my other options– single motherhood, as a highly visible director of a governmental unit in a very small town– and marriage looked, you know, okay. Pretty damn good.
But I didn’t ask– heck wouldn’t have even begin to conceive of– the questions I might have asked had I been more mature. My parents told me we didn’t have to marry. Hell yes we did!!! Our priest even told us that we had some issues that would make it real hard on us if we did marry. I did not listen.
And we had one of the most beautiful and joyful weddings I’ve ever seen, in spite of, or right alongside, everything.
I don’t believe in compatibility or soul mates– or at least, not in successful marriage between soul mates– and I liked this guy a lot, so I figured, what the heck. And I chose based on my situation and all that baggage and preconception, not based on who I or my future husband were or what we might truly want.
It could still work out. Marriages have been built on far shakier foundations… although I’m not sure how much unhappiness a marriage can survive and still finally become happy… that remains to be seen. But we seem to be making strides in our behavior. So I’m at peace with that, and my eyes are open as to how I got into this, and what I may be missing [I think about that a lot, lately, but I think it would be bad form to talk about it].
But I’m not a believer in grass being greener on the other side. I *am,* though, a believer in the devil you know, and in things working a certain way for a reason. I need to also remember to consider, not just what I’m missing, but what I do have. In spite of my bitching here, actually loving what I have is pretty much my nature. So.
the food not bombs types
I love my brother and sister in law sooooooo much. In their previous city they were involved with Food not Bombs. They would scavenge still good but nearly or slightly out of date foods from supermarket dumpsters and provide a hot meal on the square downtown to feed homeless and/or hungry people.
Once I was talking to my sister in law about whether a food was bad or not, being out of date or having set (redneck for sat) out all night or something. I thought it was not too appetizing. She said she thought the Food Not Bombs people would probably have a different opinion.
I don’t remember giving it much thought at the time, but now, with the exception of meats, I often try to use something rather than toss it. I’ll cook slightly old veggies or fruits that aren’t pretty any more. If I have time to identify something near expiration I’ll try to cook it. Even meats, I may cook up with rice, boiling thoroughly of course, and give my dogs some gourmet, healing fare.
I will eat this stuff. My husband won’t. He gags when you just say the word vomit, so he can’t abide the thought of, uh, ‘aged’ food. And I am very picky what I give to my child. And once we’ve cooked and eaten it once, I don’t always force us to eat it again. It’s more about new items that just go bad on the shelf before we even touch them.
So I was at the grocery earlier this week. I bought lots of yogurt smoothies to have for breakfast on my way out the door to work. My husband put the groceries away. I looked for these smoothies this morning. They were not there. I looked and looked, in disbelief.
I went to my car. Sure enough, two superfood smoothies and four yogurts.
I just stuck them in the fridge.
I drank one this morning. I mean… yogurt’s already clabbered, right? And they were vacuum sealed. And it’s chilly here right now.
I’m not dead yet.
I know food poisoning is no joke. I have had it exactly one time– the autumn I was pregnant with shaky baby. I rarely ever threw up during my pregnancy– well except on account of those nasty iron prenatals, but I quit taking them.
But I ate at Fazoli’s in Knoxville after we got through purchasing wedding reception decorations at Big Lots. (Yes, Big Lots.) I spent much of that night curled on the couch in agony, and the rest of it in child’s pose, in the bitter cold shaming myself by vomiting off one or the other of their porches.
Once I heard:
[the dry rattle of dispersed vomit hitting a broad selection of autumn leaves far below]
miaow!!!
I guess I’d hit one of the cats. Sorry cat.
So… I’m not dead. And I’m going to drink those other ones too.
overheard
Accident Report, X Montessori School.
Parent Copy
Child’s name: Shaky baby Date Oct. 18, 2006
Time of Occurrence 3:30 Location: Primary Classroom
Brief Description: Shaky baby squeezed her lip in a marker cap.
Injury Description: A cut on her top and bottom lips.
Treatment: Washed with Water, wet paper towel.
Parents Contacted: No.
Supervisor Initials.
and there was rock
I have to go on to work, unfortunately. I want to blog endlessly about my weekend, and probably will, but for now here’s what I can rattle down in just a few minutes.
That concert was just beautiful. Sitting in an old opera house style theatre in plush fold down seats was different, yes it was, from standing in The Nick a foot or so away from the amps and two feet from the musicians, surrounded by cigarette smoke thick enough to cut with a knife.
But the hard luck songs were still as beautiful as ever, and I believe their lyrics are richer than ever too. They did a very, very tight set of both old and new, and they started off and ended up with many of my favorites, including Uncle Frank and Let There Be Rock, which closed the set before the encore.
They ended the encore with Angels and Fuselage, and I bawled outright. Boo hooed. I know it was loud in there, but I still hope nobody heard. Everyone else was standing up after the standing ovation, but I just plunked down as soon as the opening note sounded, thinking, here it comes. When it was over, and the lights came up, I looked at my wonderful sister in law and her face was red and teary just like mine. And she, our designated driver, wasn’t even drinking! Suddenly I felt a lot less like a loser.
I’ve been thinking a lot about death, both in real terms and as a metaphor for transition and how we deal with grief. I don’t know whether I’m disgusted these guys for being drama queens and making a song out of that situation, or grateful to them for being willing to go there. Certainly one of the reasons I love them so much is their willingness to go there in all sorts of symbolic and archetypal situations, no matter how cheeseball or cliche’d– because such is our lives, most of the time, right?
They traded their old encore song, ‘This is for the people who died, died,’ for Van Halen’s Ain’t Talking Bout Love’ which was also a very, very gratifying memory from middle school.
Well to close this brief edition of Let There Be Rock the shaky egg post, I’ll say that on the way home from L’ville Sunday I was thinking about how could I turn my thoughts about death around from fear and dread, to genuine inquiry. It’s inevitable, and it’s a transition, and I know it sounds morbid, but it’s one of the key things we have to face in our life– our own, and the loss of loved ones, and sacred dying is a key precept for my healing school as well– not that it’s something to be desired and pursued, just that it happens, and can be handled with communication and love and dignity. So that’s one of my vision quests for the next year. Who knew the DBT’s in all their trashy glory would be helping me with this?
More anon.
