Scattermuse @ MindSay

Driving back into Philadelphia at sunset put a rat's nest of blaze into my mind.  The pink streaked across the sky in feathered daubs gave me shivers.  Those clouds are too much to stare into for too long a time.  Your car veers right and left as if you are inside chattering away on a cellular phone.

This weekend was not what it was supposed to be and I am glad for it...  I was to travel with my husband to Ohio to attend the array of post-death traditions with his extended family.  We were to leave via automobile very late Thursday night or very, very early Friday morning.  But as the deceased was his half-brother's mother, my husband instead left straightaway late afternoon Thursday.  His brother had actually already went off as he wanted to get out there to his dead mother's corpse ASAP.  My husband came in from out and sat down in a nervous huff.  I couldn't get into an automobile after just returning from my own five-hour stint driving across Pennsylvania from east to west, so I urged my husband to have his brother turn around and pick him up.  My husband did not want to go on without me, but also wanted to be with his brother.  So Gerard turned around out near King of Prussia and came back to pick up my Lane. 

Off they went.

I was very, very glad. 

I did not want to attend the post death traditional ceremonies of crying over a hard, dead and cold body.  I did not want to stand around trying to feel for a group of people I do not feel for.  Isn't it odd; some of us feel so emotional when complete strangers die or when tragedy strikes someone from a family of a friend, but at times people we are related to, even if only through marriage bring no emotion to heart when we've negative experiences with them.  In other words, I really liked Grandma Robinson, but I have no feelings at all for one of her daughters (my husband's half sister) or her kids.  I just did not want to be there.  I would've gone but I am very glad Gerard took off so early and Lane felt the need to drive with him for numerous reasons.

So then I drove to New York to pick up my daughter as I do every weekend I am here and not traveling or out of town.  Many times she goes along with me (us) when we head out somewhere but the past three weekends I've gone places while she was busy being a teenager.  School stuff.  Boyfriend stuff.  Friend stuff.  I've missed Liz as there have been only a handful of times in her life that I've not seen her for more than 3 weeks.  With her going off to college next year I am sure this will be a common occurance, but for now I miss her severely and she me when life has us moving in two different directions...

It looks as if there is a very good chance Liz will be attending college in this city.  She originally wanted NYU but after realizing the campus was not a nice green vale, she changed her mind.  I like that about Liz.  She has the city in her but not to that extreme.  There is plenty of time for her to jump on the crazy train of buzzing big city life.  She wants a more sedate setting with less noise and less hustle and bustle.

So then we worked on college applications, talked through her latest break-up and cooked together.  She is gaining an appreciation for fresh tofu.  We put this really excellent Sesame seed / Garlic glaze over the tofu, onions and green peppers sauteed nicely.  We also stir fried an great mushroom assortment.  Both went over jasmine rice.  Good Eats!

Tonight my husband will be returning early in the A.M.  I haven't seen him much that last week.  It is nice to go our seperate ways at times.  We are not the type of couple who will ever say we only spent a handful of days apart.  I never thought I would be lucky enough to meet someone who wanted to create a life together yet remain independant.  I need time away from married life at times.  As a married woman, but a married woman away from wifely things and the house and the husband.  I need time alone.  Space to think and write at my leisure and to ride bike alone.  I am a quite solitary person in form.

Aidan phoned me today but I did not pick up the cell phone.  I am torn about his returning.  He just left and now my head is in a swoon as I bend over, bleed out the grief I felt when he left and breathe in attempts to grasp he is coming back.  I think he is coming back for me.  I miss him too.  But it was supposed to end that way- his leaving and returning to his home.  And if it wasn't supposed to end that way then perhaps my future is one I didn't imagine.  I can't think too much about it.  It makes my head hurt.  I've lived so many lives in my 40 years.  I am just settling into marriage and into the state of becoming a new mother again.  I don't want the drama any longer.  It is like Scott all over again.  Aidan had ten years to plant roots in the firm soil of me and he did not.  And now that he's lived a few months without me in his days he is in a panic.  But I've moved on.  I am married now.  And I love Lane in a way that no fantasy could match.  I love Lane true.

This coming week my mind will be in a tailspin for so many reasons.  I will find out if I am pregnant.  I will get a new cell phone.  I will wonder about Aidan.  I will avoid 19th Street because I know who he will be slumming with until he sets up here.  I begin Clay Class.  I begin Glass Blowing class.  I begin another new week in this new year of my life...

The skyline in my city has changed this summer.  With the new Comcast building it will change again.  I want to run out and snap a few photos of the skyline at night now so I can snap a shot of the skyline after once the new Comcast building is built.

And later since it is a clear night and I am here alone, I will drag out the telescope and look at the BunnyStar.  I had it named through the National Star registry.  My star.  Secret and silent BunnyStar.  May she guide me through the hills and crags ahead.

I don't want another twisted ankle.

Two are enough...

I'd like to thank you for the birthday wishes and greetings.  :)

I didn't feel much when I entered years 16, 21, 30 or 35.  But I do feel differently entering year 40.  I am not sure how much time you spend thinking of your life or mapping out a plan, but I've always since my early Yoot (youth) given Great Thought to my future.  I'd say that in my early 30's I lived more in my mind and heart in the future than in the present.  Though I didn't feel 30 to be any different than any other year prior to perhaps 18, I knew the Time Had Come To Think About My Future.  Never releasing a close game of patty-cake with spontaneity I had my ear to the ground.  I decided at that point I'd like to live out my life in a commited marriage.  You wouldn't think this changes much in some people, but it changed much with me.  With the types of employment I chose, with the way I considered myself and others in any given situation, with the choices I made where mind, body and health were concerned.  I became a bit more serious though no less silly. 

In any case at 40 I feel like I presume and make assumption a true adult feels.  Whatever that is...  I mean to say- what do you base any control group on?  I suppose you can't base what you feel on anything other than the way you feel and how you feel it, but I feel my age now.  I still skip and hop and get completely idiotic-silly.  I still love a challenge and all that.  But Yoot is gone.  Outside I still look 25 even close up, but inside I do not feel 25.  My memories are at hand and my days of so many things you think and feel at an age less in number are now past.  I feel good to have caught up to myself in a way.  I don't yearn for Yoot.  I don't want to hang onto being in a younger frame of mind.  Many people know themselves so well at all points in their own personal life-timelines, but I am not one of those.  The duplicity and complication of my family's interaction throughout the years has always made me feel confused about who I am.  It is sort of like a swimming pool.  They are all filled with chlorine and they all have pee and body hairs in there somewhere, but no two quite complicate your immediate moments in the sense open water of an ocean does.  Just think about that for a minute and maybe you will understand where I am coming from...

I know myself when it comes to my artistic and curious sides.  I know the fabric of life I wish to wrap myself in.  But thinking about my mom, dad who wasn't there, my childhood and all the years after leading right to this very day have been so filled with a sort of caul that I haven't ever, until very recently, felt as if I could touch my own core.  Writers are like that.  We put out so much that we are distracted at times with coming to grips with our own selves.  We mother or father, we run, we pace, we create and sometimes keep our creations to ourselves wondering at the fact we've put some story together in our minds that no other person but ourselves will ever know about.  There is so much to us and in us that except for our children and sometimes our husbands we feel endlessly adrift.  We are confounded by anyone who does not write or who has no story to tell because we try to imagine not having those running and looping voices in our heads nearly 24/7 calling to us to let them evolve, be and become...

So today I sit and type after a really great visit to Latrobe with my sister thinking about how suddenly sometime in the past few months I've become me.  I am me.  I felt it happening as it did, but to say all you can be is you and then to go further and become the you that you feel like inside are quite different.  I see the other half of my life up ahead and I know it is a kind future.  You'd have to understand all of the grief waiting ahead when I was 16, 21, and 30.  It is so strange but I felt it up there even though I couldn't possibly see it.  It never felt like a dark cloud, but more like an initiation.  I don't actually feel like I've paid my dues; that is something you decide to do or to evade, but I do feel like I've learned enough about my own wants, needs, desires and requirements that I can jump through the ring of fire rather than accidently lean up against one side of it or the other. 

I am not in a hurry to be beautiful because I am, inside and out.  I don't need to rush to secure my or my child's financial well being because between me, Morgan Stanley, Met Life and Dow Jones, I've accomplished that.  I think I will be able to muster through marriage.  That is also a choice and the gift of it all is realizing it is a choice.

There are some things I know only fate and faith can detail.  But I like me.  I see me and I feel like I've come ripe.  I think of the world and I feel familiar with her just as I always dreamed of feeling.  I know places numbering in the dozens and that feels like going back to an amusement park and knowing the best food booths and games.  Knowing the rides.  Knowing where the toilets are without having to ask.  And the picnic areas.  It is like going to your home church.  Not feeling like a visitor.  I like feeling at home and familiar with my world.  I spent many, many moons wishing I could see this or that and wondering if I'd ever have the money to do so.  We each have our own dreams.  When you realize some or more than some of the loftier dreams in the context of your own specific life you begin to feel more like yourself.

I've wondered during the past few years about myself.  The internet grabs your arm and drags you over to the funhouse mirror.  We are all and each warped here.  Some of us like the way our arms look sort of deformed and our feet appear clubbed and our lips clefted while gazing at our reflections.  But I never did after the fact.  I realize just how unique I am now.  I think we all take that for granted, but I never realized how much an open mind I had until I experienced being pigeonholed by closed minds.  I never realized how much a paradox we create with all the facets of ourselves until I felt and fingered my own facets.  I have never really cared about fitting in or being worshiped or respected but then again I've always been well liked by those who actually take time to get to know me, and now at 40 I am glad I am not an easy read.  I need more than two minutes of your time!  

So today I feel refreshed.  I had an opportunity in Latrobe to set some things straight with myself and it happened well.  I see my sister trudging up her own hill and now tumbling happilty over the Other Side and I feel like wow, we did it!  Two little poor kids from the wrong side of the tracks are now homeowners and with Life Companions.  I see that her guy is a Good One and I am grateful for her joys.  While we were in Lowe's and choosing my house warming gifts to her and for her home I felt one little whisper of a prayer come true and that is a rare moment in life outside the I Do kiss and the infant in your arms.  Wishes for yourself, anyone can make them reality...  But wishes for others are really all on a wing and a prayer. 

On the drive back to my city my husband phoned to tell me we'd have to turn around tonight and drive right back west; one of his extended family members died this early afternoon.  I think to myself that wow- that was my husband who just phoned and we will be attending our first wake together.  We've shared so much, but never respect for the life of a dead person.  Somehow that makes me feel 40.  I've been alive long enough to be married and attend an interment with my spouse.  If you marry young or in your Yoot, you can't apprecaite that.  But if you waited for years to settle down into domestication, you will.  Because these are the types of things I didn't think I'd ever have exposure to.  And as a personal coda, I don't attend funerals or wakes or interments.  That is an entire other post, but I know I've moved ahead on my own walk of life to have my first thought be when he phoned today wink out something like I hope I give him comfort...

All is well.

And that is good...

:)

I kept my eyes averted and my earplugs backed up with my fingertips pushed down deeply into my audio canal somewhere near the hammer and anvil. 

I was very excited even though every birthday I've enjoyed since my husband Lane entered stage left has been surprising and filled with wonderment and joy...  I packed some pretty/sexy things, because even though I did not know where we were going, I had a feeling. 

He took me to the very same place I'd planned to take him exactly six months in the future to the date (to celebrate his 38th birthday).  What a warm feeling; to know someone so well that even if they haven't really surprised you, you are nonetheless surprised.  Because for me, it has never gone this far with a man.  He really does know me.  He measures my wants and needs and wishes and doles them out like an extra serving.  So nice...  :)

I noted on the plane that there were no children and the women- even those outside first class, were dressed nicely and not in line with the way most women dress when flying. Every one of them looked presentable and attractive.

As for me, I looked very cute!  I know how to do that while flying...

In any event all women abaord were all dressed up and raring to go somewhere very early in the morning.  I immediately thought either Vegas or the Wine Country.  But for some reason I didn't think Vegas.  He didn't ask me to bring anything special but for some upscale outfits for nightlife.  In my mind he'd have asked me to bring certain items if we were going to Vegas.  But he is good that way; not letting on...

The overall experience was broad and exciting, with many, many surprises and such.  I loved Olives (ahhh... Foie Gras from heaven- er Boston) and Fendi, I loved 'O' and 'Zumanity'.  Danny Gans was very funny and the Bellagio just made me feel like a Princess- I couldn't believe the shops and the people we met and became friends with...  I won my first Texas Hold 'Em tournement and am thinking that I could become better than good at that game.  The craps tables were so much fun I can't even articulate the laughter and the thrill of winning stacks of chips- it is just as clubbing and the Electric Banana, the Green Door and Tramps once were for me in my 20's!  We took the monorail from one end to the other and had a V.I.P. introduction to the Pussycat Dolls which was a high point for me as I love girly-shows one and all with beautiful women.  I walked and walked and walked and walked.  And walked.  I wanted to see everything on foot so we ditched the limo for the duration but for a arrive and depart from the airport (which was a freakin' madhouse in and out) and one swipe both ways on the strip.  One horror-filled hour was spent taking a peek on Freemont Street.  I don't know exactly what types of phobia of my childhood remain intact within my psyche, but the tackiness and the types of people there had me bracing myself until we left.  My husband threw words out like 'cheese' and 'frumpy' and 'oh my' which is completely out of character for him and so I felt secure that it wasn't just me.  I didn't live this much of my life and come this far to be in an area like that with people who are just plain disorderly and without ettiquette or manners.

I had some Very Good Wine, Very Good Food, Very Pleasant Accomodations and Very Delightful Treats!  I won so much money that I had it tucked in my Bolo boot on the way out.  A lump under my arch and that there is my proof of coming from the lower income bracket and up out of nothing.  I can't carry a few grand in my bag for fear of a pickpocket or purse snatcher!  :)

Ahh... What a nice experience!  Those few days felt like weeks and we've decided to keep the reservation I've already secured for my Lane's birthday in March and to return.  We never made it to the Wynn or for a round of golf- just not enough time.  I loved this birthday every bit as much as the birthday spent picnicking along a canal in Holland with just he and I and the big blue sky and a few cows across the way.  I think just being with him and exploring new places with him makes any bit of travel all the more rich for memory. 

And I did return with one additional joy; at the Hoover Dam he bought me a RingTail Cat BunBun!  I will add her to the collective and fill with joy when I look at her, remembering that amazing astrological monument outside the Dam.  I think the fact the builders put at map of the sky at the very time the Dam was complete for all posterity to view as cool as the fact there is enough concrete in the Hoover Dam itself to pave a 4-foot wide sidewalk around the entire circumference of this planet!

Wow!

Happy Birthday to Me.

I'm 40.

:)

I will receiving my 40th year in a few days.

I have wide open arms and a warm torso with which to draw her in.  Many, many times I have been here, at the cornerstone of the shelter built around another year of my life.  I never know what each new year of my life will present all around me.

The walls begin with a new foundation each turning of a 12-month section of being.  There are times when I've stood here, looking at what the previous year has created, sort of awed.

As I step near the beginnings of my year to come I turn and take a good stare at the structure of the year nearly past, behind.  What I see are 200,000 stories, each with only one room.  Last year was one new beginning flashed up quickly on the previous.  There were overlapping friendships and travels and schemes of employment both professional and personal.  I see the lights on in each room; not one window is dark.  This coming year will be a continuation of many situations/ideas/creations from the past year.

Turning 40 has my hair thinning a bit more with huge chunks of pure white hidden in my Feria #100 Pure Diamond Hair Colouring.  The hair around my ears has turned brown and my roots now grow in this ashy color.  Gone are all remaining pores prone to producing the Platinum Blonde I was born with.  My hair is longer this year than last. My eyes are a bit more worse for wear.  I have very light blue-green eyes and I wonder if I will  have cataracts as most women do in my maternal family tree.  My skin tone is better this year; I've invested a small fortune in eating very, very well and anti-oxidants serums.  I use a top of the line buffer in the shower so that my nearly 40-year-old skin glows without Mystic Tan or sunrays.  My heels are now void of all scars from blisters caused by years of wearing cheap (bad) shoes.  Mr. Pumice helped with that!

My personal aspirations were filled one and all for my previous year.  I was blessed with the opportunity to fulfill a lifelong dream- rushing off to aid in helping people displaced due to a natural disaster.  I feel as if the three items remaining on my lifelong dreams list are now possible to entertain.

I saw the past year wrought with all types of family problems- not between myself and an another but between the other and their own personal demons. 

It goes on and on.  I said good-bye to a friend I worked with, laughed with and played with for over a decade, writing the final chapter for a very long portion of my life.  I wonder if there will be a prologue...  :)  I went back and forth over the oceans in a plane or jet more times last year than any other 12-month section of my life, birthday to birthday.  I had two surgeries and 4 miscarriages.  I had more invasive procedures performed on my body than all those from the rest of my life combined.

******

My husband is whisking me off to a Secret Place for my 40th birthday.

I am not sure where we are going, but I would guess it will be either Las Vegas, Napa Wine Country/Valley, Maui or Fiji.  Those are next on my list of Places I Long to Roam.  I am tired of Europe, the Caribbean and South America.  I am tired of the same old same old.  Cafes and shopping and touring- I want to go DO things!  Like get liquidated on 70 types of wine as we use are private car to be taken here and there for wine tasting.  Or playing craps at a high roller table and watching top of the line nudie girls dance and visiting the Hoover Dam on cycles!  Or going to see a volcano or live with natives for a week.  Something different.

I never thought I'd travel so much that there would be a dozen other places in the world that no longer felt new to me!  But such has come to pass...

I am excited to put on the blindfold, which is actually a piece of silk I used for a scarf when we eloped.  I put it on before we get in the car, wear it onto the tarmac until we get into one or another private plane and don't take it off until we are in the air.  Since we have to go over the Rockies for each of my next on the list destinations, it will be time that will be the giveaway this year.  Flight time that is.  :)

Things have quieted down a bit.  I have carved away much of my immediate involvement with any endeavors or business that have any type of underlying stress attached with the project/work.  As we are now in full blown IVF courses, I have pockets of life between cycles that I can do normal things, but mostly I watch what I eat, drink and expose myself to.  It is an oddball way to live.  All this fuss for a baby!  I would have never dreamed something could mean so much to me.  Life is like that.  You go along very farsighted with your own imaginings of Where You Will Be When...  and the When is here and you would have never imagined...

I am very glad I have a secure financial future.  This means I not only have real estate and cash, but real estate and cash on three continents and thus pretty much no matter what happens I have a safe haven to dash off to if necessary.  I never thought that I would stop writing, but I have.  I loved writing.  I mean really writing.  But as life surprises us just as much as we surprise ourselves at times, I think looking back I wrote for the money.  I mean to say I knew that making money was important because at the time I absolutely needed to get something going, but it nicer to make money on no-brainer avenues than making it while strolling along hopeful streets.

I find myself quite satisfied at the junction of 39 and 40.  Not overwhelmed as I was last year or jumping out of my skin excited as I was between 38 and 39.  I am sedate and relaxed for the first time in many a moon...  :)

Welcome, 40.

May we be well met...