ifinally write

I have lost a crucial component to my writing operation.  The mouse is without.  It sits beside me motionless and with no green light indicating the link to my laptop is a solid one. The last time I updated this blog I wrote about scary weather creeping our way.  It wasn't creeping actually.  I think this is how they started using these expressive words- "It came storming through." or "He came thundering down the hall."  The weather charged us and having seen examples of the potential whip lash that could be ours too without taking precaution, we all picked our closets (I'm speaking for the entire town.)  I gathered my laptop, cleared the small guest room closet out completely, put a pillow in the floor, and sat in it.  One by one my pups came.  China crawled on my lap.  She had screamed already.  I am not misprinting that... it is a scream, not a bark.  She was seeking comfort and wanted safe keeping.  Then Selma Lu (my other lap dog, ha!) came in and fit in the left over space.  Honey Te'a is still learning our ways so she sat outside of the closet looking at us intently but with her own elbow room.  And then, Nick came home... he drove through that whipping mess... and sat in the floor looking at all of his ladies huddled in a tiny closet.  It blew over.  Then I had to clean up the room and fit everything back into that tiny closet.  To make this all relevant to the lifeless mouse on my desk top- I snatched the usb remote plug-in thingy out of my laptop, not caring about it beyond thinking "Do I need this?  No.  I don't care too much about it.  I just won't lose it.  I'll lay it here." I remember the  thoughts.  I don't remember the place I put it in order to not lose it.  I hide things so well sometimes that I can't even find them. Mostly in haste does that happen.  

Now, I care about it.  

It will come to me... things always find their way back.

Since the storm, I have watched a couple of movies.  Due Date was one of them.  I rented two from RedBox- Black Swan and Due Date.  We watched Black Swan first and when Nick picked it to put in the dvd player I remarked, "You know Nick, that's one thing I really appreciate about you.  You picked Black Swan over Due Date to watch first."  Then I reminded him of what Due Date was and he responded "Oh... shit."  He was mildly disappointed that he passed over the funny movie, the "guy flick".  So I, of course, said "Switch it.  I don't care which we watch first."  And he did not.  We watched it and we both liked it better (much better) than the comedy.  Due Date was pretty good but like Nick said when I asked what happened to a dropped off character, "I think they said, "Umm, we need to end this.  Done." I'll admit that I did go upstairs and leave the ending unattended.  That was not polite of me.  Could I have guessed the ending?  Yes.  Did I guess the ending?  Yes.  But it was, no doubt, funny.

Next, we watched a two part documentary about the Russian Revolution and it brought to light a subplot so-to-speak.  It was a story within that large tragic story that I hadn't heard. It was about the Kronstadt sailors.  They revolted, gained their freedom, handed it over to another tyrant, wanted it back, and then got killed by the Bolshevicks.  That's basically it.  A massive generalization of what went down, but do you want to hear me yap about that?  No.  I can guess you don't.  Because I begin yapping about my feelings about anything less than pure, undiluted freedom and I get a bit ferocious and then I don't mind slinging a few insults- soft ones I think- just jabs here and there- and I don't make any new friends.  I might lose some. (At this point in my life, that's okay with me.  I want my principles in tact over my popularity.)  You never know, it could deliver a friend or two.  I have friends now that see things like I do, from the same point of view.  They talk about it.  They don't mind discussing.  Regardless, I will not explain further the documentary.

Then, we started watching Gandhi.  I looked over and Nick was shut-eye.  As soon as I pushed play his head went down.  When he is tired and his eyes shut, if I wake him and he opens his eyes to look at me, they are so red.  It's as if he were sleep deprived for ages and is out of focus with blood shot eyeballs.  It strikes me as a curious thing every time I wake him.  I did that the other night when I got a text that Osama bin Laden was dead after we were already in bed and Nick was asleep.  I, as gently as I could, stirred him and read the words.  He muttered something and then he rolled back over into his sleep again.  I think my face displayed several consecutive expressions as I contemplated and had a few thoughts about it.  I leaned over, turned the lamp off, and went to sleep.  First things first- wait.  Several stories and retracted stories will come out and then at the end of the day, nobody will ever know the exact truth of what happened.  Even the ones in the location at the time won't know the entire sequence of events start to finish.  It's such a large-scale start to... wait.  Was I about to say FINISH?  I'm sorry.  I apologize.  It most certainly isn't finished now is it?!  One person is dead, but before that heaps of bodies fell and it appears they still are and still will be falling with no end in sight.  Cheering and chanting in streets like the opposition did ten years ago is not my M.O.   There's nothing to celebrate in war until it ends.  And even then, it is relief not celebration.  Anyway, this relationship between MidEast and West has been going on for a long, long time.  You saw it with Carter.  You saw it before Carter.  Even I remember it in elementary school with daddy Bush.  It is here today.  On and on and on...  That's the reaction that came from the two of us.  We rolled over and went to sleep knowing nothing really changed.  It's a machine in motion.  Wag the dog.  All of that.  Nothing reported is reality.  As John Mayer says- "And when you trust your television, What you get is what you got, Cause when they own the information, oh They can bend it all they want."........  At that sleepy moment Nick gathered what I said, but the eyes were in some sort of repair again, red as fire and bright blue in the middle.  It's kind-of freaky looking.

Gandhi will be watched tomorrow evening.  I already liked it.  Before I realized Nick was unconscious I enjoyed the sidewalk scene.  "There is room for us all."  I love him and his words.  It is such an abstract paragraph up there.  To have mentioned Gandhi and bin Laden in the same paragraph is disorienting. 

I have continued reading my books- The Crooked Timber of Humanity and Night of Stone.  I read the latter aloud to Nick in bed and guess what I got three pages in... the red-eye.

It was horrible though.  (The book is great.  What happened is horrible.)  I will pick different material to read just before bed.  It is descriptive and the subject matter is Stalin's (Lenin's possibly worse successor) grotesque and barbaric reign.  What a murderous s.o.b.  It is not human.  He and those like him are creatures that have none of the humanity I know of on the Earth. They are compositions of something far darker and loathsome.  You could see it in his eyes.  His eyes say it all.  The eyes always do.  I'm learning a lot of new things about the Russian history and the world's- including U.S.- part in it all.  They consistently traded one tyrant for another.  There was always a mad-man ready and waiting.  I'm going to try and write about it later when I've gathered more from my reading.  I think any and everybody I know would be interested.          

It has been a John Mayer night.  I enjoy it.  It is playing now and I dig it.  Nick selected the tunes and he was spot on.  Each song provoked a thought.  

"Why Georgia?"  I want to know.  Why?  Am I living it right?  

How about: "We're never gonna win the world, We're never gonna stop the war, We're never gonna beat this, If belief is what we're fighting for." Indeed.  Indeed.  

"My dear, we're slow dancing in a burning room." Such a beautiful description of a complex relationship.  These lyrics choke me, "How dare you say it's nothing to me.  Baby, you're the only light I ever saw." 

And of course, "There is no such thing as the real world."  Tru dat, homey. When I first met the "real world" I was astonished that there was no other layer in the back of what I was seeing.  "This is it?"  I thought.  I couldn't believe that the systems and components (people) of those systems is what was moving and shaking the world.  No magical potion.  No wizard or genius that comes with adults in the business world.  It was a shock.  It was scary.  I'd always assumed that there were supremely intellectual and creative leaders pushing things forward in a seamless, perfect manner and if one could not meet the highest of standards, they failed short of the cut line and were ousted.  In other words, I thought the business world was like athletics.  I thought it was a solid performance, judgement, excel or pick another kind of operation... this "real world."  Disheartening.  It is smoke and mirrors.  It is fake-it.  It is get by and/or put the time in... or just lie to get ahead.  Sell yourself and you'll get the job, doesn't always matter if it's true or if you can do the job.  Once you get it- delegate.  Pass it off.  I kept thinking "Who is actually doing the work?"  My answer was the one person in the group who can't let the project fail so they do whatever they have to and then they end up resentful and full of stress in the body and the jokers that take the credit and talk a big game gallivant around as if they matter so much in the world and at the end of the day... they are the ones stress-free with a healthy body and bank account.  That "real world" was disappointing.  (He's right.  There's no such thing.)  It rewards doing nothing, abandoning morals and ethics, and being the sort of sorry person that your grandmother would be ashamed to claim.  I'm not on that corporate ladder.  It is hard to live doing something that, in your life, doesn't matter.  If you can't see the contribution of your efforts being purposeful or positive it is so hard to wake in the morning and bust booty doing it over and over and gathering the resentment that goes with being the one who DOES it.  I am lucky, I realize.  I have a husband who appreciates what I do.  He also takes care of me.  I don't have worries because my husband makes it so.  It brings a tear to my eye as I type that.  He is my strong, insightful, hunk of a man.  He suggested I could, if I wanted, jump off the Corporation Station-bound train and I hopped while it was moving, rolled in the long grass, and jumped on my horse to ride into the sunset of a blissful horizon.  

Luckily, I have experiences that were better than many I hear about.  I had pretty sweet jobs.  But, I looked around and saw the grime.  It was the world of Busting A** To Do Nothing Really Important In The Life Of The 'Buster'.  Every morning take your ticket.  Hope your number is not called and you are the one spoken of on the traffic report's fatal wreckage site to avoid.  An ant in the scurry racing to gather for the queen.  Then, a skipping, humming kid comes and steps on your ant hill.  Over. I didn't want that for my life.  

It was really nice when he toured playing golf.  It was intense at times, but the new places, new faces, new course to walk across the country was something that felt special.  And the friends I made were special too.  Even if we don't speak often, there is a bond that comes with traveling and grinding week to week while everyone else in your life thinks your husband tinkers around on weekends!  It is unique because it can make you want to collapse, but it also feels too special to complain about.  So, everyone out there has one another, who knows in an unspoken way what you mean when you make references here and there about issues that remain hidden to the typical golf tour profile.   

We got new neighbors!  I'm super-pumped because they look normal.  Young, normal people we might become friends with anywhere.  It is exciting.  Normalville (as my friend Katy calls it) doesn't send many new people here.

They even have a rescued dog that likes to play in the field.  

Cinco de Mayo is coming... many funny stories to follow.  The second annual Flip Cup tournament is sure to resume.  We get rowdy and firey.  I'll try and take photos to post.... with my new iphone!!!  As I posted to facebook, "ifinally!!!"  I have joined the rest of the world and it feels good I must say.  I have the cutest Kate Spade, Dancing Couple artsy case for it too.  I'm crushing on my new gadget.

What else is there... not sure.  I'm set for now.  Katy brought me Silk- French Vanilla Creamer back from Charlotte and so I am cheerful about tomorrow morning.  Nico is "La, La, La, La." downstairs with Jason Mraz.  He sings along and he's good.  Ya know, I'm not going to try and think of everything I have to say... I'll just come back later.  I'll do the same as my new voicemail "Hey. This is Beth. Leave me a message or just call me back."  I was leaning toward the just call me back option.  Although, Nick called me laughing at me and my message.  "What do you mean?  Hang up and call right back?"  "No! Later.  Call later."  I said.  (Duh.)  And then he told me I didn't say that part... like it was so crucial that one wouldn't know what I meant.  That was my second attempt too.  The first one I botched and then started talking to myself aloud and the recording didn't stop so it was all on greeting message.  My third try was a success.  I think so anyway.  It's staying regardless.

Until Later.

            

Okaaay... before I REALLY go I have to share this video that my bro-in-law posted.  It is one of the best voice overs ever!  I laugh every time I watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGeKSiCQkPw