catfish's song

life

walk with me
through the crowds and the streets.
faceless bodies
blurred as they pass by.
hold my hand tightly,
you might lose me amongst the chaos.
make love with me
under the brilliance of the colored stars.
they burn brightly in your eyes,
and make pictures in the sky
as the light dances
across our naked bodies.
(6/25/95)


it's hard to wake up when you've just gone to sleep. thank you for tonight, the dead always make me think of the summer of 95'...thank you for the ride so far.

lyza jane's dictionary

i know that i am becoming a 'typical mother' with all the story telling about baby girl, but i don't really care. and if you do, then you can fuck off! she teaches me something new everyday...nobody told me it was going to be like that. so the surprise of the unexpected things she has brought into my world has been the most amazing journey of my life so far. she is the center of my universe and i smile because she is mine.

we took the red bear 'kiddie' swing down from baby girl's 'castle' this past weekend. she can hold on to the 'big' swing now and has let that be known.

before dinner her dad brought out a bowl of chips to share and they munched away on the porch for a time before climbing into the castle to hang out and continue to enjoy their snack. shortly thereafter i was invited to join them. as we sat enjoying the cool summer evening, dusk setting in, baby girl decided she wanted to go down the slide – and she was all smiles and laughter as she did. when she got to the bottom she turned around to look at me, 'how bout you mom?' how does one refuse an invitation that good? *melting heart* so as i was getting ready to go she reminds me, 'hold on tight mom!' and i smiled and answered, 'ok'...then i push off down the slide.

now, it has been some time since i've gone down a slide. years i would venture to say. but again, an invitation from your child to participate in one of life's little adventures doesn't come along every day...there was just no turning it down. as i was going down the slide, watching baby girl watch me with a huge smile on her face, my smile grew wider and wider until i reached the bottom. baby girl was there to greet with wild, excited clapping. 'good job, wanna do it again?', she asked while running for the ladder to go up again. i couldn't help but run with her, smiling...and for a moment, i was five and i remembered why it is that little kids run for the ladder, just to do it again. it was glee...there is no other word for that feeling. pure, unabandoned, momentary freedom - where you can't help but smile and giggles turn to laughter as they begin deep down in your toes and grow as you go down and run to go up, just to go down, again. and it spills from you as you hit the ground running, following one another and watching one another and clapping because it just feels right in that time and you are lost in a moment.

glee - it has just been defined for me.

what was i thinking?!

tonight is hockey night. for my husband anyway. for me, it's a night that i get to do whatever i want...ok, maybe not whatever i want, but a girl can dream can't she?

tonight i was reading and i found something i wrote. it's dated 8/22/95. so apparently this is what was on my mind ten years ago...


Box of Rain

the little notes you would pass me at work. the letters you wrote from school, with the pictures of the president when he came to visit your college. all of our movie stubs, and even the stevens motel receipt from the first time i came to visit you. you didn't want your roommates to know your girlfriend was in high school. so i let you hide me away in a tiny room with two double beds. the bus ticket from the second trip. the one i spent a whole paycheck on and skipped a day of class, just to see you. you let them see me this time, i was in college.

so many pictures...from the first summer we spent together, when i won the swimming trophy. we were late that night to dinner, and the next year we were late again. your parents were away and we took advantage of the empty house. the one my mom took in front of the mirror in my living room. you know the one, we were going out to dinner that night after work and i didn't wear underwear because my dress was too tight. after dinner you slipped my dress up and we screwed in the driver's seat of your little sports car next to that cornfield.

all of it is tucked away in that blue shoebox under my bed. you remember, you went with me to buy those shoes, the white canvas ones with the blue strip around the bottom. i had wanted those shoes for a whole month before i finally bought them. remember? memories that i can spread out on the floor and go through as if they had just happened. i can still hear your voice, so critical, telling me all the things that i could never do right. i can smell your hair and feel it, thick between my fingers. sometimes i can still taste you in my mouth after you came. i spit it down the side of your car the first time and you made me get a rag from the trunk and clean it off. you were always coming. on my stomach, in my mouth, inside of me, sometimes you even came while we were on the phone together. afterwards i would tell you how much i loved you, you never saw the tears.

do you remember when we broke up? the first day of winter quarter my freshman year, your senior year. i told you i didn't want you to come visit me because i didn't want to be your girlfriend anymore. you came anyway. we stayed in a motel that night too, and i wouldn't let you see me naked. you didn't understand, so you fucked me for spite. two months later you sent a valentine's day card, just because.

it's in the box with the others.


ok, that was sufficiently depressing! gee, do you think i had some rage?! consequently, that box has been ceremoniously burned...a drunken night of ritualistic female bonding; while we roasted marshmallows, smoked too many cigarettes, and forgave all the bastards that did us wrong.

this was the last thing i ever sent to this boy. the horrible thing is that i have let go of the rage...forgiven him, forgiven me. and i don't get to take it back. so...if you read this one day, you know who you are, i'm sorry.

accumulation

i realized tonight that i've been living in the great state for four and a half years now. that's the longest i've lived anywhere since i was 18. (i have been called a gypsy a time or two.) we've only been living in this house for three and a half years...we waited that first year to decide if we were going to stay. i guess we stayed.

previous to this move, everything we owned fit into two cars and a mini-van. we could pick up and go in a heartbeat...and sometimes that's just what we did. if it didn't fit, it didn't make the move. damn, we left some good stuff behind too! there was this comfy bed we had to leave in vermont, the nightstand that catfish's dad made that i loved that we had to leave in athens. this kick ass kitchen table with folding sides that i sold to this girl that lived down the hall in the brooks house apartment. God i miss that fucking table!

when life gets complicated, i get the itch to move. but right now, today, i have no interest in going anywhere...don't get me wrong, i've had the itch to move in the past four and a half years, it's just that now, we have too much stuff to fit into two cars and a mini-van!

smokey and the bandit?

so i'm reading thru my weekly people magazine this week and come across an interview with burt reynolds. i love burt reynolds! i have loved this man since 1982 when i saw him singing to dolly parton and dancing in his underwear, cowboy hat and boots in the best little whorehouse in texas as sheriff ed earl dodd. it was the most brilliant thing i think i had seen to that point in the eight years i had been living! burt reynolds and dolly parton singing together?! are you fucking kidding me? this was a man who was definitely in touch with his true masculinity...he was hot, he knew it, but wasn't afraid to dance in his underwear! come on ladies, you have to give the man some props! and at 69 years old...the man still looks good!

as i'm reading this article i come across this quote:
(people) 'we take it you enjoyed filming the dukes of hazzard.'

(burt) 'i did. especially when i was working with willie nelson. had i been born gay, that man would have saved me $20 million.'


fuck yeah burt, i've always had a thing for willie too.

nough' said.

stoned out housewife,

that's me. mostly i write about life instead of live it.

days when the reality of the everyday hit, it becomes a melancholy time. bored by the tediousness of the mundane act of doing the laundry, washing the bathtub. these are the days that drag. hot humid weather and no air conditioning don't help.

there is a tiny voice singing from down the hall. wrapped up in her daddy's arms, reading brown bear before nite-nite. and that sound, sweet and determined, breaks the moment.

i can't help but smile.

old mcdonald anyone?

tuesday evening, it’s bath time with dad, my turn to read. while walking down the hall, i was greeted by, ‘mom, how are you?’ in a singsong voice coming from the bathroom.

everyday when audrey goes to school she sings a song at circle time. she has sung it to me before, but each time has always had a small variance, and being the oft confused individual i am, i’ve never really gotten the song.

so i popped my head in to say hi and audrey asked if we could sing the song – ‘do audrey?’ she asked. but i needed her to help me – dad suggested she ‘do mom again’. so she sings, ‘hello, how are you? hello, how are you? hello, how are you? how are you today? nice to see mommy here. nice to see mommy here. nice to see mommy here. how are you today? how are you mom?’ to which i replied, ‘good’. grinning from ear to ear at how perfect she can be to me – i never know when it will hit me. i then proceeded to sing the song back to her and dad said, ‘audrey, you taught mommy a song.’ and she grinned sheepishly, tucking her chin to her chest, staring up with those gorgeous blue eyes.

i thanked her, we high fived, and i told her she could teach me to sing anytime. she gleefully looked up and asked, ‘wanna sing old mcdonald?’ this happens to be her favorite song to sing right now, so i laughed and said, ‘of course!’

she began the first verse, ‘old mcdonald has a farm...and on that farm he had a... what’d he have mom?’ she asked. ‘a horse’, i answered. i could see a brief flash of disappointment wash over her face as she continued, ‘with a moo moo here and a moo moo there...’ she had obviously wanted me to say cow. i knew this but decided to try a different animal anyway. but she wasn’t having it, so she sang what she wanted and got her cow one way or another.

as she kept singing along, it was dad’s turn to choose an animal. ‘a cow’, he said excitedly to have chosen the right animal. audrey looked at him with her head cocked slightly to the right, her eyes furrowing for a moment in a look of confusion and declared, ‘no, he doesn’t have a cow. i have the cow.’ like duh dad! we both laughed our asses off!

i ask...

is there REALLY anything better than an orgasm?...think about it...

standing at the edge of the world

sometimes she feels like she is standing on the edge of a cliff...she just wants to scream, 'what the fuck?' but she doesn't get to scream, it's 10:30 at night and there is a child asleep in the next room. besides, her in-laws are here. even if they weren't, she still doesn't get to scream.

she is a mother, a wife, a daughter, and a sister. she has to show up for work in the morning. she doesn't get to scream. she doesn't get to curl her toes over the edge of this ledge and imagine what it would be like to fly. she has too many people depending on her. did she ask for them all? does it really matter if she did? here they are just the same.

she knows she can never walk away. she knows she will never walk away. but will her life ever be her own?

too fucking hot!

so, if you hadn't noticed, i've been gone for a week. vacation can be such a beautiful thing...unless of course, you're me! last week sucked! i'm not talking about a little 'sucked', i'm talking about the end all of vacation suckage!!! i had very little time to myself, so writing was not an option except on monday of last week. seeing as how my vacation had only really begun that sunday, i didn't know it was going to suck so bad...i even had a pretty good outlook on the whole thing. so the following is what i wrote last monday on vacation...to follow later, maybe tomorrow when i’m a little more awake, will be the details of vacation suckage!!

7/25/05
i think it's the 25th, but it could be the 26th. to be honest, i really don't know. i do know that it's monday. and i know that it is fucking hot. i'm not talking about a little 90-degree weather here. i'm talking about it's like 105-degrees and humid as all get out! there is an occasional movement of air in this little holler, but not much. and even then it's like a moving haze. you can literally watch it over the next ridge. light blue sky that looks as though you are peering thru a filter of milky white. the green of the trees covered in a hazy blue, not as crisp as the deep forest and emerald of the trees on this hill. it is fucking hot. it's really all i've been able to think about. i want to be outside but the inside is so tempting with it's dark coolness. i just don't want to sleep, i'm too awake for that.

it's nice to be home. i'm in ohio at the nappy palace. (and by palace i mean a basement with a roof on it, but that is a story for a different day. can anyone say ‘whitetrash beautiful’?) it is spectacular to look at and be in southeastern ohio. did i mention it is fucking hot?! there is nothing quite like crossing the border from pennsylvania or west virginia into this state. and to look out into the field next to me - to stare at the queen anne's lace and the yellow of the golden rod, swaying with a hint of a breeze - is overwhelming. there is no stress today. for me, there is always a hint of desire for a much simpler life. i get to find that here for the short periods of time i get to visit.

oh my God it is so fucking hot! my skin is coated with a fine film of sweat. my forehead is almost to the point of dripping onto these pages. and my eyes are heavy for rest against this blinding white film that is reflecting and radiating that sun. it is fucking hot!