the misadventures of mary cassidy

life in spades

2009-07-06T17:22:00.000-07:00

Wow. Lots of time has passed since my last post. Nationally, personally, financially, "parentally".
Most of it has been good. I have settled into single life and have learned to love it. I am not sure if I can ever love again and am okay with that. Now, it seems enough to learn to love and like myself. That has been an interesting trip.

I find that I no longer really care what anyone else thinks about me. The assumptions people make are hilarious. The misunderstanding of my relationships with my male friends is on-going, but I have to admit, I sometimes find them confusing too.

I love that I can let myself be attracted to and laugh with men without having to think it is sexual. I also love that so many people assume it can only be sexual. I am flattered that I am seen as still being sexual.

It is interesting to live as a sexual celibate and consider what makes me tick without sex being part of the equation: Friendship, family, becoming a grandmother, my daughters, laughter, Art, in all forms, gardening, the grown-up spelling bee, Darts, a good glass of wine and a great poem or lyric.

Are they enough to fuel a full life? For now, yes.

Trust and love? I think they will come again. I am ready now. Wasn't before. Now, time will tell.

Slainte

So much to consider, to love, to want

2009-01-18T23:11:00.000-08:00

Hello again. Seems like forever since I have written here. Life has been good, bad, ugly...personally, economically, socially...
In the midst of all of this, I have been learning so much about me. What matters to me. What I want. What I fear. What I trust. What I don't want and will not do...

A life, wide-open, is like a road trip. Take the freeway and you get there fast; take the back-roads and you find beauty and joy and surprises at every stop. Some are amazingly good. Others are like a trip I took to Mexico once; full of poverty, sadness, dirt and then you land on this incredible beach in front of a most powerful ocean...I would say that this last two years have been a mix of both types of trips. Ultimately, I have a sense of seeing that vast and powerful ocean. I know about the undertow. I know about the tides. I know about the life beneath, both beautiful and dangerous. I see how the moon reflects it's light in a fluid way that shifts with each wave. I hear it's lullaby. I know and respect its power. Knowing all of this, I choose to swim in it.

I will choose my friends wisely. Those I choose, I will love fiercely. I will love and believe in the potential goodness of most people. I will trust those worthy of trust. I will not suffer those who are not. I will learn to find my way in these shifting times and believe in my ability to not just survive, but help others to do so too.

I will make mistakes. I will probably fall in love and be hurt again. I will dare to try again, anyway. I will only love someone "with both feet off the ground," if they understand and love the "pilgrim soul" in me. I will love theirs too. I will not be hateful or cruel. I will be angry at injustice. In that anger, I will be constructive and use it to make change happen.

I will never, ever, not see the beauty, both grand and small, in front of my eyes. I will try to create beauty as often as I can.
I will laugh. I will laugh. I will laugh.

Slante

Free At Last!!! oh sweet life...

2008-11-11T20:27:00.000-08:00

Post-election bliss and endorphin crash
Current mood: luminous
Category: freeeeeeeeee News and Politics

So strange and euphoric still...in my lifetime, never would have bellieved this America could have come so far! Think the absolute failure of Bush and his New World Order crew, un-regulated, unabashedly greedy, unscrupulous, shit helped the population see past skin color?!!??

whatever...it took a disaster for us, as a nation to appreciate intelligence and a calm demeanor in a leader. Finally.
Now, all the hard work begins. Call your congressmen and senators, starting today, to push change and say NO MORE to the last push by Bush as he tries to pass 300 evil, greedy bills...pay attention, folks.

Oh, and think of me this friday! At freakin last, I'll be signing my divorce decree and will be celebrating like a mad single woman at the Bee! Come BEE happy for me!

We will toast to the future, to freedom, to happiness and to prosperity, for al!l
Slante! Slante! Slante!!!!!

I am currently listening to :
La Vie en Rose
By Edith Piaf ...it is beautiful and amazing....
Release date: 1999-02-09

Promised land.....

2008-11-05T09:57:00.001-08:00

Promised land..The Angels of our better nature
Current mood: contemplative
Category: melancholy News and Politics

Last night we elected an intelligent and honorable man to be our 44th president.
A black man raised by a single mother and his grandparents, a man who wihile growing up learned that to be accepted in a color coded country, that he'd have to be smarter, nicer, socially wiser...a man hand made by society and family to be able to reach out, to find common ground...a man who could reach out and say i might not have had your vote, but I will hear you and work..I will be your President too...

Rep. John Lewis sat for an interview after the election had been callled for Obama, and to look at his face was to see the track of racial intolerance and the civil rights stuggle worn like a tattoo over his cheeks and eyes...the pride, the dis-belief, the hope the bittersweet memories about those killed over color in his lifetime, trying to bring equality to this country.

I read that FDR thought it was not the specific programs he gave this country after the depression, but instead the gift of hope...of faith in our ability to re-0build our economy, our infrastructure, our core american values...Faith reflected, was his talent and gift to a wounded America.

Obama has that gift, that talent. . He has vision and conscience and values..

I hope the great greed, concentrated wealth, lack of constitutional and legal restrictions that the Reagan/Bush neocon's have spewed can be cleaned up. That we can rebuild our jobs base, our education systems, take care of our sick and less fortunate...value art and ideas, create peace and end two new world order wars...

No one man can do that. It is President Obama, the House, the Senate...
but MOSTLY IT IS US!!! WE will need to be vigilant. We will need to get off our asses and lobby, debate, hold people accountable...we will need to be engaged in our own destiny. We will use the gift of FAITH that Obama has, to our greater good. We will be a democracy again. We will be good, honorable citizens who no longer follow like sheep.

We will honor the memory of all of the great men and women who got us to this day, the day a wise man, who also happens to be black, is our 44th President.

Soujourner Truth, Rosa Parks, MLK, Robert Kennedy, Toussaint, the many slain civil rights workers, freedom bus tiders, lunch-counter protestors, sweet Rep.John Lewis..... They saw the promised land from a great distance....some, many, died trying to get us all to that promised land...Last night in America, we got to the promised land.
Let us not waste it.

Currently listening :
'His Eye Is on the Sparrow'
By ETHEL WATERS

I voted, I cried, I believe!!!

2008-11-04T14:28:00.000-08:00

I voted, I cried, I believe!. Now, I'm gonna dtrink a toast
Never for one minute of my youth, did I ever dream I would live long enough to see a blackman run for prez and actually WIN!

Goodness, intelligence, measured -responses do matter after all! Are we finally smart enough collectively to get past the trite and false sound bites offered in place of real plans for change? Real thoughtfull strategy matters!!!

FOR FUCKSAKE, I SAID IT.... OUT-LOUD . I SAID W I N ...! I doubledared myself to believe Iit would happen and I do believe it will!

Tonight I'm gonna put on my sassiest election day duds and some high heels and eyeliner and go out with my democratic, leftist , maybe even socialist...oh dear...friends and celebrate the hell out of the taking back of Democracy, the restoration of the Constitution, the resurgence of altruism instead of greed, of hope, of jobs, of unions, fof air wages,of education, of healthcare, of a women's right over her own body, and , well, of pure and simple JOY.

I will drink to all of these things. And when my head hits my pillow, I will cry myself to sleep out of happiness ...pure hope and happiness...instead of fear.

Slante, Barak, Slante

America, be color-blind!

2008-11-02T17:32:00.000-08:00

November 05, 2008
Current mood: hopeful
Category: adament Dreams and the Supernatural

On Sunday, November 02nd, I'll go to sleep in a country that has legislatively lost it's way. All the past week, I've sadly, incredulously, listened to "educated", and yet incredibly ignorant white people talk out their fears...fears of being "enslaved," if a black man was elected President, a belief that a "muslim" in methodist's cloak, will lead us to hell, that we would be lead by a "terrorist" into a nightmare of wars and self-destruction...not one of these "intelligent" people talked about the issues: the inequitable distribution of power and wealth, or the lack of over-sight that led to the biggest financial crisis since the depression, about the undermining of the basis of our democracy-the Constitution--or the war, the deaths, the cutting of V A benefits, or the foreclosures, or the underfunding of education, or the job losses..instead of issues, they talked out of their own ignorance and bigotry:fear of color...lies lies lies, all paid for by the RNC ...hate ads everywhere...
Now, at bed time, I will light a candle and turn on Maria Callas...I"ll shut off the tv and pray to whatever collective goodness might exist, be cogent of our dire needs, hope that somewhere, out there in the cosmos, something listens...I will pray for a wake-up call for fearful, racvially divided America. I will pray for open confrontaion of and discusion about our history of hate and fear and violence against peopke of color fed by the white powers that be...I will say fuck racism...and hatred and fear about other Gods..
I predict that I will wake up Tuesday morning and go to vote, the lines will be wrapped around the park andf the school I vote at. The people will believe in change and hope.. young and middle age voters will let the old ladies and old men, the mom's with kids go to the head of the line. They will sit on the grass and talk to eachother, hopeful...white black, brown... All will sense that things must change. I will drive around the city...I will see lines full of young, old, people of all colors, all incomes, all religions, trying to create change one vote at a time...

This election, I know that no-one will sit quietly by, if anyone tries to steal this election a quiet assertion and promise to riot in the streets this time...I will take it to the streets myself if that happens...I see in the majority of voters, new and old, a determination to make sure that this historic election is played out fairly and openly...

On Wednesday, I will wake up to a new political world. It will be a hard slog, but the times and mindset of greed and self-centered interest will be replaced by the realization that it is how we share our prosperity and grow it through that sharing that makes us greater and a real world power..

I will drop to my knees and be thankful for Change and I will do everything I can to help our government make this a reality.

AMEN!

'Palin' comparison

2008-11-01T21:10:00.000-07:00

Last night, for halloween, I dressed up as Sarah Palin to give out candy at my coffeeshop...perfect wig, red power blazer, black heels...wideleather belt. and, oh yes, the perfect glasses and lipstick...The creepy, too-perfect replica! My personal added embellishment was a baby-doll tucked, upside down, into the belt, and a seal-pup, dead and bloodied hanging from my hip...The parents laughed. The kids, age 5 and up, all knew who I was. now that says alot about how politicalthe world is even for five year olds!

After the shop closed, I thought it was too good a costume to just use at work so I went to little Grumps, my fave n.e. bar,with some friends to scare and amuse slightly inebriated adults...As I walked in, there were 5 other Palin;'s in the bat...all played straight, no dark humorous add-ons ...we all complimented eachother for being the scariest things in the bar and laughed...they all bowed in homage to the baby"Trig" doll and dead seal pup..We laughed and had a drink. and toasted to her political demise..

For the rest of the evening there were many political discussions, animated and hopeful. Amazing, I thought, the level of hope and the level of fear, in that neighborhood bar! We all worried that somehow , inexplicably, another election and real change could be stolen once again...the hope and the fear were equally palpable...

Saw many a customer and friend there, and we laughed and toasted to Obama and hope...After a while, I sat at the bar cuz my slutty highheels were killing my feet and then, an old customer/friend sat next to me, laughing at the Palin costume. Over a beer, he pulled out his iphone to show me all of the pictures of his beautiful new daughter and waxed stunningly poeticfor such a macho construction man, about how much he loved her...how they were perfect pals from the moment he looked at her face. He talked about how he was stunned by the immediate depth of his love for her. It made me want to cry in joy for that love. We talked about our shared St. John's college education...how lucky we were for it...About how, in this time,, we needed to believe that Obama could win and help steer this crazy wounded ship called America...We talked liberation theology, we talked poetry, we talked kids and work for over two hours...it was so nice to see him so full of life...

As the night passed, I kept thinking how strange and goofy, downright bizarre it would have been to walk into that bar on that halloween night and listen to and watch everybody....him dressed as a woodsman, me as Palin, surrounded by lucha libre masks, devils, Hillary Clintons, priests, Pinocchio, a guy dressed as an anal fissure, goblins, Michael Phelps, Witches, Gargoyles...all of us talking politics...all of us so so so wanting to believe that change will come...

Slante to us all, Slante to hope, Slante to a new kinder liberal order.

I believe.

A New Deal/Real Deal...cycle, history... cycle

2008-11-01T18:29:00.000-07:00

FDR Explains the Crisis

Why 2008 Feels Like 1932

By PAM MARTENS
The parallels with 1932 are breathtaking: billions in bonds defaulting; dysfunctional global credit markets; commodity prices crumbling; stocks in free fall; home foreclosures; rising unemployment; banks teetering; an angry populace; a Republican administration clinging to their discredited trickle down theory; a Democratic contender for President with charismatic oratory skills tapping into the public mood with a message of a New Deal, this time called “change we can believe in.”
To complete the similitude, we need only a landslide victory for the Democrats in the upcoming election with Obama carrying all but six states.
It is no coincidence that our problems today are a replay of those of 1932, albeit with a less rapid economic descent because of the safety nets like Social Security and bank deposit insurance put in place by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal programs of the 30s. Each and every form of securities and bank fraud that led to the conditions of 1932 have been perpetrated again today. The only differences are that this time the Wall Street leverage is larger and the fraud frequently began its life with a triple-A pedigree and a legal opinion from a top tier law firm registered as a lobbyist with the U.S. government.
To make the point that an unregulated Wall Street has looted our nation twice in an eighty year span and brought it to its knees using the same treachery, I’ve sought out the assistance of the man who previously saved capitalism from the crony capitalists. Following is my interview with FDR, using quotations from campaign speeches he gave in 1932.
Martens: I am struck by the historic concentrations of wealth and inequalities in income distribution that peaked just before the Great Depression of the 30s and are with us again today. Does our economic system require a certain equilibrium of wealth distribution in order that workers can afford to buy the goods and services produced by their employers? Or, to put it another way, is deflation and general wealth destruction the end game when wealth becomes overly concentrated?
FDR: “…our basic trouble was not an insufficiency of capital. It was an insufficient distribution of buying power coupled with an over-sufficient speculation in production. While wages rose in many of our industries, they did not as a whole rise proportionately to the reward to capital, and at the same time the purchasing power of other great groups of our population was permitted to shrink. We accumulated such a superabundance of capital that our great bankers were vying with each other, some of them employing questionable methods, in their efforts to lend this capital at home and abroad. I believe that we are at the threshold of a fundamental change in our popular economic thought, that in the future we are going to think less about the producer and more about the consumer. Do what we may have to do to inject life into our ailing economic order, we cannot make it endure for long unless we can bring about a wiser, more equitable distribution of the national income.”
Martens: Today, the Republicans call their economic model the “trickle down theory.” I think you called it “economic royalists.” It seems pretty clear that extreme wealth concentration is irrevocably linked with busts and depressions, so where did this dangerous theory originate?
FDR: “There are two ways of viewing the Government's duty in matters affecting economic and social life. The first sees to it that a favored few are helped and hopes that some of their prosperity will leak through, sift through, to labor, to the farmer, to the small business man. That theory belongs to the party of Toryism, and I had hoped that most of the Tories left this country in 1776. But it is not and never will be the theory of the Democratic Party… Yes, the people of this country want a genuine choice this year, not a choice between two names for the same reactionary doctrine. Ours must be a party of liberal thought, of planned action, of enlightened international outlook, and of the greatest good to the greatest number of our citizens.”
Martens: We’re just beginning to look upon our current era as two, interrelated, institutionalized wealth transfer mechanisms. One at the corporate level where the A+B theorem actually became the A+B+C theorem. That is, A was worker wages; B was raw material and all other production costs; and C was this obscene level of executive compensation which was frequently based on an earnings mirage crafted through secret off-balance-sheet debt concoctions, custom tailored by Wall Street firms. The worker had to pay for A+B+C when they bought the product or service of that company even though C was really just a wealth transfer with no value added to the product or service. Then we had Wall Street asset-stripping through excessive fees and commissions and churning everything else the worker owned from 401(k)s to bank deposits to home mortgages to annuities to their kids’ college tuition accounts; not to mention usury fees on credit cards. Going into debt on credit cards was often out of necessity to survive because wages, component A above, was not adequate to pay for components B+C. How does this compare to the late 20s and 30s?
FDR: “In the years before 1929 we know that this country had completed a vast cycle of building and inflation…Now it is worth remembering, and the cold figures of finance prove it, that during that time there was little or no drop in the prices that the consumer had to pay, although those same figures proved that the cost of production fell very greatly; corporate profit resulting from this period was enormous; at the same time little of that profit was devoted to the reduction of prices. The consumer was forgotten. Very little of it went into increased wages; the worker was forgotten, and by no means an adequate proportion was even paid out in dividends--the stockholder was forgotten. And, incidentally, very little of it was taken by taxation to the beneficent Government of those years. What was the result? Enormous corporate surpluses piled up-- the most stupendous in history. Where, under the spell of delirious speculation, did those surpluses go? Let us talk economics that the figures prove and that we can understand. Why, they went chiefly in two directions: first, into new and unnecessary plants which now stand stark and idle; and second, into the call-money market of Wall Street, either directly by the corporations, or indirectly through the banks. Those are the facts. Why blink at them? Then came the crash. You know the story. Surpluses invested in unnecessary plants became idle. Men lost their jobs; purchasing power dried up; banks became frightened and started calling loans. Those who had money were afraid to part with it. Credit contracted. Industry stopped. Commerce declined, and unemployment mounted. And there we are today.”
Martens: While most attention today is focused on fraud in the issuance of debt securities, another problem impacting job creation is that the investment banks that are responsible for identifying and bringing to public market the innovative businesses that will lead our country forward, create new jobs and higher standards of living, are so riddled with conflicts that we have witnessed trillions of dollars of the country’s savings vanish in flim-flam stock offerings. The NASDAQ market has lost 67 percent of its value from its peak in 2000 and hundreds of NASDAQ companies that should have never been sold to the public have seen their stocks declared worthless. How does this compare with the events leading up to the 1929 collapse and the Great Depression?
FDR: “…we cannot review carefully the history of our industrial advance without being struck with its haphazardness, the gigantic waste with which it has been accomplished, the superfluous duplication of productive facilities, the continual scrapping of still useful equipment, the tremendous mortality in industrial and commercial undertakings, the thousands of dead-end trails into which enterprise has been lured, the profligate waste of natural resources...Such controlling and directive forces as have been developed in recent years reside to a dangerous degree in groups having special interests in our economic order, interests which do not coincide with the interests of the Nation as a whole. I believe that the recent course of our history has demonstrated that, while we may utilize their expert knowledge of certain problems and the special facilities with which they are familiar, we cannot allow our economic life to be controlled by that small group of men whose chief outlook upon the social welfare is tinctured by the fact that they can make huge profits from the lending of money and the marketing of securities--an outlook which deserves the adjectives ‘selfish’ and ‘opportunist.’ ”
Martens: Today our Congress, Treasury and Federal Reserve have provided over $1.7 trillion of taxpayer money to shore up the very financial institutions whose lending and trading practices have brought the country to the brink of economic collapse. Most of these firms are the very ones that created complex securities that bundled together thousands of residential mortgages, leveraged the investment, and then sold it in tranches (pieces) to investors. These are the instruments that are blowing up like land mines all around the globe (Collateralized Debt Obligations/CDOs). But because these mortgages are bundled together and contractually linked as a group investment, our government appears reticent to interfere with private contracts or the rights of the investors who either bought these investments or made contrary bets against them (Credit Default Swaps/CDS). As a result, millions of Americans are seeing their homes foreclosed on because they can’t obtain mortgage relief. What would be your thoughts in this regard?
FDR: “Never in history have the interests of all the people been so united in a single economic problem. Picture to yourself, for instance, the great groups of property owned by millions of our citizens, represented by credits issued in the form of bonds and mortgages--Government bonds of all kinds, Federal, State, county, municipal; bonds of industrial companies, of utility companies; mortgages on real estate in farms and cities, and finally the vast investments of the Nation in the railroads. What is the measure of the security of each of those groups? We know well that in our complicated, interrelated credit structure if any one of these credit groups collapses they may all collapse. Danger to one is danger to all.”
Martens: We spoke earlier about concentrated wealth and income inequality. But we also have the same concentrated industrial power that you had in the late 20s and 30s. Can you speak to that?
FDR: “Appraising the situation in the bitter dawn of a cold morning after, what do we find? We find two-thirds of American industry concentrated in a few hundred corporations…We find more than half of the savings of the country invested in corporate stocks and bonds, and made the sport of the American stock market. We find fewer than three dozen private banking houses, and stock-selling adjuncts of commercial banks, directing the flow of American capital. In other words, we find concentrated economic power in a few hands…We find a great part of our working population with no chance of earning a living except by grace of this concentrated industrial machine; and we find that millions and millions of Americans are out of work, throwing upon the already burdened Government the necessity of relief…We find the Republican leaders proposing no solution except more debts, more conferences under the same bewildered leadership, more Government money in business but no Government attempt to wrestle with basic problems…I believe that our industrial and economic system is made for individual men and women, and not individual men and women for the benefit of the system.”
Martens: Thank you Mr. President.
Pam Martens worked on Wall Street for 21 years; she has no security position, long or short, in any company mentioned in this article. She writes on public interest issues from New Hampshire. She can be reached at pamk741@aol.com

Poor Michelle Bachmann

2008-10-22T18:37:00.001-07:00

No, I really mean poor, negative cash flow, no more Money for ads-POOR!

Those nasty big boys in the RNC took all of her ad money away just because she was possessed by and channelled the evil spirit of Joe McCarthy, through her pretty little lipsticked, right-wing, mouth...

Poor big-eyed, dingbat Barbie doll, fascist!!! NO MO' ' $$$'s for you!

Can you spell Elwin Tinklenberg? I smell a burn comin on...

I'm puttin'my heels on and takin my "socialist" gloves off!

2008-10-20T21:16:00.000-07:00

Oh Sarah Palin...Oh Michelle Bachmann... I may not live in the right, real part of America...I might not ride snowmobiles or own 6 guns or 7 houses...

I might not have gotten pregnant and quickie married to remedy that...I do not play the Flute or even myself on SNL...I have not married a gayish man who dresses me like a human Barbie, then watched silently as he denies his genetics and then shames all who are not ashamed to be gay...

I have not bullied my way to power thru the PTA/Hockey Mom thing (tho I could have...)

I have not publically groped George Bush as he walked past me in the aisle, nor would I ask for a media investigation of anyone in the house or senate who disagrees with me...

I guess I'm just one fucking big failure as an American woman...but ladies, hear this: My standards are a little different...Let's start with your own gender-sterotypical selves...

My high-heels are sexier than yours.
My boobs are bigger.
My brain is more developed.
And get this...I actually have a heart...a real live bleeding liberal, kind and compassionate one...I have a heart...neither of you seem to.

Maybe you can buy one at Walmart. I hear they are super cheap there.

Ghostbusters, where are you?

2008-10-18T08:04:00.000-07:00

enraged ...scared...ashamed....voting!

I have my holywater, I have my bible, I am calling in the priests to exorcise the demons, the ghosts...I will be a ghost buster for Obama...

I was watching Chris Mathews" on Hardball, and who should appear as a guest? Minnesota's own Michelle Bachman..you know, the goofy, right wing from the Stillwater district. I decided to listen, even tho she is usually so inane I go nuts.

SHE WAS RIVETING...in all of the wrong ways. I watched Mathews face go grey, then sad, as she "Palined" the hell out of the interview. But, she went beyond Pailn to channel the cold and hateful spirit of Senator Joe McCarthy, the witch hunting, commie hating, anti-semitefrom the 50's.

She called Obama a terrorist, repeatedly...she repeated all of McCain and Palin's lies again and again...she called all democrats in the house asnd senate," left leaning liberals, said many of them "pal around" with anti-patriotic terrorists. She warned him that the country was rife with lefties, liberals and terrorists like Ayres...most democratic voters would choose to pal around with that type...She assured us that despite facts to the contrary, Obama did begin his campaign in a terrorists living room and she personally knew thst to be a fact...Policy wise, she insinuated that Obama would kill babies before they were born, poison young minds with a left-leaning education system, lead this counrty into a place where true patriots would suffer.

I saw Joe McCarthy...I saw narrow minded hatred, racism, bare-bone stupidity, butmostly I saw in her a McCarthy-like arrogance...a belief that she and her like minded flag waving, creationist patriots are the only "right" ones in this country. I saw how fear used to drive deep gulfs between political parties goes too far...incites vioence

Chris Mathews ended the interview, looking sick...he said that he had never met her before , he saw how that kind of mindset was dangerous, inflammatory, the pundit who followed said she was so shocked by the Bachmann rant, that she could barely breath. She dissectedher hateful right wing crap and then Pat Buchanan, said how much he liked Bachman's points ...you just have to watch the whole ghost of McCarthy thing for yourself...it was as good as any college level history/sociology class I ever sat in ...

george will stole my line! wtf?

2008-10-09T20:05:00.000-07:00

So, the night after the RNC convention started, I pegged that Palin biatch as Sancho Panza...the illiterate side kick to Don McQuixote...delusional, hallucinatory, crazy...tilting at any and all things liberal and measures; hateful racist, right-leaning raptured, evangelical myth monger...what? pointing at those non-critical economic windmills, showing how she stopped those bridges to nowhere, tilting at "that one", with racism and ignorance as their swords, hatred and blindness their steeds...

SO....

Dear Mr. Will,

You stole my best line...MY BEST FUCKING GENIUS LINE...
MY ANALOGY...JEZUZ...YOU STOLE MY BRILLIANT THUNDER.
AND, HERE'S WHY! IT HURTS SO MUCH; MY PERSONAL HERO, KEITH OLBERMAN, READ IT IN YOUR COLUMN AND SAID YOU HIT A HOME RUN WITH THAT LINE...my genius genius line/analogy

So, will you just tell him that I said it first? If so, I'll forgive you your conservative republican schtick...

Stop the McSanity

2008-10-08T21:12:00.001-07:00

After the "debate" I realized that we need to channel the forces of altruism, the spirit of the greatest generation...read your history, grasshoppers...we will need to set out minds to the future. Like FDR after 1929, we will need to believe in hope. We will have to put people back to work. We will have to dare to dream of a country can suck it up and do. We also will have to stop expecting that with this economic meltdown, we will not have to change our lifestyles..
Grow your victory garden next spring. Stop charging everything. Buy generic.

Buy less. Need less. Want less. Love what you have and re-use what you can.

None of this happens if you do not vote for the future...if you do not vote. I know that people think politicians are all lousy and dirty. Still, even if you believe that, you have to see the difference between blatant racists and greedy de-regulation liars and those who just might disappoint because they are not perfect. Who the fuck is? Are you? I am so far from perfect it is scary...

The belief, espoused by george w bush after 9/11 that we could shop our way out of this tragedy, is legs up in the ditch...

We will need to learn sacrifice, sacrifice like during WWII...

We will have to call liars, liars. Thiefs, thiefs.

By the way...does McCain not remember that he has a lobbyist from Freddie Mac as an advisor? Does he not remember the Keating 5 and it's 3.4 billion dollar bailout? Does he not understand basic math re taxes? Or is he just a desperate liar who will sell us down the river to win?

I am tired, sooooo tired, of McCain using fear to win. From this day on, my name is Mary "Hussein" Cassidy. I say to all of you who are tired, who want to believe....take your stand and change your middle name to Hussein, too. Fuck you MCCPAIN! You are nothing more than an OLD, out of touch fear-monger. Racist? Idiot? Liar...See just how far and low the mighty have fallen....

And to you, Sarah Palin, I say this: " I got my heels on and my gloves off." You are shameless and a liar. Take my stillettos on your instep, biatch...Bring on those fucking, SO NOT come fuck me heels...Mine are ready AND SAY THIS... JUST TRY TO FUCK ME OVER...HA!

justsomemusings

2008-10-06T22:28:00.000-07:00

I am amused by my ability to feel confused about almost everything again...That so many things are still so uncertain at my age is striking! I laugh... I remember age 15...I feel as if I have been thrown back there, emotionally. The butterflies, the stumble-tongue syndrom, the clumsy stance...oh to relax and just trust that what is meant to be will find it's way.

To learn to live in the moment, to enjoy a good conversation, a good movie...to learn to aim a pistol and feel the impact of a bb to tin...to laugh at and recognize the same silliness, to toss a dart in a friendly match and revel in a rare target achieved...simple joys.

A masculine hand on the small of my back...a firm hug...a leaning into eachother while talking...these are still as delicious as they were all those years ago.

Do these things need to lead to more? Maybe. Then again, maybe not. Still I miss an arm around me in my sleep. I miss the intimacy of a leg wrapped around mine as we watch tv or listen to music. I miss the sound of a heartbeat when I lay my head on a chest...ahhh touch....so so healing.

going negative...SURPRISE!

2008-10-06T21:57:00.000-07:00

Trash trumps substance, or so they think...what if we, as the voting public, are actually so much smarter than the RNC thinks and refuse to sink to the lowest level.

According to a recent conservative poll, Barak is now up by 90 electoral college votes, and one of McCain's campaign managers poses the dilemna..., "if we continue to talk about the economy, we are finished."

So then, what does mccain feel he has to lose, beside the election...his imagination is limited. His understanding of the middle class or god forbid, the poor, is non-existent. His moral compass is skewed, his idea of truth is distorted by his own need to win at any cost....left with no vision for the future, he will lie, distort, smear, dredge up the fake terrorist links in a blatantly racist manner.

I need to believe, like Abraham Lincoln, that sometimes as a group of regular citizens, we still have the capacity to believe in and act on the angels of our better nature...meaning we choose the high road and turn a deaf ear to the lies and smears, focusing instead on the real issues that plague our nation. I predict that we choose not to go negative! I believe the voters will choose to vote against hate and bigotry and ignorance.

For those who say Barak is the same as McCain...do not delude yourself.

There are good men and there are mediocre and there are bad. Sometimes the choice is subtle, only between almost monochromatic shades of gray. Other times it is in full spectrum white to black.

Obama is human and therefore imperfect. As a politician he is relatively new. But, he is smart. He shows the ability to be measured and thoughtful. He shows compassion...Do not paint him with the mcpain brush, To do so is blind and almost foolish. Would you put Churchill and Hitler in a box and say they were interchangeable?...only if you were blind and deaf and unwilling to look at their behaviors .

The differences ARE that stark in this election...do not suppose that they aren't.

I dare you...Think. It's patriotic.

Dissent, but do not be stupid...there are enormous differences. Do your homework. It will matter on November 4th. To all of us.

november, bloody november

2008-10-05T20:32:00.000-07:00

Current mood: I am so so anxious

Do any of us reach the finish line in this election unspattered...unbloodied?
I watch tv, the ugly ads in absolute dismay. I am furious and disgusted by the mean-spirited attacks by Mcpain and by the DNC and Obama's forced response to them...

I think these are ugly times due to Bush and his cronies. Hate and greed have ruled a once good country too long. I wonder if we can close the Panora's box of hate and ugly. I wonder if the vicious lies have already broken us too deeply. I wonder if the decade of economic piracy by "in-their-pocket" politicians who allowed big corporations to literally write their own laws, also raided the ability to hope and correct this rudderless government. I want us, as a country, to be good again. I want us, as a nation to mean something honorable again.

Obama sure as hell can't do it alone. Nor can congress or the senate. It has to be all of us. It has to be the second coming of the "greatest generation." This time it won't be the Nazi's we fight...tis time it is complacency.

Fuckin fight, America. Stand for something honorable and good and true. Please.

oh my foolish heart

2008-09-24T22:39:00.000-07:00

It is so odd and wonderful to feel life fully again...in the midst of this historical election; in the midst of this economic meltdown; in the midst of trying to keep my business alive; in the midst of missing my daughter, I have re-discovered my heart and its' capacity to feel. I love someone. I love again.

Does it matter that he loves me in return. Yes! Does it matter that I hold my breath waiting or him to act, since I have blurted out my feelings? Yes. Will I dare to act again if he is frozen? Yes. Do I want him to say again that he loves me? Yes.

Let there be some god...even a lesser one, who believes I am worthy of his love. Let there be a god who gives him the courage to speak his heart.
Let me know the truth in his...even if it hurts.

Most of all...I am amazed that I can love again. Thank you to those gods, or my own heart, for having the courage to beat and hope and dare. Let that courage drive his heart too!

Dare Obama man, i would never ever hurt you. I know that we are an odd match...odd... but, I think, mutually healing. Love me back...you said you do, but, you we were silly that night.
Dare to say it, again...

Ask me about my true heart, and we will see.
Slante

read this ... fact vs. spin.

2008-09-14T11:38:00.001-07:00

10 things that need to be known.

10 things you should know about John McCain (but probably don't):

1. John McCain voted against establishing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now he says his position has "evolved," yet he's continued to oppose key civil rights laws.

2. According to Bloomberg News, McCain is more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, Russia, and China. Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says McCain "will make Cheney look like Gandhi."

3. His reputation is built on his opposition to torture, but McCain voted against a bill to ban waterboarding, and then applauded President Bush for vetoing that ban.

4. McCain opposes a woman's right to choose. He said, "I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned."

5. The Children's Defense Fund rated McCain as the worst senator in Congress for children. He voted against the children's health care bill last year, then defended Bush's veto of the bill.

6. He's one of the richest people in a Senate filled with millionaires. The Associated Press reports he and his wife own at least eight homes! Yet McCain says the solution to the housing crisis is for people facing foreclosure to get a "second job" and skip their vacations.

7. Many of McCain's fellow Republican senators say he's too reckless to be commander in chief. One Republican senator said: "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He's erratic. He's hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."

8. McCain talks a lot about taking on special interests, but his campaign manager and top advisers are actually lobbyists. The government watchdog group Public Citizen says McCain has 59 lobbyists raising money for his campaign, more than any of the other presidential candidates.

9. McCain has sought closer ties to the extreme religious right in recent years. The pastor McCain calls his "spiritual guide," Rod Parsley, believes America's founding mission is to destroy Islam, which he calls a "false religion." McCain sought the political support of right-wing preacher John Hagee, who believes Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for gay rights and called the Catholic Church "the Antichrist" and a "false cult."

10. He positions himself as pro-environment, but he scored a 0—yes, zero—from the League of Conservation Voters last year.

John McCain is not who the Washington press corps make him out to be. Please help get the word out—forward this email to your personal network.

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THE RIGHT WING?

2008-09-09T16:43:00.000-07:00

FUCK THE BOUNCE FROM THE RNC...
RACIST, RICH, OR JUST PLAIN DEAF MEN AND WOMEN LISTENED TO THAT BARACUDA WITH TITS AND DIDN'T HEAR A GDD-DAMNED THING SHE SAID...

IS THE ART OF ACTUALLY HEARING WORDS, NOT JUST LOOKING AT THE VIDEO SCREEN, LOST?
THIS IS WHAT THEY DIDN'T HEAR WHILE THEY WERE LOOKING AT HER SNAPPY PEARLS AND SPUNKY, SNIDE DELIVERY:

SHE WILL CONTINUE THE BUSH AGENDA OF DISMANTLING THE CONSTITUTION.

SHE WILL SPEND US INTO THIRD WORLD STATUS IN THE NEVER-ENDING WAR.

SHER WILL PROTECT THE RICH AND SCREW THE MIDDLE CLASS....FORGET ABOUT SOCIAL SERVICES OR SAFETY NETS

SHE WILL UNDO THE FEW LAWS WE DO HAVE TO PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT.

SHE DOES NOT BELIEVE IN GLOBAL WARMING OR GLOBAL POLITICS/(DIPLOMACY IS FOR THE WEAK).

SHE WILL TAKE AWAY WOMEN'S REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS, UNDO PLANNED PARENTHOOD AND STOP SEX-ED IN OUR SCHOOLS...ABSTINENCE WORKED SOOOOOO WELL FOR HER DAUGHTER, DIDN'T IT....

SHE WILL ENDORSE THE TEACHING OF CREATIONISM,, NOT SCIENCE TO YOUR KIDS.

AND IF ALL ELSE FAILS, AND YOU FUCKING DARE TO DISAGREE OR IGNORE HER MANDATES, SHE WILL FIRE YOUR ASS!!!!!

SHE WILL, SHE HAS, SHE DOESN'T GIVE A SHIT WHAT YOU THINK..

ISN'T ANYBODY LISTENING?

REALLY.

I DOUBLE DARE YOU TO FIRE ME, SARAH PALIN,

2008-09-08T22:29:00.000-07:00

I DOUBLE DARE YOU TO FIRE ME, SARAH PALIN,...i do!
I know this is long,, but READ it anyway, you lazy, a-political thing! It's so so important!!!

Note: see my blog about my new political party, the B and O PARTY...(BREAST AND OVARIES) IF SHE CAN BE VEEP, ANYONE WITH TITS AND OVARIES CAN. .JOIN ME,IN FORMING THIS NEW POLITICAL PARTY, PLZ!!! WORKING ON PLATFORM CURRENTLY, AND LOOKING FOR INPUT,,,(unlike Mrs. Palin)...

About Sarah Palin: A Letter From Anne Kilkenny
Sep 3, 2008

What follows is an open letter written by a resident of Wasilla, Alaska named Anne Kilkenny.

I am a resident of Wasilla, Alaska. I have known Sarah since 1992. Everyone here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on a first-name basis. Our children have attended the same schools. Her father was my child’s favorite substitute teacher. I also am on a first name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. I attended more City Council meetings during her administration than about 99% of the residents of the city.

She is enormously popular; in every way she’s like the most popular girl in middle school. Even men who think she is a poor choice and won’t vote for her can’t quit smiling when talking about her because she is a “babe”.

It is astonishing and almost scary how well she can keep a secret. She kept her most recent pregnancy a secret from her children and parents for seven months. She is “pro-life”. She recently gave birth to a Down’s syndrome baby. There is no cover-up involved, here; Trig is her baby. She is energetic and hardworking. She regularly worked out at the gym.

She is savvy. She doesn’t take positions; she just “puts things out there” and if they prove to be popular, then she takes credit. Her husband works a union job on the North Slope for BP and is a champion snowmobile racer. Todd Palin’s kind of job is highly sought-after because of the schedule and high pay. He arranges his work schedule so he can fish for salmon in Bristol Bay for a month or so in summer, but by no stretch of the imagination is fishing their major source of income. Nor has her life-style ever been anything like that of native Alaskans. Sarah and her whole family are avid hunters. She’s smart.

Her experience is as mayor of a city with a population of about 5,000 (at the time), and less than 2 years as governor of a state with about 670,000 residents. During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings which had given rise to a recall campaign.

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a “fiscal conservative”. During her 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.

The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administration weren’t enough to fund everything on her wish list though, borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? or a new library? No. $1m for a park. $15m-plus for construction of a multi-use sports complex which she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the City didn’t even have clear title to, that was still in litigation 7 yrs later–to the delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the community but a huge money pit, not the profit-generator she claimed it would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5m for road projects that could have been done in 5-7 yrs without any borrowing.

While Mayor, City Hall was extensively remodeled and her office redecorated more than once. These are small numbers, but Wasilla is a very small city. As an oil producer, the high price of oil has created a budget surplus in Alaska. Rather than invest this surplus in technology that will make us energy independent and increase efficiency, as Governor she proposed distribution of this surplus to every individual in the state.

In this time of record state revenues and budget surpluses, she recommended that the state borrow/bond for road projects, even while she proposed distribution of surplus state revenues: spend today’s surplus, borrow for needs.

She’s not very tolerant of divergent opinions or open to outside ideasor compromise. As Mayor, she fought ideas that weren’t generated by her or her staff. Ideas weren’t evaluated on their merits, but on the basis of who proposed them.

While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respected City Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the City Librarian and against Palin’s attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the Librarian are on her enemies list to this day.

Sarah complained about the “old boy’s club” when she first ran for Mayor, so what did she bring Wasilla? A new set of “old boys”. Palin fired most of the experienced staff she inherited. At the City and as Governor she hired or elevated new, inexperienced, obscure people, creating a staff totally dependent on her for their jobs and eternally grateful and fiercely loyal–loyal to the point of abusing their power to further her personal agenda, as she has acknowledged happened in the case of pressuring the State’s top cop (see below).

As Mayor, Sarah fired Wasilla’s Police Chief because he “intimidated” her, she told the press. As Governor, her recent firing of Alaska’s top cop has the ring of familiarity about it. He served at her pleasure and she had every legal right to fire him, but it’s pretty clear that an important factor in her decision to fire him was because he wouldn’t fire her sister’s ex-husband, a State Trooper. Under investigation for abuse of power, she has had to admit that more than 2 dozen contacts were made between her staff and family to the person that she later fired, pressuring him to fire her ex-brother-in-law. She tried to replace the man she fired with a man who she knew had been reprimanded for sexual harassment; when this caused a public furor, she withdrew her support.

She has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help. The City Council person who personally escorted her around town introducing her to voters when she first ran for Wasilla City Council became one of her first targets when she was later elected Mayor. She abruptly fired her loyal City Administrator; even people who didn’t like the guy were stunned by this ruthlessness.

Fear of retribution has kept all of these people from saying anything publicly about her.

When then-Governor Murkowski was handing out political plums, Sarah got the best, Chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission: one of the few jobs not in Juneau and one of the best paid. She had no background in oil & gas issues. Within months of scoring this great job which paid $122,400/yr, she was complaining in the press about the high salary. I was told that she hated that job: the commute, the structured hours, the work. Sarah became aware that a member of this Commission (who was also the State Chair of the Republican Party) engaged in unethical behavior on the job.

In a gutsy move which some undoubtedly cautioned her could be political suicide, Sarah solved all her problems in one fell swoop: got out of the job she hated and garnered gobs of media attention as the patron saint of ethics and as a gutsy fighter against the “old boys’ club” when she dramatically quit, exposing this man’s ethics violations (for which he was fined).

As Mayor, she had her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork from Senator Ted Stevens. Lately, she has castigated his pork-barrel politics and publicly humiliated him. She only opposed the “bridge to nowhere” after it became clear that it would be unwise not to.

As Governor, she gave the Legislature no direction and budget guidelines, then made a big grandstand display of line-item vetoing projects, calling them pork. Public outcry and further legislative action restored most of these projects–which had been vetoed simply because she was not aware of their importance–but with the unobservant she had gained a reputation as “anti-pork”.

She is solidly Republican: no political maverick. The State party leaders hate her because she has bit them in the back and humiliated them. Other members of the party object to her self-description as a fiscal conservative.

Around Wasilla there are people who went to high school with Sarah.

They call her “Sarah Barracuda” because of her unbridled ambition and predatory ruthlessness. Before she became so powerful, very ugly stories circulated around town about shenanigans she pulled to be made point guard on the high school basketball team. When Sarah’s mother-in-law, a highly respected member of the community and experienced manager, ran for Mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her.

As Governor, she stepped outside of the box and put together of package of legislation known as “AGIA” that forced the oil companies to march to the beat of her drum.

Like most Alaskans, she favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She has questioned if the loss of sea ice is linked toglobal warming. She campaigned “as a private citizen” against a state initiaitive that would have either a) protected salmon streams from pollution from mines, or b) tied up in the courts all mining in the state (depending on who you listen to). She has pushed the State’s lawsuit against the Dept. of the Interior’s decision to list polar bears as threatened species.

McCain is the oldest person to ever run for President; Sarah will be a heartbeat away from being President. There has to be literally millions of Americans who are more knowledgeable and experienced than she. However, there’s a lot of people who have underestimated her and are regretting it.

CLAIM VS FACT

•“Hockey mom”: true for a few years
•“PTA mom”: true years ago when her first-born was in elementary school, not since
•“NRA supporter”: absolutely true
•social conservative: mixed. Opposes gay marriage, BUT vetoed a bill that would have denied benefits to employees in same-sex relationships (said she did this because it was unconsitutional).

•pro-creationism: mixed. Supports it, BUT did nothing as Governor to promote it.

•“Pro-life”: mixed.

Knowingly gave birth to a Down’s syndrome baby BUT declined to call a special legislative session on some pro-life legislation
•“Experienced”: Some high schools have more students than Wasilla has residents. Many cities have more residents than the state of Alaska. No legislative experience other than City Council. Little hands-on supervisory or managerial experience; needed help of a city administrator to run town of about 5,000.

•political maverick: not at all
•gutsy: absolutely!
•open & transparent: ??? Good at keeping secrets. Not good at explaining actions.

•has a developed philosophy of public policy: no
•”a Greenie”: no. Turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots. Is pro-drilling off-shore and in ANWR.

•fiscal conservative: not by my definition!
•pro-infrastructure: No. Promoted a sports complex and park in a city without a sewage treatment plant or storm drainage system. Built streets to early 20th century standards.

•pro-tax relief: Lowered taxes for businesses, increased tax burden on residents
•pro-small government: No. Oversaw greatest expansion of city government in Wasilla’s history.

•pro-labor/pro-union. No. Just because her husband works union doesn’t make her pro-labor. I have seen nothing to support any claim that she is pro-labor/pro-union.

WHY AM I WRITING THIS?

First, I have long believed in the importance of being an informed voter. I am a voter registrar. For 10 years I put on student voting programs in the schools. If you google my name (Anne Kilkenny + Alaska), you will find references to my participation in local government, education, and PTA/parent organizations.

Secondly, I’ve always operated in the belief that “Bad things happen when good people stay silent”. Few people know as much as I do because few have gone to as many City Council meetings.

Third, I am just a housewife. I don’t have a job she can bump me out of. I don’t belong to any organization that she can hurt. But, I am no fool; she is immensely popular here, and it is likely that this will cost me somehow in the future: that’s life.

Fourth, she has hated me since back in 1996, when I was one of the 100 or so people who rallied to support the City Librarian against Sarah’s attempt at censorship.

Fifth, I looked around and realized that everybody else was afraid to say anything because they were somehow vulnerable.

CAVEATS

I am not a statistician. I developed the numbers for the increase in spending & taxation 2 years ago (when Palin was running for Governor) from information supplied to me by the Finance Director of the City of Wasilla, and I can’t recall exactly what I adjusted for: did I adjust for inflation? for population increases? Right now, it is impossible for a private person to get any info out of City Hall–they are swamped. So I can’t verify my numbers.

You may have noticed that there are various numbers circulating for the population of Wasilla, ranging from my “about 5,000″, up to 9,000. The day Palin’s selection was announced a city official told me that the current population is about 7,000. The official 2000 census count was 5,460. I have used about 5,000 because Palin was Mayor from 1996 to 2002, and the city was growing rapidly in the mid-90’s.

2008-09-03T09:39:00.000-07:00

"The truest form of patriotism is dissent." thomas jefferson

LENNY BRUCE ONCE SAID, " IF YOU TAKE AWAY MY RIGHT TO SAY FUCK, YOU TAKE AWAY OUR RIGHT TO SAY FUCK THE GOVERNMENT.
"

It is with great pride that I listen to continuing reports of average citizens daring to dissent and to stand in witness against the policies of the Bush administration. Shame on you Pawlenty for your heavy handed response to peaceful dissent.
What are you so afaid of?

What a POWERFUL visual: The Veteran's Against the War , group standing in full military dress nose to nose and boot to boot against the Swat teams( put in place as an extreme overreaction by the sity, state and feds) made me cry.

I believe in our right to dissent. I believe in the right to gather in groups to protest peacefully. I believe in the right to speak our minds.

The anarchists diminish the power of that watch. Violence only gives the RNC power...I SAY, NEVER GIVE AWAY YOUR POWER. EVER.

Is this McCain/Pahlin for fucking Real

2008-08-31T11:05:00.001-07:00

INSULTED and ANGRY:

I might have been bemused, ideallogically disabused, or just plain amused by the notion that the republicans would pick a woman as McCain's running mate in a blatant attempt to capture the disgruntled Hillary supporters, especially had they picked a serious candidate...
(oh that fractured glass ceiling, and it's18 million shards!!!)

Instead, I am insulted by the selection! A right wing, pro-life, anti sex-education, pristine coastal pro oil-drilling, gold mine owning, no such thing as global warming, kill all the endangered species in Alaska, nasal toned prima-donna in bad suitsand worse shoes, and under federal investigation for her part in the firing of her ex bro-in-law state trooper who dared to want custody(partial) of his own kids....

WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK WE, AS WOMEN, ARE, MCCAIN?!!!! DO YOU REALLY BELIEVE THERE ARE 18 MILLION FEMALE IDIOTS WHO WILL VOTE FOR YOU ON THE BASIS OF HER VAGINA AND BREASTS? DO YOU THINK WE DO NOT LOVE OUR COUNTRY? OUR SHORELINES? OUR SPECIES? OUR RIGHT TO CONTROL OUR OWN PROCREATION CHOICES? OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM? THE FUCKING ECONOMY? AND MOST OF ALL YOU FUCKING FAILURE OF A WAR?

GO TO HELL YOU PANDERING OLD FOOL. YOU ARE THE PERSONIFICATION OF WHAT IS WRONG WITH OUR COUNTRY'S LEADERSHIP...YOU ARE BUSH/CHENEY III...YOU ARE A BLIND SELF-ABSORBED MAN WHO CAN'T SEE PAST THE FLAG YOU HAVE DRAPED OVER YOUR EYES...
GO TO HELL YOU PANDERING FOOL. I HOPE YOU LOSE THIS ELECTION BY A LANDSLIDE....

AND, YOU CAN TAKE HER FEMALE ANATOMY AND STUFF THAT TOO!

I am listening to my favorite republican theme song...listen to it too!
Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole
By Martha Wainwright
Release date: 2005-01-25

Breakin glass...

2008-08-31T11:02:00.000-07:00

Calling all female politicos..and of course the people who love them...

Let us this day, start a new party, based not on issues or platforms, but on female anatomy...

Let us base this new party on one single(okay, technically two) qualification: breasts and ovaries...do we have them and will they be attractive enough to lure voters?

Let us declare bad suits and homely sturdy shoes the uniform of the party...
( we can begin to think of our logo based on pretty shards of glass...

Question! Does it matter if we care about the war, the economy, the constitution, education, the environment? I posit that that would be dangerous to the development of the Party...too controversial?

Observation: McCain's selection seems to make ethics, constitution, war environment, health care, economy and educatio, among other things, inconsequential...

As a new party, do we want to follow suit? or, just the bad suit?

Breasts and Ovaries, Unite!

I don't think the B. and O.
name is quite right,,,suggestions?

Thanks for your time...
Mary, 34D, double ovaried
Founder and Mother

last time

2008-08-30T20:01:00.001-07:00

Friday night, my daughter invited her dad to her goodbye party at my house. With the ugly mediation only 3 days past, it was something that was so raw and painful that I felt sick..during the court ordered mediation...after being forced to be tested, of hiding business worth, being audited, accused by him oflaziness, of not working more than three days a week, accused of not knowing how much my employees were stealing...fuck all of that hate from him, then the saying to the girls and to the mediator how much he loved the shop and how he wants it to succeed, how he would just be sick if I couldn't stay in the house... he did every thing he could to make all of that almost impossible to do...

His final tirade before being cautioned to stop by the mediator was about how sick he was of carrying me... the mediator interrupted him to tell him to consider his trash talk as a burning of any remaining thread or bridge of hope for any future friendship between us.. to stop for the sake of our daughters...

It was too late. I didn't say it out loud. But I looked the mediator in the eye and I he knew .. I did appreciated his support against Ed's crap.
Of course, the girls don't know 90% of his legal manuevering shit, about his betrayals.. and I can't tell them it...

I tell them to love their dad, and I mean it.
If I tell them all, it puts them in a terrible place. If I answer his bullshit,"she's crazy", I hurt them with truth...

But, by not doing so, it leaves me in a terrible place. I am so tired of "Poor dad," coming out of their mouths. I honestly don't think they have ever for one second considered the emotional carnage he has wrought on me over the years...it's about them and Poor Dad, always...I wish them insight and compassion, for me just once... at some point.

So, Friday was the last night I will allow them to invite my ex into my home. He can have his relationship with them elsewhere. Not here. Not again. It was pathetic to see him pretend to fix all of the things he never fucking cared about fixing when he lived here. The "show, was classic public Ed." Always the glad hand without real connect...Always the need to protect his face and ass in public. Enough of that. No more!

I will fix all the broken things that never were important to you. I will say no more to your glad hand and pretend game...not on my turf. Pretend and bullshit all you want, but not here. Ever.

A SAD TOAST TO BRIDGES THAT COULD HAVE BEEN SAVED...TOO TOO LATE...
SLANTE

the world's wide open... the sky is the limit...

2008-08-27T13:29:00.000-07:00

I have been signed, sealed and finally delivered...so what next?

What do I feel?
Peace, oddly enough, a little fear, but that feels so good at the pit of my stomach...I feel so alive and vital and curious again.
Where do I head?
To a new life that is mysterious and so wide open...It feels like hang-gliding...leaping off a high cliff and letting the wind lift you and soar you on currents while you see the beauty beneath you and the sky above...
What do I want?
I want to taste my new life...to bite in and savor it. I want to believe in my ability to be alone and succeed on my terms. I want to travel, to sing, to laugh, to learn.
What scares me?
Spiders and a bad economy. Oh, and maybe being naked in a room again with someone...Yikes
Who do I love now?
My daughters and my family and friends...may they really see who I am now and love me for that.
When will I dare to connect again?
Not sure...so many interesting options out there. It's so new and I am so different now in many ways...and I laugh at how stupid I am about how that all works, but I do know for sure that I will trust my heart and body to lead me.

So, I'm taking a deep breath. I am putting one foot in front of the other and I am leaping into the wind with my self as my parachute...

The Grand Finale: the ending is also the beginning....sweet

2008-08-20T12:14:00.000-07:00

Mediation:
So mundane, so predictable really...My best friend J says that the best predictor of future behaviors are past behaviors....damn you J, you ARE one smart fella!

I knew going in tothe mediation session that I was worth nothing in my exes' eyes....always was that way...

I sat and listened as he spewed bullshit about how amazingly fabulous, generous, smart, skilled and ethical I am, then, he said .."see, she doesn't need me to pay her much in settlement...she can make her own money..I don't think I should have to carry her on my back"...lol

You are damned predictable sir...so, I signed off...but here's the deal. I carried you for decades...I cared for your dying, I worked so you could study and be so special that normal rules didn't apply to you, I pretended I was blind to your betrayals so that you never had to choose, never had to decide. I raised our daughters, always afraid that they'd end up like me, taking it...

So here's the funny thing. I don't care that you gaveme the absolute least amount possible.I will do just fine. In fact, I think I will soar now that I am not carrying you.
I think the disservice I did to myself and my daughters, the shitty example I set by staying too long will somewhat be undone by the new me.

p.s. not that it matters, but after I tossed you out (.i love the predictor of future behavior that cued me in to what this whole process would be like) you promised to do a collaborative divorce and then while I was moving our daughter, you went to a lawyer, hid it and lied on the legal document and said that you had decided to leave me ...all about pretense and pretend...saving face, pretending and covering your ass are what you were always about in our relationship. Now, it no longer matters...

be happy, if you know how to do that...I will be...already am. Watch out for karma tho...it is a bitch...

4 for you, 1 for me....ah that's so you...

To date or not to date; that is the not question

2008-08-16T19:09:00.000-07:00

Have a mad crush on a man who is probably too young for me. I laugh when I see that on paper tho cuz my heart and spirit have never been younger or more true...

I'm not sure how he feels in return...he IS an enigma...I kinda like that tho, confusing as it is. Mute point tho, cuz no matter what he feels, I can't read it.!!!!!.. I know also, that I love him as a friend and I won't wreck that. He is honest, kind, has developed a love for gardens, and works as hard as anyone I know. He loves warm beautiful colors and dares to use them...that is wonderful cuz he doesn't care that others don't get the beauty...
I am afraid that these days I don't know the difference between what I want and what is real. Why not believe he could be attracted tho...that he could feel it too???.. Many other young men in their 30's chase me...let me know they find me attractive. Sometimes I wonder if they all have some "Mrs Robinson, kookoo ka choo" nuttiness going on? Have they all really seen the Graduate? They are damned slick and smooth tho...some even sincere... flirting, the double entendres, the soft touches of their hands on my shoulder or arm, their hands resting in the small of my back...so sweet, so freaky... but it only leaves me feeling lonely and missing intimacy more...It's funny sometimes, flattering sometimes, and, sometimes it seems, just so pointless...we always end up talking, talking, laughing and I end up as their mother-figure which in the end, seems safe and sweet and oh so appropriate...lol...no cougar instincts after all...or if they are there, I kill them like a bad litter...

I know that I am ready to dare to care again...to share my life and laughter with someone who appreciates it. I am seeing that I am old-fashioned, lonely. Not to say that my family and friends don't make my life rich beyond words...they are so wonderful. I am so so so so lucky. But, they are not a love, a soul-mate. So, I guess I will stop waiting for the sky to open and the man in question to dare to care..

So, then that is the question; how does a gal find a real date in this crazy world? I mean a date worth having!

It is time...the divorce is almost final...and, I finally truly feel free. Sweet thing, that feeling!
Slante

kitchens and confessions

2008-08-13T17:48:00.000-07:00

I am painting my kitchen walls "smoldering red", my cabinets a "midnight grey"...

I am contemplating how apt those color choices really are.

...Something in me is smoldering...not in a bad way. It's as if the flame that lights one's soul dies down and barely holds heat during crisis times: death, divorce, loss of faith in all things we once held to be true...it gets so cold and that smolder of ash barely makes it...

Then, if we are lucky, a breeze comes along and fans that dying heat back to flame...
Forgive the bad metaphors, but a bunch of breezes have saved my ash( god how I love bad puns!)
My dearest friend and art buddy's faith in me, gives me faith in myself...he sees me as bold and brave and I will try to prove him right!!! I will dare to choose red...

So, "smoldering red" it is...all over my walls, all over my heart...I was afraid to choose it but a friend told me that it IS me, and damn it, I think he is right. So I will smolder and smile at the bold choice...

As for the midnight grey...well, sometimes the dark makes the flame seem even brighter...midnight is a time where we dare to dream...grey is the color of my hair streak, a reminder that life is short and DO NOT waste even one minute of it...

So, in a week or two, it will be finished...bold, sleek, dark and beautiful. I hope to be the same...
Slante

Guns and Underpants...all in one day

2008-08-09T16:34:00.001-07:00

All my life I have been terrified of guns...dad was a hunter and carried a Glock for self-defense and I had a re-occurring dream where I'd pick one up and shoot myself or him or sibling, or someone else...all leading to mayhem, carnage, scary bad things..

Today I went to a shooting range with a friend who taught me safety, how to load, unload, aim, shoot, balance, proper grip, stance...it was oddly non-eventful as far as the expected panic that never came...

It was zen like...keep one eye closed, keep arms relaxed but firm at shoulder height, aim, breath in pull trigger and breath out...Considering I forgot my glasses...Igot almost all X's, 9'sand 7-8's. I did not panic, remanined focused...controlled, and felt a sense of immediate gratification when I saw the shots grouped so close.

It all seems so odd tho, cuz it seems so not me to shoot anything!!! even a paper target. Not so sure I'd go again, but it made me want to pick up a bow and arrow again. Used to love the skill and strength needed for archery... I think the more obvious sense of sportsmanship regarding that is more appealing..
What did I learn?
1) You can understand and conquor old fears.
2)You can teach an old dog new tricks..
3) I'm a damned good shot!

Now, a shower, a put on pretty clothes and daainty shoes and off to the Ritz for the Lili's Burlesque Underpants Show ...Never have been afraid of underpants...just looking forward to the laughs, the music and the attitude...damn I love those ladies.
Proud that the reviews have been amazing across the board...from the City Pages to the Pioneer Press to Public Radio...the" art farts"from the local theatre crowd finally get it!

Amen

Cheers ladies!

Two J's not one but 2, in one lucky woman's life!

2008-08-07T23:10:00.000-07:00

How did I ever get so lucky? I have two friends named J that I am so grateful for...I love them. They are so different and so alike at the same time. How simple a statement. I love them... How complicated. They fill my life with something I never knew In could feel again....trust, faith, hope, laughter, humor...a gift of love and trust so pure and so important that I don't know how to express what it means...

I felt for a while now that my time in this life had been some terrible joke, it's a long, fricking crazy story...very long and crazy...(except for my daughters) Then the long and never ending divorce has left me so tired, so over-fired...made me see how I'd lost my desire..Now, finally as I come back to life, I see how much I truly miss that part of my physical and spiritual self...

Then, god bless her, there is Mom...my mother of god and gloom, guilt-ridden cuz of my birth, here in my home every week, supportive but confused. I hate that there is No privacy now...on any given week... after a year of loving my alone time, it is hard to figure out my wants and needs...

No more the luxury of simply feeling my way in the dark...after finally learning to appreciate the sense of ME for the first ime in my life...and wanting to be able to move out from under the years of sad..The new me had emerged finally, and is frozen again. Here I am, a woman no longer able to pretend, with the new goal of trying to do everything in true... around mom, around my shyness...yes I said shynesS.....It made me wonder, DOES ANYONE REALLY GET THE NEW ME? DOES ANYONE UNDERSTAND THE PROCESS I WENT THRU TO discover ALL OF THAT???

Then, miracle of all miracles, I saw how THE J'S got it!!! Totally! Each in his own way...

SO, I SAY THIS TO THE WORLD..HOW SWEET AND HOW LUCKY TO KNOW AND LOVE THEM BOTH...loved so totally and firecely...

My dear art J...you are my own dark brother... my heart and yours are one...sweet sad brother...I love you and only want you to find peace and love..I want you to be able to believe that those who love you will NOT LEAVE YOU...I am here. Always!

The other J....I think of you, as first I met you, as Obama man...upright, ethical, endearing! I love that you are driven by the machine in your head... you are loved as a new friend, you confuse my heart tho...making me wish I had met you earlier and that I was ten years younger...so so silly me...if wishes were horses, beggars would fly...Time spent with you makes me happy. just damned happy. I believe in good men again cuz of you. Thank you thank you for that. So, I have decided not to be crazy, to be grateful for friendship cuz I could NOT, for my life, hurt you, not ever! ...or confuse your friendship with my own wants and issues...what do I have to offer anyway...broken body,( but not a broken soul...that's fixed... alleluia!)
I am just happy that you both see the pilgrim soul in me, and I see both of yours, ethical, kind, just...and in this life, that is enough.

Love you both...

tossing the past into the bin, we grab the present

2008-08-06T22:13:00.000-07:00

My dearest art friend asked me why he held onto everything, good and bad, from his past...."Does it help you understand your life?', I asked.
"No, it just sits there. I can't look at it," he answered. "Maybe, if all else fails, and I just do my art and give up everything else, it will take me to a dark place..."

"Toss it." I said. "Throw it. It's saved in your head, heart and skin already."
I drew eyes and lips on my sketchbook page. Eyes of dead friends, lips of past lovers..

"Toss it. Live for today or tomorrow, or a year from now. You have learned anything you can learn from those old letters and journals...do you want to sort and keep the stuff that shows how you've grown, captures the knowledge you've found? How you have evolved?"

"Nah, I can't bear to go through any of it," he said.

"Toss it into the bin then! Grab onto now, the present...let the past go, and maybe, you can even think future once it's gone." I said.

I pulled my knees up to my chin and looked at the sky. It was blue. So blue and the clouds were spectacular... purest white, blackest gray...Whispy, pulling apart, floating low.

He looked up too and watched the clouds for a while. "Yeah. Time to toss it all."

Then he went back to drawing a portrait of himself, shoulders bare, eyes closed, arty and dark...his own beautiful self in black and white...and
i wondered about his dead father who took so long to die...

Run Lola Run

2008-08-03T10:21:00.000-07:00

running to myself
Current mood: contemplative

It feels like I have been running high speed, in circles, backward, forward for years...

Last night while running after a day of work and heat, I landed in a friend's back yard at a large summer celebration...I sat and watched while listening to good music and political conversation.

I ran into an old friend. She like me, had a terrible accident that she survived. She like me, had a partner who NEVER ONCE said in the aftermath, "I'm glad you survived...I love you."

She said it made her think there has to be someone in her life who would simply say "I'm grateful you are still here with me."

Simple wishes. Simple needs. Someone who is glad for your company. Someone who is grateful for your life.

I want that. For both of us...no, for all of us.

During my life's marathon, I have experienced many highs and lows: two amazing daughters that have made the many lows palatable, many many friends who have colored my place on the planet beautifully, a business that is more a network for social interaction, thieves who stole money and trust, loved ones who betrayed love, neighbors and customers who stood up and did the right thing when it was time...over all, I see how lucky I have been...so much more than, how sad.

Stop running, Lola...see the luck...

Long hot summer

2008-07-18T19:11:00.000-07:00

Is that an oven in my pocket or is i just f%^$* hot?

I remember nights like these, slippin out of the cabin in the dark and sneaking down to the dock,slippin out of the nightie and diving, sleak and silent into the lake...floating on my back and watching the stars for hours...95 meant nothing on those nights.

I wish my pond was deeper...

Second Un-iversary

2008-07-18T19:06:00.000-07:00

It was my second Un-iversary yesterday...so odd after being together so long.
I have learned to love living alone, as oppossed to lonely. That is good. Sometimes tho, you just miss touch and intimate conversation...

Such a wierd wierd week or two. Met lots of fun new people, spent hilarious and serious time with family and friends...went to court with boys and they won this round..pretty sure they will win entire sad cessation of parental right trial...so wonderful/so tragic all at the same time...

Saw old friends, got hit on by old friend, ran for the hills from old friend...wierd!!!!

Now, I'm wondering IF there is someone out there who gets me and wants to figure out if there is maybe more to me that is worth exploring.

The biggest dilemna is what do I expect? Honesty, Humor, ethics: both personal and social, political curiosity, intelligence, music lover, daring, ...

Hello? Hello...is this thing on? The universe I mean...sigh.

Question is then this...just how do I meet someone in this crazy world? Bars? booze doesn't bring out the best in any of us probably...but i do laugh and love the conversations. Coffeeshop? Seems way to close to home, but there are some cool guys there, smart, political...and if it all went terribly wrong... oh hell no...

I love the interesting guys I've met, but not so sure they love me and my big mouth...besides, lately I think they are all too young...how funny tho, all the guys my age are too old mentally and socially...they lack curiosity and daring...

So, I guess i just bide my time and hope the trust that the "damned-good-man" fairy bonks me over the head someday...

it ain't over till the not so fat lady sings

2008-07-16T21:06:00.000-07:00

today is my second un-niversary...still not over...day passed running work errands, making bad art with bff Jay, dinner with 'nother old friend...no one remembered. As dinner was ending my youngest called and asked if I was divorced yet...it made me laugh...don't think she even realized the date... I didn't even, not till mid day when a customer asked me what the date was ...I said july 16th and finished making a latte and was walking down the counter when I stopped and thought...july 16th...oh yeah.

So wierd to be un-niversaried 2 years and still un-divorced after all this time. So I came home and sat on my deck and toasted the full moon and lit candles and listened to music while making wishes on the moon for the future...

to the future...and singing a happy song...an aria perhaps?

Ladies who dare to say see me

2008-07-12T23:03:00.000-07:00

Burlesque on a HOT HOT summer night
Such vaudevilian frickin old school fun...torch style singers:Super power belt-em out naughty Karen!, the suave tease Jasper, the Andrews sisters style harmonies and by the Ava, Nadine, Karen trio...then lots o tease and strippin.

All of the ladies are amazing...Nadine the ex-baptist, now burlesque queen emcee rocked the MN lutheranesque crowd out of it's comfort zone...The amazing Ned taught what folding chairs are really for...part gymnastic superstar, part Gene Kelly, part freak show superman...amazing new tricks for old chairs...Go superman, go!...

Sweet Pea shook it like no-one else, Ophelia Flame made me want to sit on my washer for a double spin cycle, the umbrella routine was sexy and the props amazing...volcanic burst of feathers (in blue?) made me want a rubber-ducky strip tease outfit too. Carmela the hula girl and her ukele man made me want to own my own coconut bra and hula skirt!

Sooo funny, a very very, tongue in cheek, hot show.

Jasper, the suave producer and his lady, the Divine Ballerina Burlesque Diva, Lily Verlaine, took burlesque and married it to art and classical music...amazing how completely it took me to a place I'd never visited before. Beauty and naughty all in one...so intelligent! Gina Louise and the gang showed how it ain't just a Man's world...So there James Brown.

Doll-faced Ava reminded me why I won't go camping, and then there was the so so great and bad, Funny Bunny and the "C" word routine that would make George Carlin blush...I'm still laughing and my fear of the c word is almost gone...how sweet that humaor can educate too.

I wondered as I drove home, who wouldn't love naughty on a summer nite? Last show for Sizzle was saturday nite at the Ritz...GO to the Fringe fest to see them in The Underpants Show, You will adore it! Promise.

lions and cougars and beers...oh my!

2008-07-09T22:55:00.000-07:00

lions and cougars and beers..oh my!
Current mood: pirate
Category: amused Automotive

A pick-up complete with a stuffed half- lion is apparently the best chick magnet ever.
No foolin' Saw it with my own eyes. Sat on a perfect summer night on the 331's patio and watched the parade of beauties ready to jump...cameras in hand...into the hands of whoever owned the lion and to the arms of his wing-man too!
then, the best cougar attack of all time...no shit! "I'm a big game hunter," she said. "I'm so deadly, they make me wear a bell." Oh fuckin A., i thought now here's a game..."May I please take a picture for a friend. I wouldn't dream of just climbing in without permission."
Freud would have snapped his pencil! I sat open-mouthed, in total AWE. Doll face, R went to the truck to let her take pics...I told his friend..S. J...."Now that's a PRO cougar." I was laughing my ass of tho cuz they didn't bite. I really think R didn't see it coming, excuse the pun... Still, I wanted to bow down in admiration for the most golden approach ever, adapted to a rare and quite specific situation. Genius!!!

Gentlemen. I bow to you first, tho. You were fun, sweet, irreverent and the best company I've experienced with men in ages! I can promiseyou that I'll be dragging my tired, road-trip burnt ass to your 3rd ever freakshow with friends in tow, because
I can't imagine a better group of "soft on the inside" hard on the outside, smart-sweet asses who adore fine old rides and intelligent funnyn women.

A toast to both of you! To summer nights, laughter, hot classic cars and good conversation Slante!

May you always see a cougar coming, and may that sweet tattered half-lion get you where you want to go!

God save us from the candy-van...tho i'm excited to actually see the scary thing. Funny!

For my daughters...

2008-07-07T09:54:00.000-07:00

For My Daughters Who Are Grown

I found my favorite photograph
of you in a red enamel box;
ages two and four, self-dressed
in aqua blue swim goggles
and twin, red-dragon kimonos
black hair floating, you turn to the camera.

You are my proof of joy,
spoons swimming mid-air;
cheerios pasted, like opals,
over your
smooth fat hands and cheeks...

At night, the accumulation of time
and loss infects adult dreams:
the sweetness of roses and cereal
redeems the taste of red wine
and remembered embraces.
Sweet, bent notes rise from your throats
hang in the air like dust,
skittering over every surface
I reach out to catch the sounds...

I ride dreams into morning
emerging
from one year to another,
my body a red container,
floating in time;
across a kitchen,
abandoned like a wound,
to the depths of a house set on a foundation
of rain and stone.
I excavate the belly of our lives...

When I awake you are there,
mercifully there
smoking thin 100 lights
reaching out now adult, graceful hands,
offering me your bread and wine;
the perfect communion
for a soul at sea.

Touch this

2008-07-06T21:24:00.000-07:00

A friend just had a really bad break-up...She talked about how she knew it wasn't a good relationship inherently, how she was just lonely and so she hoped it would get better over time and connection. She said that she just missed touch and conversation and a "real" relationship so much, that she picked someone who in her gut she knew wasn't right...

I was sad for her. Glad she was talking about it all. I felt her ache...Then, I got stuck on the comment about touch and conversation. They are, after all ,what makes for sound development in infants. Lack of touch and stimulation is actually the leading cause of mental retardation. Odd! Remarkable! Predictable. Then, I wondered if, as adults ,it leads to emotional retardation.

Yes...I get it, her sorrow too well. I miss touch too. I miss one-on-one conversation, I miss the feel of a hand on the small of my back...that specific touch being for me, so intimate, so protective.

I posit this: Do we make bad choices just to attain that human touch? Are they bad, or just sad, maybe just lonely and misguided...? Should we be forgiving, then, for the bad choices we sometimes make out of that terrible, large, loneliness?

So, no regrets for attempts at human outreach when we are unattached and lonely...sometimes it is good... sometimes it is just touch for the short term..sometimes it is not enough.

Slante to all who are lonely.

endings need to end, so i can begin!!!

2008-07-01T22:06:00.001-07:00

So much time to get to the end...so many roadblocks, so much legal dancing and prestidigitation...

I kept wondering why I have been so so so so tired and I realized it's because I'm always waiting for the next shoe to drop, the next bad game to begin.

Yesterday I was tired tired tired from work, I thought I would just sleep my week away. When I woke up, I was going to try to shrug the shit off my shoulders, put the dog out, sit on my deck, water my garden, crank my music, watch Countdown with mom, unfurl my scrunched brow and smile at the world that rolled out before me, because tho the legality of END is still playing like a broken record, the mary cassidy in me would BEGIN AT WAKE-UP...No more tethers to him, no more ties to broken...

When I woke up, I SAW THAT I HAVE CHOICES...I SAW HOW SILLY I WAS TO NOT HAVE REALLY UNDERSTOOD THAT. AT THE END OF NAP TIME, MARY CASSIDY BEGAN, SMART, LOUD, HAPPY, SEXY, DARING AND CURIOUS...FREE... BEGAN AGAIN

SWEET

THEN there was Good byes and bbs...target practice with a dear man... distraction from her going, a reprieve from waiting..
Life is sweet and oh so strange some weeks...The changes will be rolling in like waves...daughters, divorce, my own daring to dream...

Ironic, I think, that one daughter is coming home at last, the other leaving on her "I need to do this, to see if I can," journey...off to Colorado...beautiful they say...

Sweet and sad for me. I will think of it as an opportunity for her (and at some future point, me,) to see new parts of this country. I will rejoice in her choice and watch, long-distance, her blooming on her own terms.
I will pray to the stars, since god is probably just that, for her happiness, and not mourn her leaving.
I will remember how I left too, years ago, then returned to where home was set in my heart. All will play out as it is meant to.

Sitting with her over dinner, listening to her reasons for leaving, I thought back to my life before her and her sister or even her father. I was so ready to strike out- far away, independent of my family. I did and it was one hell of a ride...foreign travel, island home and new cultures that dug under my skin and became such an integral part of who I now am.

I did not cry. Instead, I wished her happiness and love. And then, how strange a gift, birds pecking crumbs at my feet, bringing a sweet vision of homing pigeons into my head...of her, and her sister, off to the world, with an instinct for when and how to return...driving home, the moon rose and the stars came out...all meant to be what it is.

I am at peace with it...I thought of big love, how it drives us..

I thought of me, now, and of simpler pleasures...of the things that keep me happy...like, how much I would love laying on my deck and watching the stars, or listening in the dark to the sound of water over my pond's watrfall, the joy and satisfaction of hitting a beer can with a bb gun at a friends house on a summer night...

The thought of freedom, anyone's freedom, is so pure, so sweet...
For me, that means it will be okay...even if it includes losing what I have always known as home. Yep, the trade off is no different than the daughters' daring to start new...Fuck yes, change is good.
HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS! That cannot be taken away.
I have seen, finally, that I, like my daughters, can't be scared of new anymore...

What is New?:
That Mary Cassidy would bloom from my heart and from my skin, fully formed, like Athena...does that mean fully armed for self-defense? hope so...
That I would be so damned good at designing gardens for people who's idea of beauty is very different from mine? That they would love it and find peace there...
That I can hula-hoop and smoke at the same time...
That I could be so good at birthing babies?
That I could roll, like a ninja, with the punches life has thrown lately? I guess I knew but didn't trust that I did...now I do...
That I could judge a grown-up spelling bee and bee naughty as necessary
That I could see that BIG changes are just big changes...and, roll baby roll...
That I could love so many kinds of music...opera, r&b, hip-hop, rock, indie, folk, metal, punk, jazz, blues...

I am currently listening to : I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too, By Martha Wainwright. I love it...somehow it makes me feel free, like my life is just one more example of how things start anew...she is amazing...listen.

endings need to end, so i can begin!!!

2008-07-01T22:06:00.000-07:00

Good byes and bbs....
Current mood: adventurous
Category: sure Life

Oh the changes are rolling in like waves...daughters, divorce, daring ...who knew I would love the stars so, or the sound of water over rock, the joy of hitting a beer can with a bb gun, the thought of freedom even if it means losing what I have always known as home...? Fuck yes, change is good. HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS! I'LL BE FINE, home or no home...can't be scared anymore...

Who knew I would be so damned good at designing gardens for people who's idea of beauty is different from mine? Who knew I could be so good at birthing babies? Who knew I could roll like a ninja with the punches life has thrown lately? I guess I knew but didn't trust that I did...now I do...

BIG changes are just big changes...roll baby roll...

Currently listening :
I Know You're Married But I've Got Feelings Too
By Martha Wainwright
Release date: 2008-06-10

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Monday, June 30, 2008

So much time to get to the end...so many roadblocks, so much legal dancing and prestidigitation...

I keep wondering why I am so so so so tired and I realize it's because I'm always waiting for the next shoe to drop, the next bad game to begin.

Today, tiredtiredtiredfrom work, I think I will just sleep. When I wake up, I will shrug the shit off my shoulders, put the dog out,sit on my deck, water my garden, crank my music, watch Countdown with mom, unfurl my scrunched brow and smile at the world that rolls out before me, because tho the legality of END is still playing like a broken record, the mary cassidy in me BEGINS. Tonight...No more tethers, no more ties to broken...

CHOICE...HOW SILLY TO NOT HAVE REALLY UNDERSTOOD THAT. TODAY AT THE END OF NAP TIME, MARY CASSIDY BEGINS, SMART, LOUD, HAPPY, SEXY, DARING AND CURIOUS...FREE... BEGIN.AGAIN

SWEET

chickens on fire

2008-06-30T22:51:00.000-07:00

Today i was so tired i thought I couldn't make it thru my shift at the coffeeshop...all the caffeine in the world at my behest and it did no damned good. Tired of never-ending endings..waking up without hope, fed up with political "short bus" world views...just fucking tired across the spectrum of my life.

Then, mom came to spend the night and we went to dinner at POP and half the coffeeshop customers were at dinner and they were all so happy eating and laughing and their cute babies waved and hugged and blew kisses all thru dinner and I couldn't help but smile and laugh and hug back and then I felt awake and silly to have been so low...

Mom and I watched Countdown, a ritual I have come to love, and we bitched about politics and laughed and swore at the pundits. Then, Katia called and I booked my flight to collect her and her belongings for the journey back home from Philly...ten minutes later Jessica called and said she was probably moving to Colorado...one daughter home, one off to explore love and potential...life...life..she's right, it is her turn to leave the safety of home and learn about life and what she's made of...bittersweet. I have to see it as forward motion and a chance for me to get to know Colorado... make lemonade mary...

Dori came over and we sat on the deck, after mom went to bed. We talked about the boys and the wonderous "village" we live in where people have stepped up to house and love the boys, now all safely placed and cared for. Damn, how I love my neighborhood and the people who live in it and are so honorable when push comes to shove...

Cry baby me, but grateful cry baby....we talked about the boys, their crazy broken mom, our own kids, hope for the future, politics, food, wine, friends...then on to the best story ever! the story about Wausau and the heroin addicts camping in the woods, chicken stealers who decided they couldn't butcher them so instead decided to just toss them feathers and all alive into the fire cuz they were hungry...didn't work so well the flaming chickens escaped and ran thru the woods ablaze and then one of the addicts who part time worked at a bbq place chased them with a keg of bbq sauce after they ran around fully afire. and one of the other junkies was confused and wanted to know if he was basting them or trying to put out the fire....JEEZUZ PEOPLE ARE CRAZY!

So, at the end of the day, I conclude; God bless good stories about people SoOOOOooo much crazier than me...nothing better than laughing till cabernet comes out your nostrils.

Tomorrow I will rescue a broken tree and swipe sumac for my friend's garden...and laugh while I do it. Ninja tree swiper me Wednesday, tattoo completion, a metaphor for my looney life inked across my back in all of it's colorful glory...mary cassidy sprung forth, at last! Then to cap it all off , art time with Jay...what coukld be better? Nada

So, tomorrow I will wake up to the life I have, in all of it's splendor...grateful for every fucking thing...including the image of chickens running thru a forest on fire chased by a man with bbq sauce...

who needs movies after all of this?

Slante

Birthdays and Bees

2008-06-22T10:50:00.000-07:00

What a peaceful and crazy week...all at the same time....
Run, wait, dig dirt to create beauty, work, go out with friends, cry cuz Joey ran away...make more lattes, dig more dirt, create more beauty. Talk politics and throw darts with friends for my bday. Judge the Drunken Spelling Bee and hoop in heels while talking naughty and making spellers laugh...Good job Taffi. Thanks for the fun.

WOW...All of that and to still feel and acknowledge a growing peace with in. Amazing how I feel a sweetness to my life now. I love my family and friends more each day. I appreciate more each day what I could possibly lose...my house, my business... that's all up to a judge and a justice system I choose to believe in.

What cannot be lost is family, friendships, my soul and heart. Those are mine. The joy of knowing that they will be enough is maybe what creates this sweet new sense of peace.

My daughters, I hope you understand why I won't let your father in my life right now...Have to finish the cut. Have to draw the clear line in the sand for my own happiness. I have earned it. Have to stand for what I am now,( probably always was but never dared truly be).

" Mary Cassidy" is here to stay. She's a good lady. Full of kindness, fairness and more than a bit of Irish naughtiness. And most of all, she loves you. And finally, herself too...sweet.

so it’s true, the end is also the beginning

2008-06-20T01:02:00.000-07:00

mood: adventurous
Category: Life

A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains.
Tennesse Williams

My heart and life has been ALL curves thru the mountain...family, marriage, kids, jobs, friends, divorce.... nothing straight or even slightly predictable...Sadly, I think I always knew he did not love ME, the real me. So, I chose to see that an end is also a beginning.

One year later...Today is my birthday. I will consider this a true, curved beginning. The end was curved and treacherous. The beginning is not. It is full of hope and optimism. My human heart dares to take that curved journey again....Do I dare to be alone? Hell yes. Lonely? I was for so many married years...what's new? Friends, loves, so much stays vital and real over time...Beauty, as in the eye of the beholder, flying thru the air, like that plastic bag, spinning over the road in the film "American Beauty", that's what remains...

Today I clearly see that curved road running thru my heart...it spills on out to the rest of my life. It is well- lighted and beckons. From this day on, I am free from certain ghosts, wise to others...unafraid (who knew?) even of more failures. Shit happens. for sure...

I swear, I will pick myself up and try to live by nothing more than this: to be as good as I can be, to cause the least amount of pain or harm to this world and its'inhabitants as possible, to love my friends, family and daughters with all my heart...

I promise to judge the drunken spelling bee with sass and humor...to uphold the scripps national spelling bee standards to the last sip of wine, to write poetry even if it is bad poetry, to write incredible short stories and to one day really ,truly write a great american novel. Really. I promise it to myself...and damn it, I believe i will!
On top of all of that, I will believe in goodness and music and beauty and even love again...
So, on this, the longest day of the year, my birth day, I raise a glass to new births and the suns' rotation!

Slante and godspeed to all whom I love.

lost boy

2008-06-16T15:58:00.000-07:00

Today the boys went to court to be placed in temporary custody and finally permanently removed from their crazy, broken addict Mom...four of the five were placed. The court denied the last placement and set the wheels in motion to send hin to Saint Joseph's...he listened, watched it happen then he ran away.

He answered the phone when I called...he said so flat...nobody wants me...they took everyone else and nobody wants me...Then he said he won't tell me where he is...and hung up.

I feel like shit. I can't take him in permanently for so many reasons...my mom living here two-three days a week and slowly losing her memory...she is losing ground so markedly and I see what is coming with her. Then, my own daughter is moving home in a month... full up...no room in the inn. Lastly, the never-ending divorce...the eternal "I'll fucking show you" from the ex...absolutely no sense of where I'll be financially when it finally ends... if I take the shit offer he has given, nobody will be able to stay in the house.. After all those years, am I surprised that he sees me as worth nothing? Hell no. Hell no Fucking, hell no. The fact that the state has guidelines and he that he has consistently offered only a fraction of that...who knows what the court will do. If I got a fair settlment , I could help older brother and runaway pay rent and be together... if only I knew I'd have a fair settlement....

I feel like slapping my ex...cheap, spiteful man.. LoL.. Fair? ...he turned down my request for 100 a month to feed the boys who we've had for every Sunday dinner for three goddamn years.... it makes me feel crazy...

J, plz be safe. Plz call me, Plz do nothing daangerous. It's not that no one loves you...we all love you...we are all just as lost as you sometimes...

Come home...

tattoos and truth

2008-06-13T09:55:00.000-07:00

Today I get the unifying elements for my upper back tattoos...a tapestry that unites the disparate pieces of my story...bittersweet.... Painful...yep. Incredible trip? for absolutely sure. My friend C says to breath thru the tattoo pain and make each twinge an act of attrition. I will do that. I laughed and said, "just like childbirth"

I feel as if I've been birthing me for the past two years.

This final tatto is about attrition for a life I never cared enough to stand up for and wasted in so many ways...I also know that during these past two years I have learned and recognized the good in my history...friends, family, most especially my daughters...

So, This attrition is to my own heart for putting it second for far too long. I am sorry for the long wait in darkness. Won't happen again. I swear!

Today, Mary Cassidy will be stung into my back with ink and thought. I will never turn my back on her (me)again. I will never be hidden or locked in a bastard closet for someone else's shame. I will never againn accept that I am not enough and stay.

Mary Cassidy is, at last, allowed into the sun to live out-loud, in person, front and center and will, from this moment forward, be aware and grateful for her new evolved and hard-earned life.

And, so the end is also the beginning.....

I will love my life. I will love Mary Cassidy, at last.

Slante

Lessons from Las Vegas and Lilly's Ladies

2008-06-10T21:42:00.000-07:00

So little time to learn some pretty important lessons...three days crammed with sights and sounds and burlesque ladies young and old. All with a common thread, that being, TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE... to thine own self be true...some of them finding that at a great cost, some coming to it easily, with warm and loving support from family and friends. All that I talked to having come to it with complex stories as to how they got there.

But, each one was seeking a creative and somewhat fringe outlet to express their true self.

I SAW THAT IT WAS NOT JUST DANCE AND TEASE...HELL NO, IT WAS POLITICAL, IT WAS FEMINIST, IT WAS COMEDY AND IT WAS DRAMA.

Each of them danced a chosen story. Each of them danced their life. It was amazing and hypnotic and beautiful. It's one thing to speak your heart and mind. That takes courage. To do it while taking off your clothes and in heels, carrying 40 pounds of feather fans... well that's a whole new level of self-revelation.

Don't get me wrong...they weren't all pioneers and saints. Some were quite naughty. But most were so amazingly normal. Moms, teachers, bankers, bartenders, writers...all just trying to push out the boundries that held them prisoner.

Stories, stories and more stories. Couldn't take them all in.

What I did learn was this; that you first or finally, have to believe in yourself and your worth. You have to say, "this is me...I am beautiful, I am human, I am enough. If you do not like what you see, look away, but you will miss out on something worthy of seeing and exploring."

I saw that, sometimes, saying "take me for what I am", means losing some of those who we thought understood us, but never really did, except on their terms...and, that sometimes you have to just live with that loss.
Action/consequence...

So, now, I choose to dance...not like the burlesque ladies, taking off layers of costume till exposed to the flesh... instead, I will dance metaphorically, shedding layers of repression and self-loathing till I find the true self that I have spent my entire life seeking. No pretense, no settling, no hatred...just the hard work of peeling away layer after layer of sadness and failure...yep, it will all be weighed and assessed...acknowledged and learned from, then, hopefully shed like feathers or silk...till all that remains is my true self...hopefully still full of kindness and compassion, but allowing me to once in a while come first...to be who I am...proudly. Just a simple woman learning to see and understand both the darkness and light that lies so close beneath my own skin...
Once in a while I might even do that dance in heels and glitter...

Slante...a toast to that dance...

Oh, the birthday is a comin'...

2008-06-06T19:40:00.000-07:00

It is odd how birthdays no longer mean much to me...oh, correction, other peoples birthdays are so special!
It's just that mine no longer carries much importance....one more day, one more year.

I don't think of it as negative tho. It's just so much learned, especially these past three years. Huge decisions made, consequences lived...alone is such an evolution. A wonderful, hilarious, frightening, sacred, productive curve running thru my heart.

Have learned to love family and friends like never before. Have learned to love myself, finally. In doing so, it seems as if time has rolled up tight like a ball of yarn. The string weaves in and out and around and around...there is no obvious end or beginning in sight. Hence linear time and birthdays seem inconsequential. it's that curve of time and learning running thru my heart that matters now.

I hope that curve allows me to love deeply, fully, with both feet off the ground at some point...not one foot kept safely on terra firma for safety. How wonderful to be able to love, to trust enough in myself and another to dare to float feet ungrounded...maybe.

Here is my bday list of gifts I would love:
1. To finish the divorce fairly, with dignity intact and no hate anywhere in my heart
2. to believe in the goodness in humanity
3. Barak safely elected President and real change along with him...
4. true social justice for America and the rest of the world
5.Good friends on my deck, talking, sharing hearts and laughs....wine too!
6.Meaningful touch
7. A trusting relationship
8. Laughter
9. Music, music, music...Regina Spector and her cd Fidelity to be specific
10. Garden time
11. Spelling Bee birthday friends coming to sing hey Mary 331n "party"
12. Time with both of my daughters, family and friends
13. Italy Italy Italy...sweet sensual Italy
14.To write a great poem
15. To finish my friends garden perfectly adapted to his sense of beauty
16, side jobs creating beauty in other gardens
17. Touch...soft, kind touch
18. Laughter again
19, To see beauty in all of it's small daily "cameos"
20. To go to grad school in creative writing or to just have time to write fiction every single day of my life...
21. To know how damned lucky I am
22. to see and live the difference between alone and lonely.

Slante

Vegas isn't going anywhere...I'll get there, dammit!

2008-06-06T17:44:00.000-07:00

Tornados, straight-line winds, flight delays and cancellations, stand-by or re-book...crappity! Can't a girl just get to Sin-City without all the drama and delays?

So, tomorrow I will try again. Get a ride to the airport. Present my E-ticket, put my shoes in the bucket, take off all the bling so I don't beep...ditch all of my lighters and matches, sit next to some complete stranger who's probably gonna be an 80 yr old gambler, or some big-haired suburban housewife and beer-bellied hubby who'll tell me about their time-share in Vegas and where to get the biggest cheapest meal...

All I want to do is meet up with my hilarious lady Burlesque buddies, have a cocktai (lor two) by or in the pool, hit the Vegas strip and see all the lights, watch the Legends of Burlesque Show, where the 80year old women who dared or had to make a living and NOT strip to do so, show us all what it is to still love and trust your body no matter how old you are. Attitude, they say, is all.

I'm gonna learn me some of that!!!

Ah, a mojito, a poolboy and ladies who laugh...come to mama.

Slante

Vegas and lights

2008-06-05T10:00:00.000-07:00

Never been to Vegas in my whole damned life. Hate casinos, hate gambling.
What I do love about it is time away with women who love themselves as they are...hoping to learn from the elders of Burlesque, those granddammes who dared to fend for themselves, to believe in their own poise and beauty.

Hear tell it's all attitude and a good push up bra and panties...hahaha.

I want to believe at last, not just in my own intelligence, moral compass (glad as hell for them!!!!!) but for the first time in my entire life, my own attractiveness and sense of style. Yes, me as beautiful.

I have created beauty in my home.
I have created beauty in my garden and others.
I have created my beautiful daughters.
I have created beautiful friendships.

Now, finally, I will create my own belief in my own beauty...maybe the hardest beauty of all to see, but DAMMIT, I'm going to.

A toast to female beauty in all shapes and sizes and ages.

Slante!!!

Lunch and gut talks

2008-06-04T13:49:00.000-07:00

Jesus, how fun to sit over a good salad and just let loose, back and forth...bad jokes, crazy events that make you stop and wonder how people survive their own goofiness...politics, politics, politics...how nice to not have to censor thoughts or words.

Now, that's what friendship should always be...back and forth what we learn, what we screw up, what we want what we fear, and sprinkled all over the hour laughs, laughs, laughs...

I promised to send photos and really funny descriptive texts from Vegas and he promised to let me wear a really bad bridesmaid dress in his wedding whenever that happens...

Ah, somedays, life is sweet.

Went shopping after lunch for a clearance "theme" outfit to match the Lilly's gals...oh my GOD...so so Vegas, so so hilarious. For sure that photo is going to be fab. The Lilly's burlesque girls and friends all in virginal white from head to toe, stilletto heels, rhinestones too and lots of mascara and false eyelashes and lots of red lips and lots of floral hair accessories...dear god, I can't wait...I know i won't stop laughing for days...

Poolboys, watch out...

beauty and friendship heal me, yet again...

2008-06-01T20:45:00.000-07:00

Life is sometimes so raw and some people so completely disappointing that it sucks the air form your lungs and the light from your heart...

i have been wondering just how I spent so many years with someone I no longer know or like at all. Humanity? Kindness? Ethics? no sign of any from the ghost.

I just could not stand it...the miserly choices , the pretense of compassion, the phony and fuck you behaviors...well, they just wear you down, make it hard to move or look to the future.

I kept crying, mourning the little bit of hope, now totally dead, that we could at some point be honestly civil...I mourned the death of any sort of sense of future friendship surviving this divorce.

So, I went into solitary mode..wanted to not leave my bed or house, or even see anyone...even those I trust and love. But, friendship and a promise mae me get off my pathetic ass..I had an obligation to fulfill to someone who helped me out ..a garden to be created for a dear man. a friend who gave of his time and self to help resurrect my shop. He painted, re-painted, patched, came and did it all again...

So to show thanks, a garden to make his house into a home...
We dug, we shoveled, we pulled weed after weed...silent, focused, somehow forming a new yard, a new space to be filled with beauty.

Each hour that passed healed something that had broken in my heart...
Each clump of dead grass removed made me see, clearly, how each ending is also a new beginning...each shovel load of bad dirt removed gave way to fresh rich dirt, the kind that will let green explode into life.

I enjoyed the process of creating beauty with a friend, enjoyed the realization that his sense of beauty was so different from mine and that that, was good...nice to see so many ways to beauty and healing...

So, sir, here's a nod to seeing beauty freshly, to creating it with a friend...to healing.

I will repeat and I will believe: the end is also the beginning...the end is also the beginning...ad infinitum.

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose...

2008-05-29T22:25:00.000-07:00

And damn it, lucky me, I don't have to lose anything but a sad marriage...I didn't, miraculously, lose myself...I found me, the real me, again.

I didn't lose my daughters...they are sad about it but love both me and their dad, no matter the divorce.

I didn't lose my family, catholic and conservative as they may be; they still love me and accept the divorce as my finally saying no more to being nothing.

I didn't lose my moral compass.
I didn't lose my sense of hope.
I didn't lose my sense of humor. Instead, I have rediscovered my love of beauty and words and humanity. I have found it better, and actually fulfilling, to be alone and worth something to myself rather than invisible and worthless to a husband.

I have not lost my sister's-in-law, who are as dear as my sisters and will always love.

I have lost false friends, and grown closer to the real ones. That is a gift I am only beginning to fully appreciate.

I have begun to look open eyed and open-hearted to the future. Will I be loved again? I hope so.

Most importantly to me, I did not lose myself to hate.

I did not lose the rich history of a lifetime shared, either. I will always cherish the happy times, the joy of watching my daughters grow smart, bold, political and altuistic. That happened because the two of us loved them and parented them to the best of our abilities.

So, freedom has a price, but, it also has a beauty that cannot be put into words.
Freedom has a potential for new beginnings that excites me like life did when I was 5 and trusted the world completely. So, now, older, wiser, tougher...life and freedom are still magical and intoxicating to imagine...

To freedom! To the future me!

Slante

Limitations and lamentations...

2008-05-29T09:49:00.001-07:00

This week the shit hit the fan with the boys I mentor. Their mama is falling apart again and all i can legally do is feed them and give them a safe place to sleep for a day or two...She is damamged, so fucking damamged that I don't know that she can ever recover. The trick is to try to rescue them as she train-wrecks her life seemingly intent on taking them down with her...

Crying doesn't change a thing. Groceries, an emergency cell pone so they can stay in touch if things go bad. Talk to teachers so they get full pictutre...can't do anything else and THAT is what is so painful. So i have taken to praying to the stars to watch over them. I have nothing else except to be there when they call.

On top of that, got the list of jobs I should be applying for to make my ex happy...Starbucks manager, office manager, school liaison worker...apparently my own twelve year record of successfully operating a business and surviving an ex business partners embezzlement, the bridge collapse and a horrid economy due to Bush is JUST NOT A FUCKING GOOD ENOUGH JOB IN HIS EYES!!!!!!

As the skillsmaster analyst said...it's all about what you are worth on the open market, not your passion, not your choice, just about cold hard cash...your employees and neighborhood don't amount to anything in his (Ex"s) analysis of maningful jobs...

Looks like I'll be hiring out as a landscape consultant or bartender or housepainter soon...maybe all.

Here's to friends who understand, family who loves you( i know how lucky I have been!) and to hope for the future and the skilz to accomplish what I desire.

Slante

To Love life is to love life is to love life

2008-05-24T17:12:00.000-07:00

Somedays, when you are so tired it seems physically impossible to put one foot in front of the other and march thru your day, little gifts are presented to you in the form of friends, or a line overheard that makes you laugh your ass off...or, little children come and kiss your knee as they hug you and tell you they love you...how excited they are to look for the hidden treasures you tuck into the garden for them. They give you wilted dandylions and smile...

Adults come in wearing sadness like a rope around their necks and thank you for giving them a happy place...couples divorcing and needing nuertal ground, women dying of breast cancer who grab your hand as you bring their coffee to the table cuz somehow you know they are too tired to carry it, and then they hold your hand tight as they can manage and thank you for a place to share their last few months over coffee with friends and just for a time forget they are afraid...

How can I not love this life, these faces, these embraces...I promise to love my life big as I can and also to love my life in those small doses...to love life in the face of fear, to love the life reflected in the round faces of the teens who myspace me their questions and doubts , the toddlers who just shower drool kisses on you with the purest love and joy..

...I am so lucky....

I will not lose my shop. It is not just a business. It is a home with a heart ,with comfort and with sometimes naughty humor that somehow helps our friends and neighbors.

I promise not to lose this battle.

I promise not to grow too tired. I promise to smile and be grateful every single damned time i walk thru the doors and see the new coat of beauty given it . To thank the man who helped create it, the friend who listen to my fears and comforts me... I promise to see all of lifes' beauty and to give it back.

I just need to dig deep to my old reserves and remember all of this when I am sad; when I am too tired.

To life to life, Slante...to life.

To strong women

2008-05-23T18:49:00.000-07:00

Spent the evening with Jessica and had a great dinner and great discussion...so sad I'm not going to Philly with her to see Katia...
Happy to hear Katia probably has frickin awesome job lined up back here w Teach For America...She can live cheap and pay down here debt. Nice.

She belongs back in the classroom teaching the dear rugrats she so loves...It's her calling. Teach for America can pay her Mn. certification and grad school and then she can jump back...knowing all sides of the system.

Jessica is gaining so much faith in her abilities...so proud of her wordsmith qualities...Damn...I did at least that much right with my life...maybe that is enuf...Two incredibly smart and beautiful women unleashed out onto this world...

Do great things daughters mine...incredible great things.

I love you and am so proud of you.

Mamacita

Slante

The Gurlz got Skilz!

2008-05-22T09:17:00.000-07:00

Assessed, no longer repressed. Somehow it has turned into an incredible, freeing life lesson. To be objectively tested, tried, pushed and the evaluated...even if it's court ordered re-affirms what you already know about your true self....turns out I'm pretty flippin smart(except in higher math) have great social and civic skills and love life...oh yeah, I'm not crazy and test out to be very sane and stable and well rounded...

Guess what I scored highest in...verbal...now THAT'S FRICKIN FUNNY. DUH. blahblahblah

Should be, in order of results:
writer
advertising exec/creative
lawyer
visual artist
social worker
educator
politician
manager

(did I say emphatically enough that I suck at higher math?)

So, ultimately, I will fight like hell to keep the business I love in the community I love...If I have to I will get a part time job till I can open the wine bar.

I will start to write short stories and screenplays again...poems too just cuz I love them so. I promise I will write till I get fucking published. Then I will do it all over again...

A toast to loving words and loving humanity. A toast to the future. I WILL spoon life everyday.

Slante

true friends and target practice all in one day

2008-05-21T21:07:00.000-07:00

The two J.'s made my day. Bless the both of you. holy Jesus, life can be fun and sincere and full of surprises all at the same time...

Art in my garden with dear old friend J. S. ...thank you sir, for always being there and for the ability to talk honestly with you about absolutely everything. You are the best friend a girls could ever have and I love you with all of my "friends till the end" heart. Thank you thank you thank you for making me believe in friendship and trust and the future. I do deserve one...I will accomplish my dreams...they include being in your wedding in the not too distant future. Come on buddy, you know you're gonna. She's perfect for you. I don't want to be the guest book lady tho. Remember that. I want to wear some god-aweful dress thast I'll never use again and dance the night away at the glorious nuptials. You are wise and funny and dark and I hope M knows just how lucky she is to have you.

To the other newer friend J.M. I am so grateful for your dedication to detail, for you caring about the shop enough to come back twice, for loving the fabric, (tho I love yours more...) for your life view,,,so refreshing! and your honest reactions. I admire your political passion and ethical nature. I also love your Iowa sense of life and humor...it is SO SO refreshing..You also make me laugh, at life and at myself...that's good. Thanks for helping me find my own humor again...you make me want to see things in a new light. You make me happy because you trust me to create beauty in your yard. I promise i will do it and you, justice. I have to say thank you for letting me in your life. I think you are guarded about who you let in.
I loved sitting in your yard just before dusk and doing target practice at Fat Cat and diet coke cans with your air gun.
I think I'm gonna have to get me one of those along with that the EX knife holders...I laugh at it every damned time i see it. I'll be going on line to find me one. And lastly, I too want to be a ninja...lol. Thanks!

A toast to creating beauty in the city.

A toast to maybe being smart enough to run my own business in the eyes of the assessor and the judge. Cheers. I'll find out tomorrow...wish me luck. I'll let the two of you know how it worked out.

Slante

looking forward

2008-05-20T22:19:00.000-07:00

So many things to wish for...happiness, Barak as president, daughters both being close, geographically, divorce being final, judge being fair, assessment allowing me to justify my shop as a legeitimate way to earn a living...coffeeshop growing..knowing who my true friends are, wine bar...maybe someday having someone love the real me...time in my garden to lay on my back and stare at the sun surrounded by fragrant blooms...life is so simple, as to wants, and so complicated as to achieving those simple wants...

Wishing I could tell the deepest reaches of my heart to someone and have someone really understand them...and to have them dare and trust enough to tell me theirs...
I wonder just how stupid or at least naive a lady can be to believe in that, still, after so many disappointments.

Do I keep trying to share my ife? Do I believe that new friends will see the real me and find me trustworthy? Do I bother to try to make new friends? Do I bother to try to cultivate new relationships?

Do I dare, ever, to believe I might be attractive to someone...this week would seem to make the answer to all of the above a whopping no...

No whining. No hoping. Acceptance... Just my garden and time to touch it's beauty, to cultivate that healing element and to believe in its power to restore.

Thatv will have to be enough.

That and a thank you to the old friends who do see the real me and support me thru this crapola time.

Alone is not lonely. It is just alone.

Slante

ASSessment report on thursday

2008-05-19T17:22:00.000-07:00

Lucky me...only three days till I learn what vocational abilities I might have...know I failed the higher math, advanced spacial organizational puzzles...sucked at those too. hmm

That leaves bookeeping, phone answering, filing, typing, mmpi(crazy?) educational interests and vocabulary...

I'm betting I kicked ass on vocabulary, animal and human puzzle assemby, word association, filing and book-keeping.

Don't think I'm crazy but we'llsee what the doctorate says...

Not selling shop no matter what. Won't, won't, won't...second job? Might have to...oh well, my poor garden will be all weedy and maybe I'll have to scale it back. Sad 'bout that.

Second job? Maybe bartender to learn how to run new wine bar I want to do...maybe I'll be a painter's asst. I can roll out a decent wall, maybe landscaper...not afraid of breakin my back...OR MAYBE, back to school to be a writer. That would be so sweet.

Slante

Art A Whirl spun out

2008-05-18T19:01:00.000-07:00

Exhausted, crabby, tired, escaped for an hour from shop before I fell apart...ran into new friend who I think the world of, thought it was nice to just chat, listen to music before back to purgarory of lattes and art-crawlers...Was having a blast, introduced Garden guru to garden wanter sweet friend and it was fun till another poker buddy who I've known for years as a friend pulled a creep drool and drape move ...ish ish ish...shouldn't have done that drool on me thing...now I have to wonder everytime I see him what the hell his real motive is...

Embarrassed me and I think my friend too...Sigh...Maybe I should bind my chest, shave my head and never dare to try to socialize...

Slante, I wish...

Resurrection, part II

2008-05-15T10:05:00.000-07:00

Today I let go of all of the old hurts and sorrows...
Today and all days to come will be about new life and believing in my own chosen future

Today I begin my love affair with my new life.

Today I will be grateful for the shop and it's new fresh face and solid neighborhood heart.

Today I will see all things beautiful and hopeful...

I will begin by spooning with my garden, with art, with music, with true friends, with companionship based on ethics, humor, laughter, politics and words, beautiful, meaningful words...

I will own my own mistakes, learn from them and move forward with all knowledge gained.

A prayer from me to the universe to grant happiness to those I love and to myself from this day forward.

Slante

What I'm worth on the open market

2008-05-13T14:04:00.000-07:00

ASSessments are wierd...frickin wierd

First thing the psychologist says to me is, "you know whyb you're here, right?" I say, " I think so..."

He says, " It's all about what you are worth on the Open Market so he can pay youn less...don't play games and I will be objective...just so ya know, you got a damned good attorney. Good for you."

The tests began, lots and lots of them...eight hrs worth. one lady cried thru all of them...I wanted to cry for her.

But I learned this:
Damn, I got skillz with doll puzzles, animal puzzles, bookkeeping, filing, answering telephones too!!! I fuckin rule those skilz!! Swear!

I might even be smart enough to run a coffeeshop...waiting for the verdict from the test results....

As to rubik cube type puzzles, I suck in a way even I couldn't believe...waiting to hear what the guy says re my Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory...maybe I'm not that crazy...hmmm...I REALLY REALLY PROMISE I DO NOT HEAR VOICES OR THINK YOU ARE TRYING TO POISON ME...HONEST.

Update from the Phd on thursday, next....I'll let ya know...

Cousin Noah saidhe wants to spoon life

2008-05-10T03:06:00.000-07:00

Damn, what a phrase! so old-fashioned and hipat the same time...My daughter and her friends all talk about spooning, yeah i get that.

But, how cool to want to spoon life itself...I say go for it! Spoon your life, listen to your favorite tunes in the summer sun, eat your favorite ice cream, float on the lake, spend time with those who love you, lay on your back and stare at the night sky...
I too will ltry to spoon life...starting with the Bee...every word, every silly contestant.

Every, every, every, every good thing!

Springtime/ when one's fancy turns to gardens

2008-05-06T13:31:00.000-07:00

Oh the tulips, the unfurling ferns, the japanses maples budding, the pond full of leaves and critters...it's at once overwhelming and inspiring. I have decided to spend my free time in my garden, or in my outdoor living room singing along to old-school r&b, italian opera and damien rice, pulling weeds, singing to blooms, listening to my waterfalls...I will spoon with my garden. It will be my one true love. It will break my back, but not my heart. Now that's a spoon partner.

To peonies and bittersweet, to larkspur and robins bathing in my pind, to my mated cardinals and their hatchlings...to life, to life to life and beauty...do your magic, please.

dinner with my boys

2008-05-04T18:35:00.000-07:00

They are so funny when all together...bickering, wrestling, laughing...they sit and tell stories from the "good" days. They talk about their alliances when they were little, picking sides and mostly ganging up on big bro Jeff, about the many broken bones, about Jeffrey'sfireworks displays and near misses. Such boys. They talk about "our" mom, "our" houses, "our" schools, watching football games with their mom cheering for the same team, passionate about it as a family...a time when they were acting as a complete family unit...

Individually they talk about the bad times...only whrn alone. As a family it's as if there is a pact to maintain secrecy, to circle the wagons and cut off the world.

Sometimes I think they will all make it. They will all rise above the chaos and addictions. Sometimes when they are laughing and eating huge plates of food I forget how crazy their lives have been. I think for at least dinner, they forget too. That is good. Maybe it will be enough.

A little sun

2008-05-03T17:29:00.000-07:00

My tulips are blooming. My bittersweet is creeping around the portico, the honeysuckle is weaving in and out of my deck rails and it smells so sweet already. The willow in my secret garden is windy and green and the pond irises are two feet tall...So, despite the cold and gray, spring is arrived in my yard. So miraculous every single year.

Today at the shop, it was like the old days before the bridge died...bustling, crazy, loud, people laughing and kids everywhere. Mocha heaven, smoothie hell...how reassuring. It makes me believe in survival. How sweet again.

Now, if only I could believe in spring in my heart...in friends enough...in future.

This spring I have discovered much: new beginnings, certain endings, new friends, color as medicine.

I have learned that sometimes you are alone on your journey. That is okay. The journey is true and honest and will heal and teach things only I will understand. It doesn't matter who gets or doesn't get it. I have learned to forgive, to understand how so many can't past their own lives.

I have learned to not hate, no matter what is set on my shoulders...vocational assessment included.

My tulips are blooming. That will have to be enough. That and the fact that Katia is home for the weekend...sweet.

Never thought spring would take so long in coming...

2008-05-01T18:35:00.000-07:00

It seems that we, Minnesotans, are stuck in neutral. It is cold and gray, the sun is doled out in small increments...not enough in any given week to chase away the blahs. I am tired, so damned tired after painting the shop and covering shifts that there is no time or energy left to go find fabric, to finish the art-track, to put the shop completely together.

I am too tired and the weather is so glum that I can't find it in me to get deep into mygarden, which is the one thing I can count on to restore me and my energy. Please god or whatever it is that is out there, give me sun, give me warm, give me time to do all the things that are waiting to be finished.

Mostly I hope for good weather for our Johnstock/Art-A-Whirl weekend. No art or artists blowing down the street, no rain sending everyone scurrying off to the indoor sites, no cold that chills all to the bone...let there be sun and 70'sand lots of beauty to behold and buy.

Slante

Alone vs. lonely

2008-04-30T21:16:00.000-07:00

I like alone. I have time to think thru what it is I am now and what it is I want out of my life. I also have come to see how little control I have over so many of my wants. Those are the wants for connection, for touch, for intimacy...I cannot sleep with someone I do not care for. I cannot prey and abuse for easy sex or touch...what would be the point of that for me? None.

I have to learn patience. I have to learn trust. I have to learn how to interpret attraction and response....It's all so new. When I was young, I just trusted my gut, now I trust nothing regarding my gut, can't read signals, except for the obvious, the easy flirt, the come fuck me who cares..., oh I get that, just won't respond.

Real attraction? That's something else entirely. I just want to see clearly, to trust my intuition, to react appropriately.

Please let me be wise and learn and deserve. Let me touch and be touched by someone who actually is decent and kind.

Slante

Decorative elements

2008-04-29T22:13:00.000-07:00

It would seem strange to look at all the beauty around me and to not realize how lucky I am. I have a cozy home, great daughters, warm friends and a family that might make me crazy at times, but who I love with all my heart and know that it is returned.

Still, somehow I feel so tired and so lonely. Is there something wrong with me? Is it not enough? I feel that it should be but it isn't. I feel the pressure of having to be something more than human. I am not allowed frailty. I am not allowed to fuck-up, to make mistakes. I haveto represent not just my life, but a whole neighborhood. Who needs to do that? Is that the expectation of any of the other women on my business block? No. Is it fair? Not really.

I have agreed to do a vocational evaluation for my divorce settlement. It's my ex's way of saying what he said for years...that what I do and am is not useful, not valid. I have to live and earn by his standards, not mine. That's what it feels like when the employees say i have to represent...it's as if Iam not good enough unless I live by their decisions, not mine...Ed. Them? Where do I come into this?

I have never hurt a soul. I have never done one single thing to another human that I regret as having been mean or harmful.If I joke about "cougar" which it turns out I cannot do, even that is unacceptable. If I go out with gurls and laugh and talk trash, not acceptable...

What the hell is okay, I wonder. everyone else can talk shit, make bad jokes, complain about their lives in public, but not me...
The funny thing is that the customers come to aexpect and accept the personal, because we are like one big crazy family. I don't open to all...just those I know get it. They do the samee to me. If the employees are right I am misreading all of them.
So, here are my options as I see them. Don't talk politics...even when the customers want to and start it? Don't make bad jokes about dating, even when the customers start it? They expect a smart ass, edgy response...i guess I have to disappoint...

Twelve years in, and still alive, and now I'm supposed to stop doing what has always been what makes it work...has always been a part and parcel of what has made us succeed when everyone else is gone...it has always been about the old school personal, sharing of self that makes us tick. No matter what the ladies say, the majority of the customers tell and want to be told. that's part there but for the grace of god, and the i'm part of the inner circle magic...

So here is the last blog that the public will see for a while. I will say what I think. I will live my life w/o harming others and I will not apologize to anyone for being human and sad and trying to survive.

Slante

Spattered with beauty

2008-04-28T21:25:00.000-07:00

Long, up and down week...lots of drama, lots of sadness and lots of joy. Life in a nutshell.

Friday night painted the shop ceiling with Jay. Took so long I thought I'd fall asleep on the floor. Trying to find extra paint cuz Home Depot underestimated absorption..Evil Walmart at 10:45 p.m. with sweet Michelle. Thank you so much dear , for running around in the rain and snaow with me, And, thanks to Erik for finding an open business even if it was evil Walmart) to get the necessary paint...

Hours later,( 2:30 a.m. to be exact ) poor tired work-horse Jay finished spraying. I had a lot of trim painted and it was so good...clean and fresh, light... just that allowed me to see in my head how the rest of the shop would spring to life with the coming colors.

Sunday. Oh dear. Closed at noon to start hauling out furnituren so Jay could prep before painting walls...three hours of prep...jeezuz. Kudos to Jay for the most impressive work ethic I have seen in years. Precise, determined, perfection... flawless in execution....

Damned if he wasn't dead on regarding wall colors and the black trim. It is beautiful and makes me smile everytime I look at it. Customers love how bright and open and pretty it is. They want the art and books back yesterday tho...I'm working on it.
Can't wait to get the fabric baffles done. They will not only decrease sound pollution, they will add dimension and beauty.

I guess that if I get past the physical exhaustion, the rest is all beauty and painting perfection...

Special thx to a painter extraordinaire. One who's technique is perfection, but who also gets the fact that beauty matters; that color can make you react emotionally...that beauty saves...

Thank you.

Slante

beauty as salvation

2008-04-25T06:09:00.000-07:00

Last week, I traded dollars for scholarly, incredible art , for practical dollars... for making a living art...And, here's the best part. There's not a sad bone in my body about it.! In fact it just possibly makes me happier than having a masterpiece on my livingroom wall. I say this for a couple of reasons.

The first reason being that as a single woman, who needs more than ever to succeed in her business, it is smart business.
The second reason is oddly more important in some ways...it is that I realize now how much beauty has meant to me these past few years as i decided to end my marriage. Beauty saved me..BEAUTY SAVED ME. It did and it will always. Beauty is faithful it would seem to those who see it in all of its' incarnations, grand and simple.

When my ex's infidelities cut me to the bone, I created a garden to heal myself in. It truly was a labor of love and survival.
It is and was, a place where I could trust. i trusted that if I nurtured and weeded, my blooms would thrive and spread happiness...

With each new plant and bloom, my heart grew back together, stronger. With each back-breaking shovel full of dirt dug for my pond, with each 300lb stone set, i knew it was worth living, no matter how wounded I felt. When that first stream of water came over the waterfall, I felt freed of the dirt he brought to my bed. I felt the courage to tell him to leave. It didn't matter to me that I might lose the house and the garden...I knew I could create that again anywhere...

So, now to the painting of the shop...It will heal me further, not in regards to the death of my marriage. That is finally healed. No, this time, the painting, the creation of a beautiful space is about signalling to myself that beauty still maters.

It is now a symbol of wanting to live happy again...like my newly painted bedroom, it will make me smile and maybe even laugh each time I enter. It is a gift to my community, to my customers, my employees and to myself. The rest of them, they will see beauty in color and ight...I will see beauty in that too, but most of all, I will see beauty in the fact that it is a symbol of wanting to live full-force again...of wanting what we all want, but i didn't dare to think I deserved, a shared life, for however long a period of time i am lucky enough to be given, i want to share my life with someone who intuits the importance of beauty, of it's ability to heal, to give joy, to laugh.

So, great art is after all, in the eye of the beholder... I hope those who behold the clean beautiful bright shop at its completion, understand.
Slante

Posted by mary cassidy at 10:01 PM

renew, re-use, review

2008-04-25T05:41:00.000-07:00

Last blog made me think about perceptions: Since my childhood I had to walk a tightrope...don't be that bastard child, keep family secrets, act this way, never misbehave, always think of others first...always be meek...then I married, same thing..., then I had daughters, god how I love them, but willingly, sometimes be-grudgingly, I put them first, their father first, taking care of my parents, solving other peoples problems, worked for a decade as a Chair for families and children's mental health, basic health and educational rights county wide..everyday representing the families that had no voice. Everyday fighting greedy politicians and agenda driven superintendents...I loved it, for the ethical and social justice good it did, but was exhausted by it all till I didn't know who or what Mary was anymore...

Then I dared to open my own business...I put it in front of the line, and me too, by association...probably was what led to the end of my marriage, that I dared focus on my own life, my business...it was seen as a total betrayal.

Now, I am trying to explore, define, question, open...to this new solo life. It is beautifully frightening and amazing at the same time. I suppose I have come across as self-centered for a bit...it being about me..such a new concept. I will try to go back to it being about us, community. It will be that tightrope walk again trying to keep growing and trying to keep my values and ethics about community in place at the same time.

Still, I do not want to shoulder the responsibility of, as I was told I do, "representing NE/Jstreet." The other ladies and gents can carry that for a while. I will represent just me, Mary. A hard working, honest, ethical , exhausted, sometimes funny, sometimes eccentric woman trying to find herself and save her business after divorce, multiple betrayals, no bridge and a bsd economy. It takes time. It takes energy. It takes support.

And, as always, it will be seeing and making beauty that saves me...beauty in all of its tiny and vast forms. I have my friends, my family...my garden...That WILL be enough.

Slante

Apparently , I need to represent, not live my life...

2008-04-24T20:09:00.000-07:00

After years of marriage to a psychiatrist who was the best mind game player I've ever met, now I apparently, have to again think of myself, not as me, but as a representative figure...I am the "face of Johnson Street," which means I shouldn't talk or blog here about my sadness, my fears, my temptations, my crushes, my sadness, my joys, my re-discovery of the fact(without being easy, I might add, just through thought process and re-discovering self-esteem...)that I might feel sexy again. I might dare to like my body, my sensual side still being alive...oh dear, how slutty of me...

I say..sorry to offend. Shut down my blog, don't read it at all. Or, better yet, read it...REALLY READ WHAT I AM SAYING, WONDERING THINKING, FEELING.

Have I harmed anyone? have I betrayed myself? NO. NO. NO.
Will I harm anyone? knowingly? NO.NO. NO. FUCKING HELL NO.

People who live in glass houses should never throw stones. At least they should carefully read, not read INTO.
My mom told me that. She was dead on.

TO being MARY, just mary, not THE POPE OF NE.
Don't represent anything but hard working, funny, irreverent, tired and re-newed...mary d.

Slante

auction item

2008-04-23T23:45:00.000-07:00

Once in a while life throws a softball to you. Got bought at a silent auction funraiser...i came with a gift cert. to Manny's. Hell of a deal. Went to dinner with highest bidder tonight. Sean from the coffeeshop was our waiter and my bodyguard...lol...

Had a great time with young, did I say how young, Jed. He was polite, nervous, funny, slightly eccentric.. and I laughed my way thru the date. He came to my house to see my garden and we drank a bottle of wine on my deck and talked till 1:00a.m.

It was so much fun...i think I found a dear new friend. How lucky can a gal be?

Slante

I'm finallyb worth spending $1500 on...

2008-04-22T16:43:00.000-07:00

Never was worth a fancy restaurant, or a decent pieceofjewelry till he knew I was leaving...then only as a bribe to not leave him...
Now, I'm worth $1,500.00 to have me vocationally evaluated to see if he can convince the court that i need to se4ll my shop so that I earn more and he pays less...so so sad...he knows that the shop is special, not about income as much as it is about communityb and family...does he give a damn? No.

How strange. I would never consider making him stop doing what he loves. Yet, to save what, $200 a month, for a guy who makes well into double six figures...so typical of him, so predictable...just like him telling people he left me, instead of the truth, that i asked him to get out....

Kharma is a bitch, Ed...you'd better be ready for it. May 12th i'll do your required evaluation and I'm willing to bet the judge will see it for exactly what it is. Here's a prayer for justice...let the judge just be fair, gods...all I ask.
Slante

Sexy in my bones

2008-04-21T20:36:00.000-07:00

So, it is interesting how in one week three, count 'em, three men i am intrigued by, are in my life..

SFC, all darkness and smarts, so sweet and so self-destructive...for some reason willing to share his frightful secrets with me...and I am determined not to give them away...but, i said i will always listen to him, help him struggle to find reasons to stay here among the living. I will try to make him see that there are reasons to un-freeze...try to give him light in his darkness. And, I will sit up all night to listen, try to share what I have learned and to hold his hand, gladly.

And, sweet sweet Jed, so sincere, so damned cute, so nice... he bought me and I bought him at auction...dinner at Manny;'s wednesday and jazz or film after dinner...such a gentle man, emphasis on gentle i think...too young... too young. I could be his mother...so, what is happening here....I am confused by his enthusiasm, i assume he just thinks i am nice and fun...but then, I am confused researching everything we could do together after the meal; make the reservation, request specific server, research foreign film festival selections, find out who is singing Jazz at the Dakota...or, he asks, would i prefer a simple walk, talk and cocktails, by the river...????

Then there is Jay, my enigma man, smart, intense, somehow i sense he is wounded and slowly recovering. Like with sfc, i want to listen, to somehow help him heal... I am so thankful that he is helping re-do the shop. Amazed that he gets how color can make me happy, everyone happier...I am struck by how much I like him...but, I act like a teenage fool around him...Jesus save me from myself. Thing is, as attracted as I am to him, I would love his friendship alone...??? Did I mention that i am confused?

Still, confused or not, I love that I finally, finally, feel sexy to my bones. Sweet.

going once, going twice, SOLD

2008-04-21T10:01:00.000-07:00

Well, the fundraiser is done, raised about $1100. 00 for ads for the BIZ fund. Nice, considering Jarret didn't do the promo he promised...lesson learned...let Jess and Nina do the promo. Next one is at little Grumps, then on to DT Grumps for athink, a guitar hero death battle...hmmm.

Jed, sweet Jed, bought me at auction so we are going to Manny's! I bought him too, so it's perfect. He is funny and nice and sincere and is a great young friend that I'm happy to have met. Can't wait to go eat steak and have a cocktail with him. I'd like to learn about his life, and interests beside the drunken spelling thing....

In the ealier blog I commented about how everyone was afraid they wouldn';t sell...It's funny how we all see ourselves as not atractive enough in others eyes...not funny, i guess, more sad than anything. Took a lesson from it all. After the Single Auction I have decided that maybe, just maybe, i can be sexy in my bones...gonna try to believe I am and will be.

A toast to being both Sensual and Confident.
Slante

business and babes

2008-04-19T10:56:00.000-07:00

So, tonight is the first BIZ event, an attempt to raise ad $$$'s for the businesses hurt by the 35W bridge collapse. Jarret didn't promote it the way he promised and I am afraid no one will come to it. Between slow economy and bridge it's hard to stay alive and I needed him to do what he promised...

So, I pray to the collective conscious universe to have people come, to have them spend, to have them care...and, please gods and goddesses, don't let me go for $7.50. I'll cry. That won't buy any damned ads...

P.S. Please don't let any of the creepy customers buy me, a certain one would be just fine, but not the creepy ones. I'll cry then too. Hard and my eyes will get all puffy. and my nose will get all red and gross.

What if no one wants to buy me?

2008-04-16T16:25:00.000-07:00

Saturday night is the Fundraiser for BIZ, a project to raise $$$'s for the small businesses that are hurting due to the collapse of the 35W bridge. The Onion and my daughter thought a singles Auction would be fun...funnier if mom entered to be bid on...okay, it IS funny.

Everyone I have asked to be in it, except Dollface, have said the exact same thing. "What if no one wants to buy me?"
It doesn't matter how old, how young, how gorgeous, what gender...the same damned thing...

So, I say this. I am funny. I am smart. I am sexy as hell. I can pay for my own dinner. Liberal? yep...Political? yes yes...great company? you betcha...

$200, what the hell, I'm so worth it and so's the cause.

SHOW ME THE MONEY!

Letting go of things you thought were gone

2008-04-16T16:07:00.000-07:00

I ran into my ex's old guitar teacher yesterday, he said" I'm sorry to hear Ed left you." I have to admit to being blindsided.
" I left him, Steve". He looked puzzled. "But.." "No, I asked him to leave...guess it doesn't matter what the hell he tells everyone to save face."

I walked away, in a public place and started to cry, which shocked me. Not because I was sad that it is over. No, it's more of the same. I think somehow if I made him face alone....face a consequence, it might have an impact, help him to fix himself, or at least somehow face his own shit, the cheating, the never being wrong, the denigrating crap he spewed...no, it appears, same old same old.

It made me sad...Do I care that people think I was left? No. It's inconsequential in the end. Do I want him just once to be honest, yes.

So, trying to find some peace for me, I went for a reiki treatment today to try something new, a cleansing, a ritual of over-ness. It was amazing and I'm not sure I believe in a lot of the spiritual journey, but I do believe in self exploration.

As it was happening, something rose up from my heart and left in a swirl of darkness, like a thunderhead. It was physical and emotional. Afterwards, I felt like I was new. A terrible loss had happened and finally the weight of it was lifted. A birth of hope, cliche, I know, but true, came through and I shook and felt white and floral. Here's to new beginnings...
Slante

Bad cougar/ good cougar/ funny cougar...

2008-04-13T16:57:00.000-07:00

Went to face my cougar cub at the hotdish revolution...awkward. He seemed nervous, I was nervous. Shook his hand and told him I was sorry if I scared or confused him. He laughed. Gave him the card. I blushed, he blushed...he said he would read it later, but went into back and read it right away and started bringing me beers. I brought him food. We talked. I talked to all the neighborhood assn people. Sat withmy funny customers, talked politics, talked business with other small biz owners about how tough things are since bridge collapse, touted the BIZ event...he watched every guy I talked to and hugged and smoozed. I smoozed some more, he brought me more beer set up three meetings with holland and windom people(all men)..he brought me more beer. Of course I really don't like beer... beer makes me want to sleep, but i'd drink a few sips and ditch the glass. After enough quarter beers i got damned tired so I gathered my goodies and headed out.
He asked why I wouldn't stay.

I am confused.

Good cougar? Bad cougar? Just plain funny cougar? what the hell... now I have that super dooper specific only to beer and me, headache...

Nite lad

Cougar part II

2008-04-13T13:21:00.000-07:00

Here's the funny thing about cougaring...i find that I can't bare to hurt anyone...ever!...

So, once you've flirted them into interest and following you from bar to restaurant...a hug, a soft kiss, a "I get up at 5:00a.m. I have to get home now..." Then, an invite to a neighborhood fundraiser where he is bartending....I'm going and bringing a card to say I am an idiot, that he is sweet and fun and too nice for me to cougar on...It's a FUNNY FUCKING CARD, all humor at my expense...I hope he gets it. I

need to learn so so so much.

So, if I can't cougar on men I LIKE, I won't cougar on men I HATE or even dislike, what's left? Retire after one night at it?

I have to think about this one...

I'm packin up my hotdish and heading to face the man at the Holland Neighborhood Hotdish Revolution... the neighborhood politics will begin, and i hope to laugh at myself......with him.

slante

practicing naughty

2008-04-11T15:30:00.000-07:00

I have decided to create my own spring...I have been painting and creating beauty to counter the f'n snow and rain, but it hasn't been enough. Then it occurred to me that in the spring, "a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of"....well, so have mine. Why do young men get all the thoughts?

Hence, tonight i'm going to the Peacock Lounge with Nicole and Jess and her boyfriend Bret and I'm going to practice my cougar skills...don't know if I 've got em, think so, but I'm determined to find out if I do. Nothing stupid mind ya, just full out flirt attack. Tired of sitting home and painting and reading poetry alone. Sure, I go out with friends, and I love them and have a blast, but as of yet I haven't overtly prowled... I think tonight is the night.

Re-stated...Tonight it begins. I'll be raising a cup or two or three, to cougars...rrrrrrrrr, meow?

Spring?

2008-04-10T19:10:00.000-07:00

According to the calendar it's springtime. But, tonight it's snowing and icing and blowing sleet like a winter gale...

According to my heart and longing, it's springtime. I am healed from the winter of my marriage and divorce and ready to love or at least share me, and no one cares or dares, at least no-one I want in return.

The one man I am attracted to is younger and so oblivious to my attraction and maybe that is the way it should be. Oddly enough, I have never hurt a friendship because of sexual attraction. It's just so ironic, that he is someone who i would love to share a true friendship with, and yet, I feel like a goddamned teenager when I am near him...nervous and foolish. It passes once we start talking but i fucking laugh at myself. How could I be this old and still so foolish.

I guess the heart and mind operate on two different planes...one has nothing to do with logic, only emotion...

Maybe spring actually will come. Maybe emotion will have it's way. Maybe with time, someone will dare and care.

Hope "springs" eternal.

the plot thickens....

2008-04-09T14:53:00.000-07:00

We had our jstreet merchants meeting this morning and guess who having invited herself, never bothered to show...the ANA prez, (mz I'm gonna be voodoo-d )Cindy Schulte...
By not showing she increased the suspicions of all of the merchants and now it has worked to pull the more apathetic ones securely into the larger group.

Letter to ANA left on desk stating that we expect to be put on planning board and given current info...cc to Ostrow, CPED, Ryback, Hillcrest development and the City Council...if no info is forthcoming it will be the press at everyturn and the neighborhood. Legally, it has to be an open process and they have locked it down to the public, Shame on you.

the detective work has begun..public records, public info requests... purchase agreements.

I guess a good fight for the businesses I love as welll as the one I have poured my heart into is good and necessary...
It's also a distraction from loneliness and spring fever, if ya know what I mean...

I know I trust my customers to stand up for me. I also trust my lawyer, when he says they cannot pull emminent domain on the lot. What the developers can do tho, is to buy out all of the landlords that our businesses are housed in. No controll over that.

I choose to believe that we will be okay...and that we are smaart enough to predict the bad behaviors and counter them before it is too late.

Fuck y'all for your underhanded shit, Cindy and Hillcrest..and Paul Ostrow, if you are part of this, you will not be re-elected, I promise .

Politics, neighborhood, the little guy

2008-04-09T05:44:00.000-07:00

The biggest political fight of my business life begins today. This all depends on what the hillcrest developers are planning for the 28th-29th and Johnson...as of yet, they have shared no plans, answered no questions and have locked out the Jstreet Merchants.

This morning we ass the association deliver a letter to the ANA and the developers telling thm that they must seat at least two of us merchants on the planning taskforce. If they refuse, all hell is gonna break out. Great time to be the new president of the merchants...

What the hell, need to fight and I will, for all of us. Hope the rest of the merchants are ready.
Have already talked to lawyer buddies. Next step will be to call in the neighborhood loyalists...petitions, going to the press...to city hall...

misadventure? no just one hell of a battle...wish us luck and good lawyering.

Gettin my voodoo doll ready Cindy....ouch to you

Cougarishness

2008-04-08T11:41:00.000-07:00

Saturday night at the Triple Rock and the Nomad, before my daughter's show, she was busy trying to recruit singles guys for the Small Business bridge impact zone fundraiser...lots of sweet, young men volunteered to be auctioned off for a good cause...but, oddly each of them said the same thing, "what if no one wants to buy me?" (that's the subject for my next blog)

My daughter, who'd had a few coctails laughed, pointed to me and said," oh my mom will bid on you...she's gonna be a fuckin cougar, GRRRRRROWLLL" ....completed with clawing swoosh thru the air...

The boys smiled, said, "cool, will she buy the both of us...can't wait to go out, the two of us in public with that cougar.Sweet!"

I smacked her on the back of the head and laughed....then later, while she was sining I thought, well, maybe it's not so crazy after all. But, I'll pick my cougar cubs all by myself, Jess. Thank you very much!

A toast to cougars with values...
Slante

politics, paint and purpose

2008-04-07T21:48:00.000-07:00

I know, I love, LOVE alliteration...get over it it's one of my quirks.

Tonight I went to the ANA public meeting, my first as president of our business assoc. and was awed by the level of deceit and behind closed doors political maneuvering that has been going on under Cindy"the new world order" Schulte...what she doesn't know tho is that I am the master of undoing bullshit politically...it was my forte in myb past county-wide political life...here's my counter...fuck with my neighborhood and you fuck with me, which I don't take gently...I'll study your game, I'll find your weak spot and i will kick your dirty tricks playing asses...not just me, but my customers, my fellow business owners and college friend lawyers...so, the challenge has been seen and the strategies to counter have already begun.

Left the meeting and immediately met with other merchants to begin the counter-attack plans. Do not underestimate a tough broad, especially one who has survived tidal-waves of shit and lies. Wrong estimation of me and the rest of the busness owners.

Took me years to stand up for me, now it's second nature. Add the attack on my and my friends business livelihood and you have really given me reason to go to war. Like Mike Ditka, I do NOT take prisoners. So, ms right wing racist, control freak schulte, prepare for a salvo you never planned on.

I will not go away. I will not let you bring in chain stores and dirty dealers. I will paint my shop. I will beautify, I will re-tool, In will go for grant$'s to help all of us and you dear can go to hell.

Come on Obama Jay...we'll start with beautiful color, add some new furniture, retain the sense of humor that has driven the business since day one, overtly add some sassy political machinations and in the end, the little guys will hold their own.

We will not only hold our own, we will win in the end. Like the country, we are tired of dirty politics and have had enough.

This time, we will not fall for the pat lines, the bullshit scenarios. We are on to you. We are willing to fight to the end.
We will win.

En guarde, bastards

paint=beauty=fun=gratitude

2008-04-04T11:32:00.000-07:00

I know this blog is titles the misadventures of mary cassidy, and trust me I've had plenty and know there will be plenty more.

But, last night I had a yes-adventure, something as simple as planning to re-do the shop with delish color, looking at beauty and realizing how color can show you a great deal about someone. I drank too much on an empty stomach, talked too much, (but I guess that is me when i'm sorta nervous and i AM working on that).
It was just nice to sit in a colorful kitchen with someone you know is nice, who had the funniest knife block I've ever seen and to laugh, to plan for the future and to think that sometimes the universe puts a gift of a person in my life. Not only can he paint and wants to help, he's, smart, political,funny and to top it off, fucking nice too!

It was a good evening, at least for me. I hope I didn't scare him with my big mouth and tipsy demeanor...Jeezuz. I apparently need to practice my drinkin skilz a bit more. So, Jay, I just need to say thanks for being there, for getting elements of me and for hopefully a great friendship into the future. A toast to color, new beginnings and to the Galaxy coming out of the garage. I'm hopin for a ride with the top down...sweet ride.

Sex toys, wine and giggles

2008-04-02T07:44:00.000-07:00

My god, it's been years since I've been to a "romance party." Toys, lubricants, whips and bondage items all over every open surface in the room. Ladies drinking screaming orgasms, good red wine and vodka martini's; disinhibited by the booze and the company, passing dildoes, licking edible lubricants off our arms...talking about everything from jobs to kids to politics to breast -feeding, cramps and about being "too tired but maybe this will help"

After, Nicole and I went to Grumpys and she read the toy catalogue descriptions to Old Frank the bartender, who ran, as only big old Frank can, (more like a turtle crawl) to the other end of the bar and we laughed and laughed. Eventually, he worked his way back to us. "Do they have crotchless panties in there?" he asked. So we flipped to the naughty lingerie section to see and darn they didn't but he liked the nurse's outfit.

Geez life is funny and silly and it was great to spend an evening with women who weren't catholic about their sensuality. HoooRahhh.

Mary did some shopping. Hehehehehe.

Too long

2008-04-01T23:23:00.000-07:00

Listening to Yael Naim"s .Too Long...perfect song for me. I HAVE been wainting FAR TOO long , painting my room with gold...it made me suck in air and think, I have been waiting, frozen in myb home and self, far too long...I DO know who I am now...a complicated, smart, silly, naughty, altruistic, intense funny woman who finally sees that it's time to live, time to reach out and find my physical self SOON.

I have been dormant for far too long. I will not sleep with the young punks who just want a cougar fuck...screw that. I will find a soul mate. Young or old. A soul mate... I will find a sensual, caring partner who is not afraid of the tough broad me...one who wants to dare, to explore and bite life, who sees me as genius and kind, someone to touch, to lie next to and wake up happy with, someone who wants to learn from my old soul along with me and who will love my intellect and spirit. No more sitting and waiting for god knows what...Don't know how I will finnd this but goddamn I will. Promise to myself!

It no longer seems foolish to see myself as sensual. I am. It no longer seems foolish to reach out to a man who will find me interesting and alive. Told by many that my eyes hold stories that are worth sharing. Haven't done that yet but, Frickin Okay world, I'm going to. Here's a toast to the men who will dare to see me for what I am worth. And most of all, tell me so... I am ready.

Slante

New beginnings in living color

2008-03-31T20:04:00.000-07:00

Painting for beauty, for new start, for giggles, for survival...

Tomorrow I am going to sweet Obama Jay’s house to peruse colors and ideas for a new fresh start. New look to the shop. That translates to a re-newed, hopeful, funnier Mary. It also translates to happier employees, delighted customers and a new intriguing friendship I am glad to have found...He will help me make something clean, light-filled and crisply exciting. Aahhh Beauty. Amazing what a coat of paint will do for a space, a heart and for a new start.

It seems that beauty is what has always healed me and moved me forward. It can be as simple as a color that sets your heart racing or at peace. It can be the simple and awesome power of friendship and family. It can be hope for more...It can be a set of words in a poem or lyric, so meaningful they stop you in your tracks and connect you to something so deep inside, you almost forget to breathe.

A toast with Beamish and cabernet, to color and beauty and friendship and connection and the future.

Slante

Spellers, Vampires, Bikes and the Boyz

2008-03-31T12:14:00.000-07:00

Work, work work. Play,play, play...
Thursday: Up till 3:00a.m. painting harlequins in pink, black and gold leaf on my bedroom door...So amazingly sweet and femme and silly all rolled into one. Smile every time I see that door.

Friday: Run from work to 331 and the 2nd Mpls Grown-up Spelling Bee. It was full of bodacious spellers, cheering squads, burlesque hula-hoopers and hecklers. The Hard On girls were delicious! It was fun and bawdy, as always, with the audience begging for more naughty than nice words. Thank god for the Psychiatric dictionary of sexual perversions, I say. And of course, to the archives of the Scripps National Spelling Bee...so many words, so many hard to pronounce words...especially after wine enters the judges.

Saturday: Worked from 11-8, lates and fucking smoothies till close..great for business, hard on the hands. afterwards, to the Peacock with Nicole and Vicky for sustenance and a good cab...serial vampire killer lawyer and friends there again...decided to play with his head this time cuz ignoring him didn't work, a polite we're talkin here, didn't either.

So I took him over to the bar and sat him down and asked if he remembered what he had asked me the first time we met; about cutting someone while having sex and drinking their blood. "oh, that", he says!!!!!! Yeah "that fucking innappropriate that" I think arrogant guys like him never get called on their shit by their buddies or the women they harrass..., so I decidedit was safe to quietly, in a public place just have at him in return...

nobody gives it back with equal vehemence..Every time he said something outrageous, i called him on it, everytime he talked to my tits, called him on it. Told him, he needed how-to-be-nice-human lessons and that therapy would be his only hope for anything more than a life of one-nighters with vapid 23 yr olds. He told me my red wallet was seductive, I told him he wasn’t. Told me my bra straps were suggestive, told him grade-school was over decades ago. I asked if either of his parents were shrinks and he got a funny look on his face and told me his mom was...I told him with the possible exception of my own kids, I'd never met a shrinks kid that wasn't totally fucked up and he fit the bill. He asked why I hate him and I laughed and said, I hate no-one. Just don't like you or your arrogant shit...pull the stick out of your ass...bought him a drink, gave him a mom hug, said there were Too many reasons to go into. Wished him luck with his life. I know iit was mean, but somehow freeing. Sat back down and talked and laughed with the girls till way past my bed-time...Home way too late but worth it to get out and have real food and discussion with the ladies.

Sunday: work, work, train Marge while crazy buzy...poor Marge...but she survivedand damn i think she makes the best smoothies of all of us. at the end of the crazy shift i look up and who should be in line but the vampire’s wing-men who all live downtown...Not sure why they were in my shop, but, it creeps me out a bit.
After work Marge took me to pick up my new bike...black with fenders, nifty basket and fat-ass seat...so damned sweet to ride. I swear my leg is coming all the way back! Then the Mulay boyz...treats at shop, dinner and arcade games at Grumpy’s, telling about their lives...

All of it seems so right. Especially the boyz. I could cry over how comfortable we’ve become as a substitute family unit. It feels like it was meant to be...the boys I never had but always wanted...little jason, holding my hand and sittin on my lap, telling detailed stories like a little old man, Jacob picking songson the juke box, tring so hard to please his older brothers, Joey so eager to share that he is doing better in school and will not be that dumb kid who has to repeat a grade for dumb choices made, Justin with his permit, learning to parallel park before his test on 4/19, all of them doing better in school, settling back into life with mom, who just completed one year of sobriety. Kudos Elizabeth. Whatever was crazy in your life, those boys will rise above it.

So, after a week of non-stop fun and run, I am fucking tired. But, I am mostly happy for all of that living....and, so grateful for all of it.

2008-03-30T19:42:00.001-07:00

Can you spell t.i.r.e.d.?

2008-03-28T23:04:00.000-07:00

Tonight was the second Mpls. Drunken Spelling Bee, a wonderful gathering of would-be genius spellers who get to spell everything from "bugle" to "venerable" to so many latin and greek based, 6 syllable words, that I am too tired to remember...then there were naughty sexual deviant terms...the final and winning word was numismatist...(one who collects and admires coins) There was the underwear round, the hula hooping by Honey and by yours truly, the Hard-On girls...the event was silly, fun and, oddly enough, ultimately academic . The Daily covered it and took tons of photos. The crowd seemed to love learning new words and wanted correct spelling for the ones misspelled.

I learned that people are funny when their guard is down. I met lots of hilarious women and men, some so earnest it hurt when they lost, and some so just happy to be there for fun that they laughed out loud when they went down.

I was told by both the men and womenthat i need to be meaner to the contestants, but that they loved the "catholic apologist component of my silliness after saying naughty things. Don't know how to be mean, verbally, I guess. I can be naughty, i can say the most sexually awful words and give definitions with a completely straight face...naughty nice naughty nice...so confusing, but I can't be mean to them when they fail...hmmm

Happy to see lots of coffeeshop customers, some shock and giggles at my potty mouth. I'm sure there will be much shaking if fingers on monday...

Most surprising and gratifying of all, were the number of young women who said they want me to adopt them and the complete strangers who came up to tell me how much they envied my easy and open relationship with my daughter; the naughty back and forth between us, the obvious affection and respect. i was struck by how true that was...how i love her unconditionally, and encourage open exchange and creativity between us, actually with both my girls. I think it ironic that these young women want to be me...ME? SO STRANGE!!!. It made me realize that I need to get past the me as failure...divorced, alone now, as if that were what i am...I need to see the me who they see. A woman speaking her mind, not afraid to be silly when called for, smart enough to be witty and concise with language. I guess the woman they see is so perfectly fucking on the money for the place, and time she is living in.
I, she is enough.., pretty damned tough, a survivor and definitely growing more fearless with each passing day.

Maybe that is all that matters. Maybe smart, kind, funny is all I've got and damn, i just need to seethat as good...oh, there is that ethical, i won't go home with you thing, too. Missing intimacy, that is hard to do, but especially nowm np confusing sex with care.

Bottom line, I guess i just need to paint more, to write more, to love friendship and make it enough. Being the Queen Bee isn't so bad, considering the options. Tho, I prefer the moniker given to me by the Burlesque ladies; Pope of NE....It has such a lovely ring...hmm...a pope who can spell. guarantees me heaven I think.

Nite y'all.
Slante

Night out; Drunken Spelling, Time to cut loose

2008-03-28T10:37:00.000-07:00

Tonight will be the second ever Mpls drunken Spelling Bee, now politically corrected to the Adult Spelling Bee by those who run our state offices...Silly.

There will be glee in the successful spelling of complicated and simple words. Drinks will be had. People will dare to spell in their underwear for a second chance at winning the Bee. I will sit at the judges table and try to keep a straight face while giving out definitions and using words in sentences for them.

Mostly I will laugh and enjoy the company I will have tonight. I will enjoy being out in the world, living loud, not afraid to be foolish and have fun.

Gotta love my daughter for being genius enough to bring the Bee to fruition!!!

This Queen Bee is so P.R.O.U.D.

Painting for the Not faint of heart

2008-03-27T22:01:00.000-07:00

Pink and Black Harlequins make me laugh

2008-03-26T19:27:00.000-07:00

It's amazing what paint can do for your mental health...I took a friends suggestion and decided to free hand pink and black harlequin diamonds FREEHAND, on my bedroom door. Started with the outside, a heads up to anyone visiting that this is not your normal dull space. My dearest friends will get to enter and see it. and i know they will get it.

How sweet to laugh out loud when entering a place where you sleep and dream and maybe someday share your bed.
I only got the outside door finished but stated the closet door, also free-hand, it will have fake panels, pink and black and they too make me smile.

Then,being the impatient type and curious to see what it would be like, I decided to copy Jay's idea and began painting all of the door trim black...it's beautiful! Can't wait to get to the window frames...Great contrast, frames the room, it's like living in framed art.

Maybe just maybe, creating beauty is enough for now... a temporary cure for loneliness and longing. Sure feels good to be so happy about it. Now I just have to stay at it, find the time to finish the beautification with a frickin crazy busy weekend ahead. Oh well, walls and door frames are patient structures. They will wait for me. Drunken Spelling Bees and lattes won't.

Ella sings it all

2008-03-25T21:30:00.000-07:00

"Reach for tomorrow, today belongs to the past. The golden hopes of your yesterdays can all be yours at last...reach for tomorrow and keep your head in the sky...you may get hurt a thousand ways....but give it one more try ...

no regrets about the chances you missed...keep your dreams ever new, no matter how many times it seems that dreams are not for you...reach for tomorrow and make them all come true..." So to the heart sweet Ella.

Dreams are simple for me; touch, tenderness, true connection...I don't ask for much more than that. Yet, I am stunned some nights by just how much I miss human touch from a sweet man and isome ntelligent company that is honest in its' expectations.

Been thinking a lot about loneliness and longing lately...I can accept and understand any rejection based on sexual attraction, odd huh?, I'm not your type? I get that...not hard to accept....It's the me, the true self shared, and rejected that is so frightening. It's the rejection of what I AM intrinsically that frightens me...

What if what I am is not enough...

What if all I get in life is friendship from this point on...will it be enough? That is a good and lucky life...one filled with true friends. Having said that, I also know what I am missing.

Is it enough to know that at least once, someone DID love the "pilgrim soul" in me? Guess I'll have to find out. Hope there is more of that in my future.

Dreams, sing them Ella, my dreams...to believe that someone, someday, somewhere, will SEE me,

So, I say fuck yes, I will dare to dream that someone will ultimately appreciate my sexy self, my disinct and often bawdy humor, my sassy political mouth and my eclectic brain which operates at 1000mph. I will find someone who sees all of that, loves it and will be worth writing poetry for...and maybe, depending on what happens, I will write them some very clever, dirty Irish limmericks...

So, I, Mary, outspoken, political, potty-mouthed neighborhood offee lady, hilarious ( to me)" cougar" icon for so many sexy outspoken young men who tell me to my face they want to sleep with me, yet, ironically do not interest me, will dare to dream but by my own quirky catholic no quick one-nighter rules and standards, but I will dream none the less...