Excavating

When I went to The Parents' house the other day to get a bunch of back issues of the magazine, I picked up a crate that had been there for a few years. It was filled with my stuff from I-don't-know-when. Probably over a decade ago.

I wanted to bring back this particular crate because I saw it had some of my papers in it. I thought maybe I could find old poems or journals or something.

I did.

In the crate (so far) were:

• time sheets from a job I had 12 years ago
  
• notebooks from some college courses (20 years ago)
  
• employee benefits information for that job I had 12 years ago
  
• copies of a story I wrote in my senior year in college. Some of these have comments from fellow students, but mostly I had saved them for scrap paper.
  
• papers I wrote in college (see below for something that amazed me about myself!)
  
• tests I took in college
  
• dangerous leaking batteries
  
• battery acid
  
• small musty boxes that I was presumably saving to use for giving small gifts
  
• hair baubles and pins
  
• key chains (several)
  
• empty musty eyeglass cases
  
• a hairbrush
  
• several plastic combs
  
• several 4-packs of crayons from Bennigan's
  
• copies of poems from college
• an E-scale
• several 5.25-inch floppy disks
• a standard international units conversion guide for endocrinology assays

The big thing here are the poems. Since I became computer literate, I've tried to keep all my poems in one place. Apparently there are some that missed being typed into the computer. I know there must be more. I also have a decade or two of missing journals that I hope to someday find. I'm sure they're in a box in the barn at The Parents' house, but which box is a needle-in-a-haystack type mystery.

I will add to the list of crate contents as I get through the crate. It should be sufficiently boring.

Now to the amazing thing I did in college: I wrote a paper on Kafka's Metamorphosis when I was in freshman English. I remember staying up very late, trying to come up with something to write about. I found something (quite good, actually) and tore up the typewriter. Yes, I had several runon sentences. Yes, I spelled a few things wrong. Yes I had a typo or two. But I got an "A," so who cares about all that stuff?

The interesting thing I did was that I tacked on a story after the paper. It was an account of a dream I'd had at some point while reading The Metamorphosis or while writing the paper. After the story I wrote: "I realize that this is a rather odd way to end a paper, but I thought it was relevant to The Metamorphosis. Everything in this story is an unadulterated dream that I really had. Really." My professor loved the story.

What's interesting about that is that I was not one to take chances back then. I was unsure of myself in many ways. I think I must have been comfortable doing this with this particular professor because I knew that he's a poet. Still, I have no recollection of doing it.

Is that a sign of aging?

Don't answer that.

--Mary

Cleaning Up

I finally had someone come and take away the Taurus today. While I was waiting for him, I cleaned up the yard a bit. Now I have the beginnings of a blister on my right hand from using the clippers. Do I have gloves? Yes. Did I wear the gloves? No. That's what happens when you don't get enough sleep or coffee. Now I have a lot of work to do and I have a sore hand.

But there's one less car in the yard!

--Mary

Bad Drivers

There's a story on the CNN website today:

http://www.cnn.com/2005/AUTOS/05/26/drivers_study/index.html

From the story ...

Bottom five states for driver knowledge:

1. Rhode Island
2. Massachusetts
3. New Jersey
4. New York
5. Washington D.C.

Makes me proud to be a New Yorker!

But, of course, I can drive!

--Mary

This Post Is for You, Melissa

Melissa has told me in no uncertain terms that I need to clarify some previous posts here on my blog. So ...

The other day I wrote about some "crazy person" calling me. I then mentioned that I am a dope sometimes. Finally, I said that my friend's daughter had twins.

First off, in my defense, my friend had been getting up for the babies and she really didn't sound like herself. Granted, I've known her for over 25 years and I should know what she sounds like by now.

She is not a crazy person. Well, not crazy in the way I portrayed her (she's good crazy, not crazy crazy). In context, the message made complete sense. See, I hadn't listened to my messages in a few days. My friend had left a message during that time asking me to call her. Had I listened to my messages I would have called her or emailed her or something. I am a dope because: 1) I didn't recognize my friend's voice and 2) I didn't listen to my messages. Thus, I wrote: I will listen to my phone messages every day. x 1,000." (Imagine me writing it on the blackboard a la Bart Simpson.) That was my penance for missing my friend's call and failing to recognize her voice.

She was calling to tell me that her daughter had the babies and all was well. So I called her back, took some lumps, and got to see pictures of her beautiful grandbabies.

Is that better, Melissa? :)

--Mary

Mongo!

We picked up some rusty old 50-pound standard weights from someone's garbage today. I have to take some pictures and put up a little story on the mongoworld.com web site. I can't believe Eric actually got out of the car and picked them up. I would have but I don't lift 50 pounds very well yet. We'll have to clean them up and put them to use.

--Mary

Now I've Done It

I sent some poems out to see if they can make it on their own. There's nothing left to do but wait three months or so to see what happens.

(Oh, no! She's going to talk about Ian Hunter again. Shut her up, please!)

When I used to write a lot of poems and send them off to meet their fate on some poetry editor's desk, I called them my children. That's the way I think of them; technically, I birthed them, I created them. So they are my children. Since they are alive (don't argue the point, just accept it; go with me here) they're more like children than anything else. Certainly calling them my "creations" sounds very Frankenstein-ish or Island-of-Doctor-Moreau-ish. They're not monsters (all right, some are, but that's the nature of children). They're not freaks of nature (again, some are, but I love them anyway).

A few months back I spent far too many hours reading all the "Horse's Mouth" columns on Ian Hunter's web site. He calls his songs or records (musician lingo for "album") his children! (Now you know one more reason why I keep writing about him.) I also credit Ian with helping to inspire me to really pick up my pen again. I've been writing some really good stuff. I've been managing to get into that "zone," that trance-like place where the words just come. I'm pleased with some of the sounds I'm getting, internal rhymes, mood.

So now four of my children are off to see what they can make of themselves. I have high expectations of them. But even if they come back rejected, I won't be disappointed. Not every child grows up to be a star.

--Mary

I Got My Hair Cut

I walked into a SuperCuts and just did it. It's not very different, but at least it's neater. It's done. Now I can color it again.

The importance of this is that I haven't had my hair cut by anyone but Kenny for at least 20 years. But he's been away for months now, and I just had to get my hair cut. I feel like I've cheated on him. I feel disloyal. But I know I'm not disloyal. I waited as long as I could. It's like the episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show where Rob has an emergency situation with a tooth and Jerry is away, so he goes to a different dentist. He then goes through a great deal of angst because he cheated on Jerry. Of course, Jerry doesn't care; he realizes that if you have a tooth problem and it's an emergency, you get it taken care of.

I don't know if haircutting works that way.

Flattery Gets You Places

A very nice young woman from one of my ferret message boards e-mailed me to tell me, among other things, that I look too young to have had ferrets in the early 1980s (I didn't, it was the early 1990s; I think there's a typo somewhere on the FerretNews site). Most people are kind of surprised to find out how old I really am -- 29 in hex (for non-geek people, find a hexadecimal to decimal translation table to figure out my age, if you even care).

Anyway, Sabine, you made my day!

--Mary

The Birds

From CNN:

HOUSTON, Texas (AP) -- Like a scene from the horror movie "The Birds," large black grackles are swooping down on downtown Houston and attacking people's heads, hair and backs.

Link: http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/05/18/birds.attack.ap/index.html

And people told me it never happened. Hah!

--Mary

Well, Aren't I A Dope Sometimes?

I will listen to my phone messages every day. x 1,000.

Congratulations Are In Order!

My friend is a VERY YOUNG grandmother! Boy, do I feel old! She has two beautiful grandsons. (Yup, twins! What did you think?) I even got to see pictures! Cigars for everyone!

--Mary

I May Be Psychic

This relates back to Saturday when Eric and I went into NYC for our friend Melissa's birthday. I think I mentioned that we had baked cookies. One of the cookie shapes I chose was a shooting star. It was partly out of laziness -- I was looking for a circle (because they're really easy to deal with) and the shooting star cookie cutter was in the same bag as the circles. So I made some shooting stars and I made some circles (as well as hands, feet, cars, and plain stars).

Melissa likes to give out loot bags to anyone who celebrates her birthday with her. It's just her way. They usually have some little toys (last year we got those guys you throw at the wall and they "walk" down it) and candy. This year we got some yummy dark chocolate Hershey's kisses, a candy necklace (always some form of candy jewelry), candy buttons (you know, sugar on paper), a light-up lollypop ring, a pencil, a little green alien (just like the one I abducted with Melissa few weeks ago!), and ... get this ... a shooting star that glows in the dark!

So I'm psychic. Or Melissa's psychic. Or we both are psychic (or psychotic). Or it was just a coincidence.

Crazy People Calling Me

Some lady left a weird message on our machine today. Something about trying to call and trying to email all week (and it's only Tuesday!). She said something about not know what kind of "space" I'm in and how she's not in that same "space" right now and ... all kinds of weird stuff. The thing is I think it was a wrong number! I also think this crazy person has been calling and hanging up over the last few days. Our number is not listed and really impossible to find, so if it was someone who was actually leaving a message for Eric or me (or both of us), we'd know who it was. We don't. We did *69 the caller and it's not a number we recognize.

Just what we need -- a repeat wrong number caller.

--Mary

PayPal

It looks like a lot of people prefer to give tips through PayPal instead of Amazon Honor System. We're thinking about getting rid of our Yahoo Store and our credit card processing (especially since our CC processing company took $100 out of our bank account for no apparent reason and made the account go negative, which got us a couple of bank fees ... ugh!). We might start using the PayPal shopping cart. It'd be more cost-efficient, especially as we're looking to do more non-ferret-related things (putting out less $ to run the ferret-related stuff).

I also have the tip jars on my depression web site, but no one has thus far given any tips. It's fine. That site has never been about money. It's just about helping people.

Success Journal

I've been keeping a success journal for the last couple of months. I write down five successes for every day. Sometimes they're lame. But I do it. It's supposed to help keep me focused on positive things. I think it does help. Of course, the book I'm using for my success journal is a Happy Bunny thing: "It's cute how you think I'm listening." If you're not hip to Happy Bunny stuff, it's very funny and obnoxious. Check it out:

More Happy Bunny Stuff

Yet More Happy Bunny Stuff

Happy Bunny. Yeah.

Now I have to get some sleep. It's after midnight. Much work to do tomorrow.

--Mary

... Later That Day/Amityville Horror

I found out some very interesting things about my husband today. We've been married about 11.5 years, and I never knew that he was actually in the Amityville Horror House! His mom knew someone who knew one of the owners of the house (not the actual Amityville Horror family, but later owners). The guy Eric's mom knew was house sitting the Amityville Horror House and had a couple of kids about Eric's age. So Eric's mom would take him and his brother there to swim in the pool. How brave is Eric? Well, I doubt he really knew what had gone on there (he was only about 11 at the time). But he was there and he's not possessed or crazy or anything like that.

From what I understand, the whole thing was made up anyway.

--Mary

Laser Tag

Yesterday I played laser tag for the first time. Fun! I did poorly the first time out, but then I improved quite a lot. If you'd told me 20 or so years ago that I'd be pointing even a fake gun at someone, I'd have said you were crazy.

Mother's Day

Not one of my favorite days for a lot of reasons. But the weather's nice and I'm going to see The Parents for dinner. Eric and I baked cookies for the occasion (well, that and our friend Melissa's birthday, which was yesterday [Hi Mellisa! ;o)]).

Now I'm off ...

--Mary

Typo

I was looking through my journal on the train last night. I made an interesting typo in my blog entry from the other day. I typed:

It's a greedy need;
you're the only jewel
I covet.

But what I'd written was:

It's a greedy need;
you're only the jewel
I covet.

See how different that is?

--Mary

I Write (Poems)

I write a lot of things. The best I write is poetry. Even though I haven't focused on it much in the last decade and a half. Well, in the last few years I've tried to focus on it. Now I'm compelled to work at it more. It's wonderful.

I never used to find a blank page daunting. I used to have words swirling in my head all the time (and not only the words to someone's song!). Now it's a little different. I have to mine the words, the poems.

To get started, I blindly pick a word out of the dictionary and write it down. That's my starting point: from there I do a word association thing and see what happens. The idea is to tap into the subconscious and find what's in there. You can come up with some very neat stuff that way. Or I can. It's often totally unrelated to the word I initially chose. For example, today I used the thesaurus and pulled out "cold shoulder." The lines I created:

I worry over you,
aging, aged
not frail
but nearing the edge
of fragility.

Afraid of losing
what I only now found --
afraid you'll be gone
before I can absorb
enough of who you are
to change me.

It's a greedy need;
you're the only jewel
I covet.

See? Nothing to do with a cold shoulder. But then I did:

Gray absorbs color
turns spring into something
cold, dying.

Clouds shun the sun,
dancing hot upon its core
oblivious.

Green is unenduring --
only gray lasts,
fading then revived --
a sure heartbeat.

You can never tell where you'll go. But the key is to tap into that subconscious level where things really happen. Where the third eye sees between all the dimensions.

That's it. Just wanted to share that.

--Mary