nowhere = now here

13 things I'm not doing

I'm a bookkeeper, so this is my busy season. One of my clients needs payroll for the year. For the year. I am halfway done and heartily sick of it. I already tried to pass it back to the accountant, but she doesn't want to do it either.
Why is my laundry basket always full? I now have a pile on the floor. Maybe because I refuse to have a dryer, so I dry on racks. One load at a time.
Working at home means I don't have to get dressed or put my shoes on.
Usually right now I'm at my day job, caretaking a disabled boss and babysitting a dying business.
Coffee was good, water is good, and I wish I was hungry.
Really, I can't do figures while the sun is in this particular place - right in my eyes, clouding the screen. Really.
Another client has a years worth of paypal figures I have to download and itemize.
My favorite client is waiting for me to finish her year. She was smart enough to use my help all year, so we are almost ready for taxes. Just one reason she's my favorite.
Still haven't partied with my zany Shay - we are both December babies, so we have candles to blow out and gifts to share. I'll keep calling.
I have yet to create a response to the gentleman I email who wants to take me to dinner. I question his subtlety; I don't want to send a picture.
I'm not hearing from BigSis. I hope this means she's having too much fun.
My infamous Capricorn drive seems to be snoozing on a mountain top.
No resolutions - that's my tradition.

13 ways I'm not ready

No tree.
No scent of pine in the house.
No presents underneath the missing tree.
No mistletoe.
No turkey thawing.
No santa in the closet.
No cards mailed.
No party planned.
No nativity scene.
No caroling.
No wrapping paper bits on the floor.
No time.
No worries.

Sunday Seven

I know it's a sin to work on Sundays but I do it. Isn't it a sin to let bills go unpaid? Or something like that.
Some songs demand you sing along. Right now on itunes: Way Over Yonder - Carole King. She makes it sound like we could all sing it.
When I was growing up you couldn't buy anything on Sundays but food and toilet paper. Not even pantyhose for church.
Athough I'm a second degree priestess of the Wicca, a kitchen witch who survived and assimilated a Baptist upbringing, I still love some gospel. One of my favorite movie gospel singing scenes is in The Color Purple, God Is Trying to Tell You Something - now on itunes - loudly.
One of the few things I miss about belonging to a church is caroling at Christmas.
I don't yet have the Christmas / solstice / yule spirit - maybe about the 19th.
Happy Christmas Eve birthdays to me and my BigSis - she knows how I'd love to gift her......

8 Dec

Why in the world are we here?

Surely not to live in pain and fear.

SHINE ON
LIKE THE MOON & THE STARS & THE SUN

TGIF

INTERIM            Lorraine Hansberry

When I will have conquored all my days
When I shall have become mistress of the miseries of the ordinary

When I will have pummelled trouble into nothing
And fashioned the atoms of unqualified despair into a star of hope

When I will have made the agony of hours a lovely thing
And all the aching griefs of solitude a sweet and simple song
    why then

Death come and move with me to some other land
For I shall be ready then.

13 early morning observations

Coffee is god good.
No matter my other feelings about winter, the morning skies are beautiful - the perfect austere background to bare tree branches.
It's more relaxing to ignore the work on my desk.
Some mornings even ambient radio would be too much.
I can also ignore that woman in the mirror.
The kitty rocks the rocking chair as he grooms himself. Sometimes this is funny; on a quiet morning the creaking is very loud.
Even though it breaks the solitude, I'm so glad Be gets up to her own alarm clock. No more cheery "It's time to get up" every five minutes.
Solitude is as precious a commodity as sleep.
I love my bath. I love Ivory soap and Aveda lavendar lotion and Chanel No. 5.
If the first cup is good, the next two are great.
I adore online banking.
One day I'll learn to eat breakfast.
No matter how early I get up, I still run out the door.

a postscript

There's more to the day than dining alone.
The night after my nostalgic Bojangles-and-Bruce dinner, Be and Scrub came in just as I was publishing the post. They sat down and we hung out for the next two hours, talking and laughing and - my favorite part - letting Scrub know - again - that if he wanted to be part of the household he needed to hold up his end, carry his weight.
But I don't let it get heavy - I'm trying to speak from one artist to another. I plan to post on this soon - how I see the art of life, the art I want my life to make and be - but this post is about what Be's dad is missing. Not me - I'm sure there are lots of interesting women of a certain age willing to be his companion - not me, but this beautiful, interesting young adult we made and I live with.
For years when he wasn't around people always said, yeah but he's missing out. And it was not a comfort. It made me impatient.
The years have passed and it still makes me impatient with him - but I think more patient, more appreciative, more aware, with her. What sorrow and joy she gives, worth every meal I ever fixed and ate with her, all the sleepless hours and nights, all the yelling and pushing and wheedling and bribing.
Be tells me she had a happy childhood. And I didn't miss it, even if I was alone.

on Saturday I clean

women’s work

I’m not the woman my mother is

she quit smoking
and stayed married but
as long as she keeps a sloppy house
says “shit”
and lets her garden dry out in every summer drought

she’s not the woman her mother was

both my sisters are divorced
don’t smoke
still shave
and never go to bed before
all the dishes are done

while my daughter works hard
to housebreak her boyfriend
and refuses to trade on her looks

does this mean anything?

or am i just oppressed by
my aging face in the mirror

so many fuckin dishes to wash
a too-big floor to scrub
once-was food to throw out
and a drooping garden to water

I have no time
for contemplating change
through the generations

still
here I sit
staring at this poem

itunes magic & dining alone

THIS POST HAS BEEN REMOVED FOR SPELL WORK......

And - in typical itunes fashion - now Gillian Welch reminds me: Time is the revelator.