| Monday, June 26, 2006 |
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I was raised on country sunshine |
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I just went to my first national conference for work. This is a big deal that happens every year and this is the first time I have gotten to go in my four years of employment with the UU's. It costs a fortune! The family went with and vacationed while I went to workshops, rubbed elbows, and took naps. Over 4300 UU's came together in St. Louis to argue and drink together. I did some of both. Actually, I did little arguing and much listening as friends spilled their guts into my big, welcoming ears, and spilled tears onto my soft, comforting shoulders. I caught up with some friends whom I had not seen since February, drank some of their homemade wine, and made plans to get together with them when they come to town next weekend. I got promising news that my district position could easily be increased to half-time so I can actually get it done, and I got to try a GREAT beer from A-B, the crusher of all things microbrew in the St. L area. It's called Beach Bum, and guess what - we can't really get it anywhere but for free at Grant's Farm - the A-B tribute to General Grant and the Clydesdales that draws in frustrated parents and screaming children from all over the Midwest. No really, they have a great biergarten that I would love to mimic in my own frontyard and all kinds of critters running around, like Longhorn cattle and beastaloes. I got to pet a camel and I had never realized what strangely shaped heads they have and what bulbous eyes protruding from their deeply contured faces. Very cool creatures - but they smell pretty bad! I felt very cosmopolitan as I strutted around downtown St. L in my favorite silk outfit that makes me look faboo. This was the first time I had been to a city where I was not terrifically annoyed by the people, traffic, noise, and lack of fresh air after 2 days of being pushed and jostled and cut off in traffic and lost. I actually LIKED it there. It's only 2. 5 million pushers, jostlers, and cutter-offers, and most everyone I talked to was very nice. But I am glad to be home, and the first thing I did was go weed my garden and pluck 3 homegrown zucchinis from alienlike plants that are dwarfing the roma tomatoes that reside in their shade. I can't wait to make zucchini pancakes tomorrow with mint and feta cheese, ala Joy of Cooking. I recently learned that Irma Rombauer, the original author of Joy is a UU. I think she and I would have gotten along well together.
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| posted by Rosie @ 6/26/2006 09:54:00 PM |
2 comments
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| Saturday, June 17, 2006 |
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BLUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRR |
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Hi friends. Sorry I have been away. We had a death in the family and things just went to hell in a handbasket for a week and a half. I finally feel like I can put together more than one sentence at a time that might make sense to someone else AND to me. AND, more importantly, I finally feel like I can process a thought without tripping a breaker in my brain. While I have been trying to help my family through the practical processes associated with death, life has gone on everywhere else. Goddess church happened without me, Harley had baseball, Har and Andrea had swim lessons, emails came and I ignored them until I can wrap my brain around the idea of answering them. Chelsea and Mike broke up, Ellen got laid off, Martin and Heather had both of their cars die, and I have to go to World's of Fun Monday with 8 high schoolers, then trek to the national UU conference for 6 days. I have every weekend but one scheduled with a meeting of some sort - many of them far, far away - until mid-October. I am whirling in a sea of craziness, but none of it matters when you think about someone dropping over at age 50. I saw grown men - tough mechanic guys and race car drivers - crying and in shock about the loss of their friend. I stood at a visitation for 3 hours with a half-hearted smile on my face, talking to total strangers, while my family sobbed in the foyer with the minister who would perform the memorial service. I bit my lip and wept when we sang Amazing Grace, and tried not to think about my own sadness over the loss of my father, which is still incredibly fresh in my heart and mind although it has been five years that he has been gone. I told people to remember their mortality and to have a great life, hoping that they understood what I meant. It is so hard to really live your life like you could die tomorrow when we are so caught up in mundane bullshit that doesn't matter at all. We are overscheduled; over-connected by technology; inundated with messages that insist we should be doing more to be thin, well-invested, well-medicated, and living our lives in a responsible, environmentally-concerned, culturally-sensitive manner with time to talk to our kids about drugs and sexuality; have healthy intimate relationships; AND not go crazy while cramming work and self-care in on top of it. I'll try to see you at FSB Monday night after I squeal my brains out at WOF with the high schoolers. Please don't call to see if I am OK. I am. We are. We just need the phones to stop ringing for one day so that we can have a second to collect our thoughts and restore our souls to some semblance of normalcy. Perhaps "normalcy" will be the return to the calendar slavedom that is my life without the constant reminder that we are mortal, and I really could drop over dead tomorrow. I guess that thing I said earlier about thoughts that make sense to others AND to me was premature. I gotta go flip the breaker back on.
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| posted by Rosie @ 6/17/2006 10:35:00 PM |
2 comments
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| Friday, June 02, 2006 |
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Duane Johnson changed me forever |
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In the small, po-dunky high school that I was forced to attend, we had 31 people in my class my senior year. This was large parts of 3 counties and a sliver of a fourth, and this was what we could muster. One fine spring day, while senior fever was oozing out the pores of everyone my age, and probably the teachers, too, who were rejoicing at being rid of my highly obnoxious peer group, Mr. Ellwood, who kicked ass, joined us for music class. Our regular music teacher was a fat turd of a man. He was a whiney baby who kicked trash cans across the room and threw music stands at people if they weren't showing him enough respect. We made up absolutely horrid songs about him, including lurid details about what we thought sex might be like between he and his equally nauseating wife, also a teacher. Well, this lovely spring day, Mr. Ellwood, who was still young enough to be handsome and cool, but was married to his super-cool wife ever since he had come to our school fresh out of teacher college, fell in love with one his students, and married her as soon as she returned from college five years later, this fine day, Mr. Ellwood took us into the music room and taught us a bit of musical history. He sat down and proclaimed that he was "really not much of a musician" and self-taught at that, then played Rhapsody in Blue, followed by a montage of crazy music that walked us through the history of musical change in the U.S. Then, out of the Blue, Mr. Ellwood asked Duane "Spanky" Johnson to take the floor. Spanky was a slight, weasel-looking kind of kid. Not a mean bone in his body, but rat-faced with a skinny, pointy nose that set off his too-close eyes in an unattractive way. These features were nestled under his never-freshly-washed or professionally cut hair, that had more cowlicks than a person could count. Bless Spanky's heart. He was from Geneseo, the smelliest part of our own personal armpit of HELL where we all had to live, and I think none of us by choice. We knew nothing about his family, but everyone from Geneseo wanted to be from somewhere else more than the rest of us did. He wore clean clothes, and I am sure bathed often, but had that dirty, hangdog look about him all the time. He was born defeated. I am not sure how Mr. Ellwood knew this about Spanky, but Mr. Ellwood knew that Spanky had something to offer to us. Spanky shyly stood and walked to the center of the room, while the rest of us slacked in our folding chairs. He lifted a ukelele and said that he had learned this song a long time before and would like to share it with us. He sang Rhythm of the Falling Rain, by the Cascades, in the sweetest tenor that you could imagine, while self-accompanying on the uke. We roared when he was finished.... giving him an embarrassingly long standing ovation which nearly scared him from the room. From that day on, I have thought about Spanky every time I have heard that song. I think about how much it sucks to be (from) somewhere you may or may not like, all the while knowing that everyone else hates the place. I think about what it must be like to wash yourself, and still no one can tell. I think of what it must be like to wake up every day thinking that you never had a chance from the beginning. I think about how lucky some girl was to have Duane sing that song to her, and her alone, with a lilt in his nervous voice. At least I hope that happened for him. And now, Rhythm of the Falling Rain: Listen to the rhythm of the falling rain, Telling me just what a fool I've been. I wish that it would go and let me cry in vain, And let me be alone again. Now the only girl I've ever loved has gone away. Looking for a brand new start! But little does she know that when she left that day. Along with her she took my heart. Rain, please tell me, now does that seem fair For her to steal my heart away when she don't care I can't love another, when my heart's somewhere far away. Listen to the rhythm of the falling rain, Telling me just what a fool I've been. I wish that it would go and let me cry in vain, And let me be alone again. Rain, won't you tell her that I love her so Please ask the sun to set her heart aglow Rain in her heart and let the love we know start to grow. Listen to the rhythm of the falling rain, Telling me just what a fool I've been. I wish that it would go and let me cry in vain, And let me be alone again. Oh listen to the falling rain Pitter patter pitter patter, OhListen, listen to the falling rain Pitter patter pitter patter, OhListen, listen to the falling rain Pitter patter pitter patter
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| posted by Rosie @ 6/02/2006 03:01:00 PM |
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