Cold Front

In which Autumn flees.

Good evening blog. I wish you the very best and ask no less for myself. The year is closing down, and lights are about to be shut off and we're all aisles out the door as they lock up 2010. Been a good year, a very good year. In fact, any year you get to see the end of is a 'win' in my book. Work is good, family is a blessing. All is right in my world.

'They' say snow is coming. I can't catch a breath of it on the wind. It is colder, I'll give 'them' that.

In which the Darkness cometh

I am at the center of a maelstrom. It rages and I can see it all so clearly. I don't need music to write in this mood. I don't need descriptive settings or romantic ideals, gothic emotions or vintage knowledge.

My vision is perfect when I'm upset. Literally. Figuratively. Oh how heavy and huge and hurtful it all can be.

The air I breathe in is too much for my lungs. Expanding me out and how tiresome that is.

Dear Blog. Hear me. Here I am. There are times when I feel much older than I am. I might be jaded. I probably am and under it I'm so hopeful. I don't know where this blog is going. My fingers sound like they mean business with each key stroke but my brain is on auto pilot. Today, the moon suggested fasting and solitude. I got food poisoning and my person to person interactions are wearing me down. Wonderful advice moon but calling it sky doesn't make it more obtainable. I feel like my stomach is about to turn in to a golf course sprinkler. There's nothing creative in this mood. No redeeming, underlying good underlying these words. It's a reverse fever.

I need to get out of my head for a few. Nothing triggered it. This is the circle closed. Tonight it starts again and I'l be euphoric come tomorrow. It's cathartic and a much needed release.

Goodnight dear blog, I'm going to go sleep it off.

On Friday

In which knuckles crack like firewood.

I'm sitting in my bed. It's 11:11pm. My husband is beside me, the dogs are at my feet and you, my blog, are sitting in my lap in the form of an Ipad. In the silence, the keystrokes are loud and accented by the sighs of the dogs sleeping. My husband reads a digital book, no pages rustle and somewhere in the neighborhood, a dog barks.

Tomorrow is a full moon. That bears no relevance on this story but I thought you should know. I track these kinds of things to amuse my mind in passing.

I read over old blogs, mine and others, before setting to task this one. I belatedly notice that I have received comments on my blogs, from my Aunt and cousin and I read them over in amazement. In this world where I'm sent an email notification every time some one sneezes, it never occurred to me that a comment would drift by unnoticed.

So I notice now.

A few days ago, I tune in to NPR as I drive to one place or another. A short story - more of a sound byte in passing, says that people fall in love three times faster online than in real life - a lack of inhibitions that daunt face to face. Like I said, interesting but like the full moon, has little to do with the blog.

I'm losing my voice. Or rather, it hurts to talk so I'm electively taking a break from the vocal. It's not going to last long. Morning. Maybe.

11:17 blog. The seconds are skipping against the minutes. An hour will have danced by before I know it. I seem to write more at nights. Active mind I suppose that isn't ready to sleep. Better to let it play here where the only damage it can cause is to my train of thought....

I have a lot to say blog. Volumes and bound books worth. My mind is awhirl with possibility and alit with things I wish I could do justice to. They call me an auditor now. Head of the department, no less. Three years and going and it hasn't been able to hold a prince's candle to this... my writing, my words. These tiny hours I snatch and share and smear my soul against paper or screen and I'm here. Always here, waiting for the working world to slip away and give rise to this. I sing the body electric.

And that is not something that is easily comprehended. Only when I'm writing, with husband beside me, dog curled warm on my feet and the knowledge that my daughter sleeps sound in the room next to ours do I feel... feel like myself. Nothing else needed. No one to 'be' for. To be able to have this time where stress cannot seek me and love is all I could ever feel.. I'm not sure there are many that can stake a claim in such time.

Anyway blog, I feel like that was a lot of short rantings wrapped around a loose fifteen minutes of intent. To anyone that reads this or will read it I offer encouragement.

Keep writing. Keep typing at the top of your lungs 'I'm here, I was here, every silly little thought and deep inspiring life lesson or joke or ramble I share matters'. Cause it does. Oh believe me it does. This lesson of language is one of the greatest gifts we have and even if you use your blog for nothing more than to explore the ups and downs of cracking your knuckles against pavement, it matters.

Trust me.

Till next time blog. Blessed Be.

On Midnight

In which I write the next hour away.

I cannot abide drinking. The energy of it sits ill with me. The uppercase 'why' escapes me - with effort I can trace a few of the less subtle aspects. It's been four years now if it's been one since God with a capital G asked for my everlasting vow of never tasting alcohol again. Important note; it was a Wednesday, I was dead sober and trying to fall asleep on an otherwise unremarkable night. And i wasn't much of a drinker to begin with. The request seemed out of left field. But deity speaks, who am I to argue? It's been the one thing in my life that is an absolute certain. I question it less than I question if air is visible. Like brown eyes, witty humor and a small toe that bends slightly inward, the command is me and I just don't/will not/can't drink.

As one forever removed from this socially accepted norm, it's been quite an education in the goings on of the inebriated mind. I don't see the point drinking alcohol. I just....don't. I don't like being around people that are drinking. It's like a thick vail of suds bubble up between myself and the drinker, the person I had been keeping company with washed away, leaving me with a stranger with a familiar face but emotionally and rationally unstable. A lot of terrible and uncomfortable things can be caused by this imposter.

I dislike immensely that the next day, when my company washes back on shore from their tide of inebriation, they wave away any misdoings as the acts of another. Their lovable, blameless ale clone was the wrong doer and they admonish their actions as if they were a thing apart from them. "I was drunk.... I wasn't that drunk... No i wasn't acting like that,,,"

As my hour is almost up now, I'd like to give thanks again. Deity, in infinite wisdom, blessed me with a soul mate that also doesn't drink, mainly I believe because he came from a country where getting drunk was viewed as the highest form of social embarrassment and simply just wasn't done. He never saw the point of drinking. Alcohol was treated as something as common place and special as grapefruit juice - something one got a taste for on occasion but could stomach more than a glassful at a time.

That's all from me. Blessed be

Of August

~In which I recount the many days that made up this month~

But not in great detail.

Oh August. This is the month that first greeted my little sister in to life. This is the month that summer is in it's full bloom and the heat is thick and smells like pools.

You went fast this year August. I can't believe I'm already saying goodbye and thank you. Thank you for the many warm summer nights we sat around chatting and laughing. Thanks for another month spent with my family and friends, for being the month in which Aidalei grew stronger and more wonderful than the month before. Thanks for giving me another 31 nights nursing her to sleep and another 31 mornings of waking up to her joyful voice.

I'm so grateful for everything this month has been. I'll honor it always, add it to the growing collection of months that have made up the catalog of my life. Filed it away under 'awesome and awe inspiring'.

Cause you just never know how many 'August's you're going to get.

Until next time.

Blessed be.

On timeshares

My life is a time share. I dole out small chunks of it to myself, hard-candy wrapped up like Christmas for a job well done.

It's almost August.

Today is the last call for July. Everyone out, it's closing time. Ready or not. Here come the short days of a dying summer. Last call. And I caught enough of it not to regret the only 2009 July I'll ever know.

Let's hear it for tomorrow. And while you're at it, let's give today a cheer for the remaining 48 minutes of it.

Of July

July.

July for me is a tried and true month. Deaths, usually. But birthdays always. I've never had an uneventful July. How about that.

I took to the scale today. The first time, in let's be honest, a long time. And I wasn't that shocked when the digits that popped up were the same. I'm so use to seeing them when I look down, they are the number equivalent to the casting of my shadow. That's good though. That's really good. Having pushed the big 2-0-0 at the height of my pregnancy, being back to where I started ten months later is a pretty good feeling.

Things are changing faster now. Time's in a hurry to slip by. Some one has broken the hour glass and the grains of sand are spilling out over the tile like the tide is rolling in.

Aida won't nurse. Started this week. I can't decide if it's because the promise of her upper teeth are pushing like two fat people at an all you can eat buffet or if because it's closing time at the milk bar. Either way, I'm backing to pumping. A past time that isn't as hated as it once was but won't be missed after the next two months put us on the road to separation.

I'm tossing around an idea. Nothing will come of it, more likely than not. But the possibility that of a 'might' is enough to have me making plans this weekend. I'm not sure what's in my head. We shall see.

Until next time, Blog o mine.

Quick Mix

Prompt: Me Vs. Maradona Vs. Elvis

The cherry stem was starting to unravel as he forced it against the back of his teeth with his tongue for the thousandth time that night. It was so important to tie it in to a knot.

The bar was loud and the big screen TVs in the corners were distracting. She was saying something but between the cherry stem in his mouth and the football game flickering above his vision, he had missed it.

She was beautiful in a fragile way, the kind that was so appealing when viewed out of the corner of a passing eye. The kind that fell apart without make-up. As natural as the chemical red of the cherry stem in his mouth.

Of Breastfeeding

I'm going to keep this short because I doubt there are more polarizing topics than breast vs. bottle.

Personally - and please, don't think I'm throwing judgement around like a football on Sunday - I felt breast was best. I'll spare you long discussions on how much I hated it at first. Watch me as I skip over explaining what it's like to have to pump every two hours, day and night. Gloss over the myriad of excuses I tried to make myself believe to try and give myself justification to stop when I knew in my heart I was in for the long run.

Almost seven months later, my daughter has never tasted formula and Goddess willing, she never will. I find myself loving what I thought I couldn't stand for even a single day more. That time we spend together in that rocker - awesome.

Pregnancy, babies, labor - those early months when mother's are programmed to be the primary caregivers of this new life - are private battlegrounds. No shortage of advice, surely. But in the end, we all have to do what's best for us and us alone. That bond with our baby is the most sacred of trusts and no one has the right to judge what that mommy feels is right for that baby.

This comes in the aftermath of reading an article that slams breastfeeding mothers. It's core argument was that less than 14% of mom's make it to the six month mark without formula so if anything, we're the freaks.

I envision a future where breastfeeding is such a singular rarity that it isn't talked about in polite company. Where young mother's are briefly coached on how to let their milk dry up and ways to make it happen as quickly and painlessly as possible. (This one already happens, Andrew and I had to sit through a class on it).

Not too long down the road, breasts will become sex objects totally and completely. Serving only to attract a mate but not to sustain life. We'll keep dicing them and stuffing them, lifting them and worshiping them as toys until one day...

One day it won't matter any more. They're wisdom teeth. They're the appendix of the chest. The thumb on the whale. The bat's molars. Generations from now, breastfeeding will be at the best a nostalgic study on how misguided but well meaning our ancestors were. At worst it will be used as an example of how hard mother's had it before science stepped in. Deity gave us the ability to think and to improve our lives, surely He meant for breasts to be sexual objects and not ways to feed our young... surely...

Speaking from that 14% of freaks that have exclusively breastfeed, I can't feel anything but a sad resignation for our future on this topic.

Blessed Be.

EVE

Six degrees

I have a new project.

I'm going to use facebook to see if I can connect myself with anyone famous.

Here's how it's going down:

I'm going to pick a family member and click on to one of their friend's facebook link. And from there, pick another link. Rinse and repeat.

Send and Receive

"This job is like a fudge pie from a distance. And then you get closer and it's like, 'that's no fudge pie'. - Andrius

Names. Funny things. Labels.

Andrius changed his name when he became a citizen of the GRAND o'l US. His name was too old to make it over the thick teeth of English speakers. 'Williams' breathes easy with a pace that invites familiarity.

In some universe out there, my husband kept his born name. In that universe of never-was my name's Els Volkoviene. I imagine she has my sense of humor and when she signs her initials, she does it phonically to justify having a neat signature on the dotted line.

I'm 26. I work at a healthcare outsourcing center. I'm a medical auditor. A passing stage of three years and counting.

Welcome to my moment. Here it is. Right here. Right now. This is the best it gets. The apex of my skill. Years of education boiled down to the pounding of this keyboard with a venom dips down bent elbows as I rush against time to get as much smeared against this screen as I can before -

I remember it was snowing when I first saw Andrius. Him in his green vest, me in my work clothes. His camera was hanging from his neck with the lens off, taking stock footage for his then job at the news. A few hours later in the warmth of the downtown Starbucks as we chat over a cup o'joe, I knew I had just met my best friend.

Let's move to Paris.

I wake up every morning with a distinct advantage over the rest of the world.

I'm not waiting for Friday.

While everyone else is looking forward to the weekend that will be spent in a drunken daze as they try to cram a week's worth of living in to burning nights, I'm alive in the ever vanishing moment. They get two, three days max, of recreation. I pick up the other four days. I want the Mondays. Bring on the Wednesdays, watch me dance away Thursday. And the Tuesdays. Let me tell you about the Tuesdays. They are lazy and wonderful. Each day I drive in to Denver, I'm singing in my car because I'm exactly where I want to be, doing what I want to do. My weekend is here. It's right now and I'm thriving.

I know a secret that only happy people know. Happy people, truly happy people, will be happy no matter where they are or what they're struck with. And I'm happy. Happy to the very core of my being. Happy to the point that I don't need events to sustain it.

Having arrived here I find it hard to relate to anyone else.

But you can watch me try.

Blessed Be.

EVE