Waiting for the moon
When your life is ruled by the sight of the moon
and clouds creep in
fueled by rain
and wind and wintery madness
nights can seem long.
But the air is nice and cool
and we have this night
and that is a lot, really.
Favorite Places
Standing outside after midnight
in the shadow of the building
where the stars are free
from lightpost illumination
and other forces
the air is so rich
and the sky is
pieces of broken glass.
And I watch
and memorize
as if there is a test
any moment.
Monday, December 20, 2010
A Special Kind of Self Help Group
Feeling betrayed and abandoned by the sky
and the moon
and knowing twelve step groups don't even exist
for your kind of madness
you compulsively check for the lunar eclipse
just in case those numerous clouds
have all gone away
of course they don't
so you log onto the internet
and look at photos
and know that it isn't even as close to good
as it should be.
Feeling betrayed and abandoned by the sky
and the moon
and knowing twelve step groups don't even exist
for your kind of madness
you compulsively check for the lunar eclipse
just in case those numerous clouds
have all gone away
of course they don't
so you log onto the internet
and look at photos
and know that it isn't even as close to good
as it should be.
Monday, November 15, 2010
It was twenty years ago today that I was walking through the lounge in Baker Hall at SOU and started a conversation that would span these decades with someone who would prove to be my best friend and soul mate and as good love stories often do, it all began with poetry. You see there was a poetry reading that night in the SU and I had been searching for a friend to go with me, but everyone I knew had other plans. So I took a deep breath, gathered my wits and asked Jason if he would come along with me. He said yes.
To be fair, he and I had been watching each other for weeks. I saw this guy who wore "John Lennon" style sunglasses and was kind to Jorge my "shhh don't tell anyone because he is illegal" stray cat buddy who hung around the dorms. He thought I was stuck up but was intrigued by my door (which I must say was a work of art and was full of oddly interesting pictures, photos, words and even a great clipping of Ronald Reagan getting on a plane waving happily at the crowd, post brain surgery while Nancy stood behind him looking horrified, and on the bottom of that my friend Pammy had written "Win one for the gipper", so I kind of owe her a bit of gratitude for the small part she played in all of this too). There was, I guess some bit of cosmic electricity between us even from the very beginning.
Twenty years? How is that possible?
Neither of us remember all that much about the poetry reading itself other than Sharon Doubiago was headlining. He remembers talking a lot. I remember listening. I suppose we still balance one another like that. He learned that the arrogance he thought he saw was actually shyness. I learned that he cared a lot about his grandparents (who are really my own now after all these years) and was passionate about photography. I'm certain that we laughed quite a bit.
Fast forward through four, count 'em four kids, births, death, the most incredible lives that we share. More laughter, tears, the day to day minutia that make up a life and all of the moments that really matter with me feeling so incredibly lucky that I get to have this man by my side. That he is my friend, my husband, sometimes the only one in the room who gets my jokes and at the end of the day even through all of the messy stuff, there is this love between us. Love that goes on and on through twenty plus years. Love that I know will span this lifetime and beyond. Lucky. Me. Him. This family.
This is what I know about time. When you aren't having fun it can drag on like it probably did when you were in seventh grade. Good times pass quickly. Summer vacations seem to be over in minutes. Each of our childrens first years were over in the blink of an eye as we tried to hang on to the miraculous wonder of it all. Despite how much we wish we could slow time down, we know that the best tools in our bag of tricks are our minds, our ability to pay attention and to appreciate the "everyday" days. I'm pretty certain that the next twenty years will pass just as fast, Jason as long as I am spending them with you.
We are always a work in progress and the rest of the story is still being written. I'm grateful.
To be fair, he and I had been watching each other for weeks. I saw this guy who wore "John Lennon" style sunglasses and was kind to Jorge my "shhh don't tell anyone because he is illegal" stray cat buddy who hung around the dorms. He thought I was stuck up but was intrigued by my door (which I must say was a work of art and was full of oddly interesting pictures, photos, words and even a great clipping of Ronald Reagan getting on a plane waving happily at the crowd, post brain surgery while Nancy stood behind him looking horrified, and on the bottom of that my friend Pammy had written "Win one for the gipper", so I kind of owe her a bit of gratitude for the small part she played in all of this too). There was, I guess some bit of cosmic electricity between us even from the very beginning.
Twenty years? How is that possible?
Neither of us remember all that much about the poetry reading itself other than Sharon Doubiago was headlining. He remembers talking a lot. I remember listening. I suppose we still balance one another like that. He learned that the arrogance he thought he saw was actually shyness. I learned that he cared a lot about his grandparents (who are really my own now after all these years) and was passionate about photography. I'm certain that we laughed quite a bit.
Fast forward through four, count 'em four kids, births, death, the most incredible lives that we share. More laughter, tears, the day to day minutia that make up a life and all of the moments that really matter with me feeling so incredibly lucky that I get to have this man by my side. That he is my friend, my husband, sometimes the only one in the room who gets my jokes and at the end of the day even through all of the messy stuff, there is this love between us. Love that goes on and on through twenty plus years. Love that I know will span this lifetime and beyond. Lucky. Me. Him. This family.
This is what I know about time. When you aren't having fun it can drag on like it probably did when you were in seventh grade. Good times pass quickly. Summer vacations seem to be over in minutes. Each of our childrens first years were over in the blink of an eye as we tried to hang on to the miraculous wonder of it all. Despite how much we wish we could slow time down, we know that the best tools in our bag of tricks are our minds, our ability to pay attention and to appreciate the "everyday" days. I'm pretty certain that the next twenty years will pass just as fast, Jason as long as I am spending them with you.
We are always a work in progress and the rest of the story is still being written. I'm grateful.
Sunday, November 07, 2010
When I start to come to, I see a nurse standing over me. At first I can't even speak and the few words that I try to utter are indecipherable. After several tries, I'm finally able to get it out. "My son?" I ask. "Where is my son?"
The nurse looks away and quietly says, "We have to get you stabilized and then a doctor will come in and talk to you."
There is this silence that seems to stretch forever as I lie there thinking about what those words might mean. "He must have downs syndrome," I tell myself. "There must be some sort of issue like that." One time, a few years back, one of our cats caught a blue jay and brought it to me. The bird was still alive and I tried to get the cat to drop it, but he held on to his prize as though his teeth were stuck to it and no amount of yelling or pleading from me could make him let go. I thought about that cat's tenacity as I let my mind grasp that tiny possibility of hope, as I drift in and out of consciousness.
When I wake up Jason is standing in front of me. He looks strange. His eyes meet mine and there are these words coming from his mouth, but they seem to be coming from a distance a lot farther away, almost like they are coming from the hallway beyond the room.
"He didn't make it."
I spend several minutes trying to figure out what that means and he must see that the words are not reaching me because he tries again. "He died."
Those words echo inside my head. "He died, he died, died, died died."
I just want to be invisible. I want to climb back into the safety of sleep.
Some days pass and before I leave the hospital, several nurses tell me that my milk will be coming in and I 'll need to think about doing something to stop it. One nurse suggests a pill that I can take that will dry it up, but after checking with someone else in the hospital, determines that my doctor will not prescribe that medication. Instead my doctor stops by my hospital room and talks about what will happen.
"Really the only thing we can do about that is to have you bind your breasts," she tells me. That way the milk will dry up quickly."
When I first hold that bandage in my hands, images of centuries of women being bound in various ways come to my mind. I am expected to follow instructions and I do. I go home wearing an ace bandage tightly wrapped around my chest. In the days that follow, I wake up each morning lying in a puddle of milk with breasts that feel heavy and painful. Sometimes I express milk to calm that angry pain even though I've been warned by several well meaning people that it will just increase my supply. Despite my effort, wearing that bandage does not seem to be working because I am still dealing with painful boobs and flooding milk so I soon give up trying to stop it, choosing instead to allow it to run its course. It takes weeks, but it is my last physical connection to my son and I am heavyhearted when my body finally stops producing milk. Many months later, I come across the ace bandage while I am cleaning and I am happier after I place it in the trash.
I recall that the cemetery smelled of juniper and baked dirt. The heat rose up from our ankles as we stood underneath the ancient trees. There were rows of people; our friends and family who sat in folding chairs in front of his tiny pine casket whose inside was lined with soft, white silk. We'd given his little, pale blue, footed giraffe suit to the funeral home and I had to trust that it was on him and that the handful of soft toys that Sierra had chosen to be placed inside the casket was next to him. It was a closed casket.
I can only remember snippets and pieces from that day. I remember that when we arrived at the cemetery we were greeted by a guy named Steve who worked for the mortuary. The open ground was covered with fake grass and there was a support beam holding up his casket. There were several floral arrangements on top, so many that I could not see the carving of the little animals on top and I pushed one aside a bit so I could run my fingers over the dips and curves on the wood one more time. After a little while although at the time I had no sense of time, so it could have been twenty minutes or several hours, people began to arrive. I remember Jason stepping towards the casket and turning around to face our family and friends. I guess I could use words like officiate or conduct, but what he really did was stand there and talk about what had just happened and then he tried to map out a plan for how we would survive what had just happened. I said a few words too, but I was shaky and held on to his arm to steady myself. And then, just like that, it was over and everyone stood up and prepared to leave. And we were expected to leave as well.
I remember standing there wishing that I could stay there with my son. Knowing that it wouldn't matter because he was not there, but finding those steps to be the hardest I have ever taken. Walking away seemed impossible.
"I guess we should go now."
"Just a little longer."
We stood there next to the piled up dirt and watched the warm sun dry out the lazy susans. It was hard to stand there and harder still to walk away.
The nurse looks away and quietly says, "We have to get you stabilized and then a doctor will come in and talk to you."
There is this silence that seems to stretch forever as I lie there thinking about what those words might mean. "He must have downs syndrome," I tell myself. "There must be some sort of issue like that." One time, a few years back, one of our cats caught a blue jay and brought it to me. The bird was still alive and I tried to get the cat to drop it, but he held on to his prize as though his teeth were stuck to it and no amount of yelling or pleading from me could make him let go. I thought about that cat's tenacity as I let my mind grasp that tiny possibility of hope, as I drift in and out of consciousness.
When I wake up Jason is standing in front of me. He looks strange. His eyes meet mine and there are these words coming from his mouth, but they seem to be coming from a distance a lot farther away, almost like they are coming from the hallway beyond the room.
"He didn't make it."
I spend several minutes trying to figure out what that means and he must see that the words are not reaching me because he tries again. "He died."
Those words echo inside my head. "He died, he died, died, died died."
I just want to be invisible. I want to climb back into the safety of sleep.
Some days pass and before I leave the hospital, several nurses tell me that my milk will be coming in and I 'll need to think about doing something to stop it. One nurse suggests a pill that I can take that will dry it up, but after checking with someone else in the hospital, determines that my doctor will not prescribe that medication. Instead my doctor stops by my hospital room and talks about what will happen.
"Really the only thing we can do about that is to have you bind your breasts," she tells me. That way the milk will dry up quickly."
When I first hold that bandage in my hands, images of centuries of women being bound in various ways come to my mind. I am expected to follow instructions and I do. I go home wearing an ace bandage tightly wrapped around my chest. In the days that follow, I wake up each morning lying in a puddle of milk with breasts that feel heavy and painful. Sometimes I express milk to calm that angry pain even though I've been warned by several well meaning people that it will just increase my supply. Despite my effort, wearing that bandage does not seem to be working because I am still dealing with painful boobs and flooding milk so I soon give up trying to stop it, choosing instead to allow it to run its course. It takes weeks, but it is my last physical connection to my son and I am heavyhearted when my body finally stops producing milk. Many months later, I come across the ace bandage while I am cleaning and I am happier after I place it in the trash.
I recall that the cemetery smelled of juniper and baked dirt. The heat rose up from our ankles as we stood underneath the ancient trees. There were rows of people; our friends and family who sat in folding chairs in front of his tiny pine casket whose inside was lined with soft, white silk. We'd given his little, pale blue, footed giraffe suit to the funeral home and I had to trust that it was on him and that the handful of soft toys that Sierra had chosen to be placed inside the casket was next to him. It was a closed casket.
I can only remember snippets and pieces from that day. I remember that when we arrived at the cemetery we were greeted by a guy named Steve who worked for the mortuary. The open ground was covered with fake grass and there was a support beam holding up his casket. There were several floral arrangements on top, so many that I could not see the carving of the little animals on top and I pushed one aside a bit so I could run my fingers over the dips and curves on the wood one more time. After a little while although at the time I had no sense of time, so it could have been twenty minutes or several hours, people began to arrive. I remember Jason stepping towards the casket and turning around to face our family and friends. I guess I could use words like officiate or conduct, but what he really did was stand there and talk about what had just happened and then he tried to map out a plan for how we would survive what had just happened. I said a few words too, but I was shaky and held on to his arm to steady myself. And then, just like that, it was over and everyone stood up and prepared to leave. And we were expected to leave as well.
I remember standing there wishing that I could stay there with my son. Knowing that it wouldn't matter because he was not there, but finding those steps to be the hardest I have ever taken. Walking away seemed impossible.
"I guess we should go now."
"Just a little longer."
We stood there next to the piled up dirt and watched the warm sun dry out the lazy susans. It was hard to stand there and harder still to walk away.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Saturday, July 24, 2010
July 24, 2010 free samples:
Info on how to get free stuff from the Chicago White Sox, free EAS shake, free pain patch, free cold medicine and free makeup. Click link below.
Info on how to get free stuff from the Chicago White Sox, free EAS shake, free pain patch, free cold medicine and free makeup. Click link below.
Free samples: Chicago White Sox kid fan club, EAS shake, pain patch, cold medication, eye makeup
Friday, July 23, 2010
7/23/10 free samples July 23, 2010 free samples
Free samples: Muscle & Fitness Magazines, Vendr TV, Virgin Mobile FreeFest concert, General Mills
July 23, 2010 free samples 7/23/10
Free samples: Alpha Geek T-shirt, 2 yrs Shape Magazine, Starbucks (California), Kmart Kids birthday
July 23, 2010 free samples
Free samples: Organic products, Bahama Breeze $10, food safety magnet, coffee, skincare makeup
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
July 21, 2010 free samples
Click the link below and it will take you to the freebies!
Click the link below and it will take you to the freebies!
Free samples: Achooz nose, Pureform, flower pin, Eco Tools, Stain Devil cleaner
July 20, 2010 free samples:
Just click the link and you'll find the goodies!Free samples: PetSmart Vet exam, snacks, Carolina Herrera Fragrance, AMC $1 popcorn, EPA kids
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
Go to my friend Linda's blog for a chance to win nifty things from Seventh Generation!
MONKEY BIZNESS
MONKEY BIZNESS
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Friday, May 21, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Free Pampers Potty Training Kit and Huggies Pull Ups Potty DVD
Frugal shoppers, get your mouse ready! Click article below to find out how to get your free samples and coupons for potty training success.
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-38960-Ashland-Frugal-Living-Examiner~y2010m5d19-Frugal-shopper-Free-Pampers-Potty-Training-Kit-and-free-Huggies-Pull-Ups-Potty-D
Frugal shoppers, get your mouse ready! Click article below to find out how to get your free samples and coupons for potty training success.
http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-38960-Ashland-Frugal-Living-Examiner~y2010m5d19-Frugal-shopper-Free-Pampers-Potty-Training-Kit-and-free-Huggies-Pull-Ups-Potty-D
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Welcome channel 10 watchers!
Order a copy of You Paid What? A Simple Guide to Slashing Grocery Bills and Saving Money with Coupons by Vanessa Houk
Click here
You can also learn a lot about the benefits of frugal living by checking out my examiner.com articles here.
Writing for Examiner.com is a lot of fun! Are you passionate about something and do you have some writing skills? Examiner is currently looking for Medford and Southern Oregon writers to cover topics ranging from family, health, politics, hobbies and many other interesting subjects. You can apply to be a Medford area examiner by clicking here and if you would please be so kind as to use me as a referral (just type Ashland Frugal Examiner in the box that asks you "How did you hear about Examiner.com" which is directly under the space where you type in your name and address). Watch a short video on how to do that here. The application process takes a few weeks and you will also need to provide some short writing samples, but I think you would enjoy sharing your passion with others as much as I do.
Thank you for visiting!
Order a copy of You Paid What? A Simple Guide to Slashing Grocery Bills and Saving Money with Coupons by Vanessa Houk
Click here
You can also learn a lot about the benefits of frugal living by checking out my examiner.com articles here.
Writing for Examiner.com is a lot of fun! Are you passionate about something and do you have some writing skills? Examiner is currently looking for Medford and Southern Oregon writers to cover topics ranging from family, health, politics, hobbies and many other interesting subjects. You can apply to be a Medford area examiner by clicking here and if you would please be so kind as to use me as a referral (just type Ashland Frugal Examiner in the box that asks you "How did you hear about Examiner.com" which is directly under the space where you type in your name and address). Watch a short video on how to do that here. The application process takes a few weeks and you will also need to provide some short writing samples, but I think you would enjoy sharing your passion with others as much as I do.
Thank you for visiting!
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Another Safeway run this evening. My hobby is shopping...
5 gallons milk
5 Honey bunches of oats cereals
5 pounds tangerines
8 big bixes Ritz crackers
4 boxes Teddy Grahams
10 more Green Giant vegetable bags (the coupons expired at midnight which is why I went one more time!)
Got all of the above for $12! The milk alone was $2.39 each before coupons, so that is pretty good! My freezer(s) are stuffed, fridge is stuffed and shelves are stuffed. I'm not planning on a lot of other shopping this week, but there is a very tempting Albertson's sale and I know I can always donate a bunch of milk to the food bank if I need to make some room.
5 gallons milk
5 Honey bunches of oats cereals
5 pounds tangerines
8 big bixes Ritz crackers
4 boxes Teddy Grahams
10 more Green Giant vegetable bags (the coupons expired at midnight which is why I went one more time!)
Got all of the above for $12! The milk alone was $2.39 each before coupons, so that is pretty good! My freezer(s) are stuffed, fridge is stuffed and shelves are stuffed. I'm not planning on a lot of other shopping this week, but there is a very tempting Albertson's sale and I know I can always donate a bunch of milk to the food bank if I need to make some room.
These Sunday "all by myself" shopping trips are becoming addictive. I went to three stores today (and went in and out of Safeway 4 times).
Spent $42 and came home with $20 in coupons good off my next purchase of nearly anything, so $22 net.
The goodies: (no picture this week. It was mostly frozen stuff and I had to get it into the freezers)
At Fred Meyer
2 Purex Laundry Soap
1 green pepper (those three items were just four cents after some careful couponing at Fred Meyer.
At Safeway
1 bag of half price chocolate valentine candy for DH (the list of stuff he most wanted included smoked salmon... he got chocolate at least!)
1 bag animal crackers
1 Skippy peanut butter
1 Pillsbury toaster strudel
6 bags of Green Giant frozen vegetables the steam/microwave ones)
4 El Monterrey "Tornados" that look like rolled up tacos
Safeway Trip #2
7 Purevia sweetener
8 frozen Yoplait Smoothies
1 Old Orchard juice
Safeway trip #3
2 huge packs of Charmin (24 rolls each, supposed to be double rolls)
Safeway trip #4
1 Swiffer mop starter kit
1 Swiffer refill package
2 Febreeze air fresheners
At Food 4 Less
Mushrooms
2 avocados
2 cucumbers
2 tomatoes
bean sprouts
1 frozen chicken meal (family size)
2 Haggen Dazs bars (only fifty cents each, not even on my list. Even I splurge sometimes).
Total value of groceries before any coupons: $180.00
Not too shabby!
Spent $42 and came home with $20 in coupons good off my next purchase of nearly anything, so $22 net.
The goodies: (no picture this week. It was mostly frozen stuff and I had to get it into the freezers)
At Fred Meyer
2 Purex Laundry Soap
1 green pepper (those three items were just four cents after some careful couponing at Fred Meyer.
At Safeway
1 bag of half price chocolate valentine candy for DH (the list of stuff he most wanted included smoked salmon... he got chocolate at least!)
1 bag animal crackers
1 Skippy peanut butter
1 Pillsbury toaster strudel
6 bags of Green Giant frozen vegetables the steam/microwave ones)
4 El Monterrey "Tornados" that look like rolled up tacos
Safeway Trip #2
7 Purevia sweetener
8 frozen Yoplait Smoothies
1 Old Orchard juice
Safeway trip #3
2 huge packs of Charmin (24 rolls each, supposed to be double rolls)
Safeway trip #4
1 Swiffer mop starter kit
1 Swiffer refill package
2 Febreeze air fresheners
At Food 4 Less
Mushrooms
2 avocados
2 cucumbers
2 tomatoes
bean sprouts
1 frozen chicken meal (family size)
2 Haggen Dazs bars (only fifty cents each, not even on my list. Even I splurge sometimes).
Total value of groceries before any coupons: $180.00
Not too shabby!
Sunday, February 21, 2010
I went shopping alone today and spent about $10 for everything in the photo.I love coupons.
Here is the list:
3 Tide liquid laundry soap
2 Tide Stain release
2 Purex 3 in 1
24 Charmin TP
2 Iams cat food
4 Fresh express salad mixes
9 Purevia sugar substitutes
6 Pillsbury cookies
12 Pillsbury biscuits and rolls
4 Campbells soups
4 Nabisco Saltine crackers
40 Rice A Roni
1 Febreeze
3 Dawn dishsoap
3 Oreo cakesters
6 Nabisco cookie sacks
1 Swiffer mop
1 Swiffer refill
2 cans tuna
1 can catfood
I went to 3 stores and made a total of 5 runs. Came home tired but pretty happy with the savings. If I paid retail prices, I would have paid more than $200 for that. I misplaced one receipt, but it would have been $219 plus whatever that other one was. Wow. Did I say how much I love using coupons?
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Fun Safeway run tonight. I came home with all of this:
6 cookie doughs
6 boxes cheese nips crackers
4 six packs coca cola
1 real vanilla extract
4 progresso soups
2 frozen meals for lunches
Saved 95%
I spent $4.62 and got a coupon for $4 off my next order. That was fun!
I've been shopping at Costco more lately because we have been eating a lot more fruits and veggies and I like their fruits and veggies, but this reminded me to get back to work saving.
6 cookie doughs
6 boxes cheese nips crackers
4 six packs coca cola
1 real vanilla extract
4 progresso soups
2 frozen meals for lunches
Saved 95%
I spent $4.62 and got a coupon for $4 off my next order. That was fun!
I've been shopping at Costco more lately because we have been eating a lot more fruits and veggies and I like their fruits and veggies, but this reminded me to get back to work saving.
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Why Does Community Radio Matter?
Left to my own devices and patterns, I would listen to rock music more than anything else so when I first began to get involved with KSKQ community radio I couldn't have foreseen what community radio would grow to mean to me. Originally I think I had this notion that it would be mostly talk radio. I have since learned that it is so much more.
One of the most powerful by-products of Ashland's own community radio station has been an ongoing ability to reach out and connect with disenfranchised people. I think of the hours spent with a local homeless man, capturing some of his stories shortly before he died on the streets. My mind jumps to one of our longest running shows, First Nation Radio, which is produced by local Native American friends. In the morning news hour, you can often hear snippets of Prisoner Radio. There are young voices and elderly voices and everything in between. Music choices jump all around the globe, world music (From Dakar to Durban), Reggae, Jazz, Latin Music, Electronica and even a nod to the 1980's. Those are just a few examples of many that explore the myriad of voices we are listening to.
All of this creates a richness of exposure to new ideas and to new music, one that we would never be able to achieve individually, but when we work together and add our own passions and experiences to community radio we build a collective wealth. We learn from one another and leave with new ideas. Powerful stuff!
As KSKQ/KORV continues to grow and as we move toward full power (August 2010), we hope to continue to be a bridge for the Ashland Community at large. We invite you to join us in our quest to be heard. We're listening, are you? Visit kskq.org or call 482-3999 to add your voice to this evolving organization.
Left to my own devices and patterns, I would listen to rock music more than anything else so when I first began to get involved with KSKQ community radio I couldn't have foreseen what community radio would grow to mean to me. Originally I think I had this notion that it would be mostly talk radio. I have since learned that it is so much more.
One of the most powerful by-products of Ashland's own community radio station has been an ongoing ability to reach out and connect with disenfranchised people. I think of the hours spent with a local homeless man, capturing some of his stories shortly before he died on the streets. My mind jumps to one of our longest running shows, First Nation Radio, which is produced by local Native American friends. In the morning news hour, you can often hear snippets of Prisoner Radio. There are young voices and elderly voices and everything in between. Music choices jump all around the globe, world music (From Dakar to Durban), Reggae, Jazz, Latin Music, Electronica and even a nod to the 1980's. Those are just a few examples of many that explore the myriad of voices we are listening to.
All of this creates a richness of exposure to new ideas and to new music, one that we would never be able to achieve individually, but when we work together and add our own passions and experiences to community radio we build a collective wealth. We learn from one another and leave with new ideas. Powerful stuff!
As KSKQ/KORV continues to grow and as we move toward full power (August 2010), we hope to continue to be a bridge for the Ashland Community at large. We invite you to join us in our quest to be heard. We're listening, are you? Visit kskq.org or call 482-3999 to add your voice to this evolving organization.
Thursday, February 04, 2010
Holding Myself Accountable
This week I restarted an exercise regimen that helped me lose quite a bit of weight last year. I would like to add "and kept it off", but it seems that even when I am serious about something I still manage to backtrack. So, I have to start again. I remember that a couple of weeks into it last year I actually started walking around saying things like "I LIKE exercise". I am not really convinced that this could happen twice in one lifetime, because left to my own devices I would spend 99% of my time in a chair reading or sitting at the computer surfing and writing. Exercise is not on my list of "fun things to do with my time". And do you know what else? At 40 everything is harder! My metabolism didn't just slow down, she kicked back on the couch with a cold drink and an Oreo.
I've been doing one of the Biggest Loser workouts (Cardio Max) for a half hour each day. I woke up muscles that have been stagnant and my aerobics instructor Gracie (age 4) yelled at me because I "didn't use the new DVD you got for Christmas!" I figured I would start with the familiar and work my way into the Boot Camp one, but she was not exactly supportive of that idea. And nobody in this household is sympathetic to my complaints that my legs hurt! You think they could give me a empathetic look or something, but they all seem to think I need a little cheese to go with my whine.
What do you do that helps keep you on track, exercise-wise?
This week I restarted an exercise regimen that helped me lose quite a bit of weight last year. I would like to add "and kept it off", but it seems that even when I am serious about something I still manage to backtrack. So, I have to start again. I remember that a couple of weeks into it last year I actually started walking around saying things like "I LIKE exercise". I am not really convinced that this could happen twice in one lifetime, because left to my own devices I would spend 99% of my time in a chair reading or sitting at the computer surfing and writing. Exercise is not on my list of "fun things to do with my time". And do you know what else? At 40 everything is harder! My metabolism didn't just slow down, she kicked back on the couch with a cold drink and an Oreo.
I've been doing one of the Biggest Loser workouts (Cardio Max) for a half hour each day. I woke up muscles that have been stagnant and my aerobics instructor Gracie (age 4) yelled at me because I "didn't use the new DVD you got for Christmas!" I figured I would start with the familiar and work my way into the Boot Camp one, but she was not exactly supportive of that idea. And nobody in this household is sympathetic to my complaints that my legs hurt! You think they could give me a empathetic look or something, but they all seem to think I need a little cheese to go with my whine.
What do you do that helps keep you on track, exercise-wise?
Sunday, January 31, 2010
It turns out that I am a bit of a doormat.
It took most of the last eighteen months to learn this about myself. Actually I am also married to a doormat, for it was his actions that led us on this passage of self and marital discovery. The tale involves an acquaintance who left the country suddenly and with her departure came the phone call announcing that her cat was left behind in her apartment about fifteen miles away and since we couldn't exactly be the type of people who can leave a cat trapped in an apartment, we wound up rescuing the cat and moving him into our apartment. It was supposed to have been a temporary arrangement, maybe a month or so and then the cat's owner promised she would come back for him. The first red flag should have been the cats name, "Probation", although he also answered to "Bugger".
I never met a cat I didn't like and he was no exception. His soft orange fur and beefy face quickly won me over. Our other two cats hated him on sight, but I knew they would adapt. I found that it was hard to yell "Probation" out my front door and even more impossible to call "Bugger", so I took to calling him a gentler sounding "orange cat" and he promptly learned my clicking call. I tried to insist that he would be an indoor cat and to his credit he did try to humor me for a little while, but it became apparent that he liked to roam. As soon as one of us opened up the door we would see an orange blur and he would race out into the parking lot. I could see that he had a healthy respect for cars, so I resigned myself to becoming his door woman.
When he was still a new visitor, he discovered the school bus stop and would plant himself nearby so that when the school bus arrived he would be right there to walk our middle daughter home from the corner. He was partial to chasing leaves and had an extremely playful nature. In the evenings he would come inside and liked to hang out next to me while I watched TV. When he grew tired of being indoors he would saunter up to the front door and throw his body against the doorknob until one of us would let him back outside.
We settled into our routines. A month passed and there was no word on his departure. A couple months in, we asked his owner to contribute to his upkeep and she did, still reassuring us that he would not be here forever.
In the meantime we were doing this crazy cat shuffle. Since our family pets did not get along with him, we could not leave any of them alone together. This challenge was exacerbated by the size of our living space (a small two bedroom apartment) which meant that Probie had to be in one room with the door closed while the other two had roam of the rest of the place, or our two cats had to be locked up while Probie explored the rest of the apartment. This was all made more complicated when it became obvious that all three cats wished they could follow me around. Whomever was locked up was often loudly miserable.
At some point my orange friend had his first run in with a neighbor cat. More months passed and a couple more big cat fights followed. Our neighbors announced that they were going to get a live trap and if Probie entered their property they would trap him and take him to the animal shelter. We pushed his owner for a solution and stepped up our cat security. This became something of a new game for him. If he saw one of us reach for a jacket or keys he would race to the door and wait. One of us had to hold him while the rest of us ran out and the last one out had to be ever vigilant of tricking him and keeping him inside. A few times we missed and he won some temporary freedom, but we got him back inside before anything happened to him. If anyone knocked at the door he would sneak behind the curtain and wait to try to make his escape. Keeping him in became a stressful job and we wondered how long we could keep at it.
Finally almost a year and a half after he moved in, we got word that there was another place for him. Arranged by a friend of his owner, we were told that the place was out in the country and sounded like it would be a good fit for him, so we drove him there last week. It looked okay and it seems he will have the run of a huge piece of land, but his days of sleeping inside just ended. He will be a barn cat now. I hear his owner is still promising she will soon return.
In the meantime I find myself still watching the corner when the school bus reaches the corner and I sigh when I realize he won't be racing home.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
For Greg
At four am or the "hour of ghosts" I feel
a warm hand on my shoulder and I am twenty years back
in Sacramento in his dented yellow car.
We are both young again.
I smell tobacco even through my cold ridden nose
and though he wasn't a smoker until after I knew him well
this is one of the ways I know he is in my room now.
He has regrets.
The zip of the years passed us both
and left this gentle man
a corpse in a doorway on a cold October evening.
Homeless in the end.
I remember his rich, deep voice
and his passion for words and ideas
although I have lost our conversations over the years.
My sweet friend.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Eat it or Wear it!
It was not my finest moment as a parent, but all in all my actions and reactions on one evening about ten years ago can still shake one of my younger children (who were not even born at that time) into better listeners. In my minds eye I see us all back then. Two weary parents and one strong willed five year old who refused to eat a single bite of chicken noodle soup, never mind that it was something she had eaten dozens of times before, liked and she should have been hungry enough to want. In my own defense I had to have been tired, dealing with wacked out pregnancy hormones and after begging, cajoling, arranging deals that most other children would have jumped on, ("Just eat five bites of soup and we will call this over."), but it was all met with crossed arms and a defiant stare. We were losing her and I guess I must have imagined the soup as the proverbial line in the sand. I must have worried that if I allowed her to leave the table, I would be setting myself up for years of disobedience.
So after about an hour and a half of all of us sitting around what was now cold soup, I uttered five words that has become the stuff that family legends are made of.
"Eat it or wear it!"
I am certain that she thought my threat was hollow, but there is one thing she has since learned about me. It takes an awful lot to make me mad but once I have invested all of the energy it takes to get me there, I follow through!
The soup was dumped over her head.
Within minutes she was cleaned up and I apologized. Life went on. She and I both learned a few things about discipline and listening and most of all communication. I suspect that we are better off for it, but if I could reach back in time and change my actions, I would. I didn't need to dump the soup to make my point. When I think back about all of this I can see that my bullish behavior only taught her that bigger and stronger people always get what they want. All because I insisted that she eat something that she did not want. How absurd!
As I got older, I learned to pick my battles. She (and her sisters) might appear to get away with things on occasion, but only because I know that I am far more of an effective teacher when I am not nitpicking every little thing they do. And when I start to forget that I think about the soup.
Isn't disciplining our kids right up at the top of the list as one of the hardest jobs we face on a daily basis? The parenting books all cover it, but what they all fail to tell you is that it is always evolving as our families grow and change. Consistency is key, but so is balance and it is okay to make mistakes along the way, especially if we own up to them.
We teach our kids, but they are all here to teach us something back too. Sometimes those lessons include forgiving and accepting our own shortcomings.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
When I was twelve years old I lived in fear that someone would ask me what my favorite Ted Nugent song was. It's funny now, but back then I spent so much time worrying about what other people were thinking and what they might do that I missed about half of my childhood.
At the time my only concert shirt was a hand me down from one of my sisters. It was black and by the time I took such a great liking to it, the shirt was beginning to fray at the edges. There was an expanding hole under one armpit. My parents loathed it which must account for why I was so drawn to it. Of course if you opened up my closet door now and inspected my wardrobe you would see that I still have a great affinity for black concert shirts and if you examined even further you would notice that I have many that sport holes of various sizes, some many decades old and the best are so soft and thin that it is a stretch of the imagination to call them shirts. A few of them I keep in the back of the closet knowing that I can't even wear them anymore, but I can't get rid of them either. My husband likes to tell me that when I drop off food at the food bank, they often must think I am a client. I stopped caring about what other people thought decades ago, so I can see the humor in that, but at twelve I spent hours thinking about how I could evade any conversation that began with, "So, what is YOUR favorite Nugent song?" This was 1981, decades before the Internet as we all know it, before You tube and MTV, even Friday Night videos were a few years away and the closest Tower Records was miles away from my neighborhood, so it wasn't like I stood much a chance to memorize the names of Ted Nugents songs anyway. Looking back on it now, I can see that I was way too hard on myself back then.
Seventh grade is what we send people to in order to prepare them to enter the military and go off to war. It was lumpy meanness and blight. Even the few kids who were basically nice human beings were a little off back then and the rest of us turned into bullies in order to distract everyone else from turning on us. It is an ugly truth. We couldn't comprehend that we still had the land mines of puberty and the unsettling adventures of first love. Twelve year olds live in the moment, which I am sure is mostly a good thing or it would all have been worse.
All of this has been weighing heavily on my mind because my middle daughter just turned ten this month and I am already anxious about what seventh grade will do to her. Out of my three daughters, she is most like me. My little towheaded, blue eyed girl who escapes into her drawings. I watch her excel in the arts while struggling with math and numbers and I see how she already keeps a long mental list of things that she can lie awake at night worrying about. Apparently she also inherited my tendency towards nervousness and anxiety. I wish I could have spared her that too.
I have to remind myself that the flip side of my own personal neurosis is that throughout all of it, I do mostly maintain cheerfulness. It is something I cultivate and draw from on an ongoing basis, always have, even back in those dark middle school years when I worried myself to death. I always kept a handful of optimism and she will too.
And just in case, I will always be there to listen. I may even share a shirt.
At the time my only concert shirt was a hand me down from one of my sisters. It was black and by the time I took such a great liking to it, the shirt was beginning to fray at the edges. There was an expanding hole under one armpit. My parents loathed it which must account for why I was so drawn to it. Of course if you opened up my closet door now and inspected my wardrobe you would see that I still have a great affinity for black concert shirts and if you examined even further you would notice that I have many that sport holes of various sizes, some many decades old and the best are so soft and thin that it is a stretch of the imagination to call them shirts. A few of them I keep in the back of the closet knowing that I can't even wear them anymore, but I can't get rid of them either. My husband likes to tell me that when I drop off food at the food bank, they often must think I am a client. I stopped caring about what other people thought decades ago, so I can see the humor in that, but at twelve I spent hours thinking about how I could evade any conversation that began with, "So, what is YOUR favorite Nugent song?" This was 1981, decades before the Internet as we all know it, before You tube and MTV, even Friday Night videos were a few years away and the closest Tower Records was miles away from my neighborhood, so it wasn't like I stood much a chance to memorize the names of Ted Nugents songs anyway. Looking back on it now, I can see that I was way too hard on myself back then.
Seventh grade is what we send people to in order to prepare them to enter the military and go off to war. It was lumpy meanness and blight. Even the few kids who were basically nice human beings were a little off back then and the rest of us turned into bullies in order to distract everyone else from turning on us. It is an ugly truth. We couldn't comprehend that we still had the land mines of puberty and the unsettling adventures of first love. Twelve year olds live in the moment, which I am sure is mostly a good thing or it would all have been worse.
All of this has been weighing heavily on my mind because my middle daughter just turned ten this month and I am already anxious about what seventh grade will do to her. Out of my three daughters, she is most like me. My little towheaded, blue eyed girl who escapes into her drawings. I watch her excel in the arts while struggling with math and numbers and I see how she already keeps a long mental list of things that she can lie awake at night worrying about. Apparently she also inherited my tendency towards nervousness and anxiety. I wish I could have spared her that too.
I have to remind myself that the flip side of my own personal neurosis is that throughout all of it, I do mostly maintain cheerfulness. It is something I cultivate and draw from on an ongoing basis, always have, even back in those dark middle school years when I worried myself to death. I always kept a handful of optimism and she will too.
And just in case, I will always be there to listen. I may even share a shirt.
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