Monthly Archives:July 2007

this purging of house and soul – seemingly blessed by daughters 1 and 2 – can you imagine the trails I keep going down? My pastor calls it going down rabbit trails when he does it.

Not sure where I will end up – or who will still be along for the ride when I get to THE END – whenever and wherever that might be.

Bud – I do have an edit to yesterday’s post. I continued with g-searches and hit upon obituaries and sure enough, I found the person who was murdered when I was a child. It turns out that I was a bit older than I remember – 10 years old – I had thought I must have been closer to five or six at the time.

And, there was an arrest made, but I have been unable to find out whether or not the person was convicted and sentenced, or if the crime still goes unanswered. That, is sad.

But, you know – if one person (I am that person) remembers him, then I guess his loss is not for naught. Right? Right!

And, no answer from my query to either reporter – either regarding the murder – or finding the girl I treated badly.

And, that’s an interesting thing, too. I was thinking of it this morning. Whenever I refer to her – either in print or in my mind or out loud – it is to say she is/was a young girl. I had to have been the same age – or a year different – than she. Why don’t I think of myself as a young girl? What makes me believe that I sh/could have treated her differently – as an adult would?

Is it because I am looking back with an adult’s eyes?

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And, interesting, too, the things that come out of those closets when you get to digging into them. Begs the question – just how far does any one person really want to go? When does one quit – when it becomes too hard – when the other person(s) demads it quit?

I’m thinking that comes when it becomes too hard – to take it any more – too hard to think about things – too hard to handle consequences for airing out that closet – too hard with no hard hat to protect you. That might be when it is time to quit.

I self edit – always have. I generally stop short of hurting the someones who might read what I write = whether here or in print. I only pull the bandaid partway off. When it hurts I quickly pat it back down and pretend THAT didn’t happen.

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Somehow . . . I doubt I’m the only one who does that or who feels that way.

>..<

So – I mentioned that I have been shredding – and writing – and the like. They are oddly connected.

Wait, let me back up a bit. The person who left the position I currently hold at work – gave a bit of a speech at our last staff gathering before she left our employ. During her 15 or so minutes she went around the room and said something about or to just about everyone there.

When it was my turn she looked me full in the eye and said stop talking about the d*****d book and WRITE it!

Ahhh – a challenge you see. And, all of my insecurites came out and the excuses (I don’t have the time – I can’t write about THAT stuff . . . ) You’ve heard them all – or you’ve said them yourself – if you are someone like I am – a very busy person with a book inside that is just waiting to be loosed. (whether it be loosed onto the mass public or just loosed from its prison within me remains to be seen).

And, so the other day I began writing – free association type writing – writing about the houses I lived in as a child – and writing about the family and such things as I did in those houses – or around them.

Twice now I have been stopped – well, three times if you count the stupid power outage – but twice by the thoughts of someone(s) that cannot be quieted. I need to (for whatever reason) find out whatever happened to this or that person.

g-search engine to the rescue . . . I mean if you can’t g-search it, and find it, it’s not there to be found. Right? Right.

On the first person, I have come across NOTHING – I only have sketchy details and a child’s morbid curiosity. You see, the very first funeral home I ever remember going to was to see the body (pay respects) of a man who worked for the owner of a bar my dad frequented (and to whom my dad owed a king’s ransom of a tab). The man had been taking a large sum of money to the bank to deposit. Well, I say large – I have no clue how much was in the bag.

He didn’t make it.

He was shot gang style – shirt over his head – body face down – by the river – shot in the back of the head (or the back of the back?) and left to be found.

I later attended high school with that man’s niece. I haven’t been able to find her, either. I can find nothing through g-search about whether or not that man’s murderer(s) was/were ever found and brought to justice.

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More free association today as hubby moose and I shared lunch and I talked with him about some of the little things I had remembered about my childhood . . .

and I remembered a little girl who I used to treat terribly. I was only a little girl myself  – and if I wanted to psychoanalyze myself I would tell myself it happened because I was so unhappy because of my family situation – blah, blah, blah.

Fact is – I still remember terrorizing that little girl – and I remember that even as I did it I felt terrible about doing it – and I remember her NAME so well, that when I did a g-search on IT tonight, I found an article about her written RECENTLY in my old hometown newspaper. It was a story about long ago proms and she and her hubby apparently sent in their photo and it was used in the story. They have been married 37 years – just one year less than hubby moose and I have been married!

I’ve sent an email to the news reporter who wrote the story – telling him even that I had mistreated her as a child and wanted to contact her to make amends. I asked him to forward my email to her with a request that she contact me – and if she refuses, would he please let me know that door had been closed?

And, now as I write these words I am wondering at this urgent need I seem to have right now to tie up loose ends – this cleansing of house and soul.

But I also know that sometimes it is just something that needs to be done – and there is really no reason why – it just IS – it just needs to BE – and I find that I can be content with that.

there you go, Lessa – some skeletons let out of the closet.

So – here’s your riddle for the day :

What costs $10 – takes over two hours and several inventive curse words and stripped out screws to install????

window blinds for our bedroom.

How lame am I? We have lived in this house for nearly thirty years – we put blinds up in the girls’ rooms (that would be the Ladybug and Lessa) so that they would sleep at night – even during the infamous midnight sun for which Alaska is known.

But in OUR room? We have made do with a pair of (not nearly dark enough) drapes and a blanket tacked over the window. We got used to it – just closed our eyes and went to sleep.

Yesterday, however, I got into a bit of a cleaning mood – swept up (years worth of) dust from the headboard, took down the drapes to wash – then took down the blanket so I could wash the window.

Got a burr under my saddle so to speak and when hubby moose came home (after a 5 day working stint) and said he wanted to pick up a grandkiddo, go get some dinner, and do the weekly shopping . . . well, I just added window blinds to the list (after measuring, of course).

The local box store (no not THAT one – we don’t have wally’s here in our area – closest is anchortown) did not have the right size – so we decided to go to Mother Fury’s favorite store – Home Depot (or as the sign read for nearly three weeks when the store was first going up Ho  Depot – hey, we live in Alaska – we make our own fun!)

ahem – where was I – oh, yes – we went to the HD store – and found two full aisles of window treatment – mostly all in the correct size, even!

We picked through and talked about wood – bamboo – hey, VINYL! – because the vinyl was only $10! We don’t need top of the line or anything – just something to help keep the sun out of our tender little moosie eyes in the late evening and early morning.

Brought them home – hubby moose decides he is going to install them (although I had quite capably installed the much more expensive blinds in the girls’ rooms lo these 20+ years ago), so I wisely stepped aside as he gathered up the tools he felt he needed and the step stool and such.

As you can imagine, the instructions for $10 blinds are not all that great (example: install so that the blind goes passed . . . ARGH! my English speaking mind grappled and decided that of course the word should have been PAST) oy!

But we got the general idea – and hubby moose set to work – cursing and wishing that his left handed buddy could be here (he lives in Ohio) because the right side bracket would be much easier to install if only he had been left handed himself.

Several inventive curse words later, he decides that it is looking just right and just in time as the blankety blank screws were beginning to have their little phillips heads stripped out. I looked up and gently (I swear!) asked him how he was going to get the blind into the bracket – he looked and swore some more because, of course, he had installed it sideways and there was no way . . . .

Three more tools came out trying to get the screws out – because by now the heads were totally stripped – the final tool? Yup – the leatherman! When all else fails, ask an Alaskan for her leatherman. (yes, I said her . . . what? you don’t own a leatherman? silly wimmin!)

Huffety Puffety goes hubby moose as he goes back into his cave (aka the garage) to find “better” screws not those measley . . . mumble . . . curse . . . blankety blank cheap screws (that had come with the aforementioned $10 blinds!)

Back he came and got the bracket installed in the proper position – then the second bracket – and we decided to skip the center bracket because it WAS NOT BIG ENOUGH to hold the blind and, after all, it’s a narrow window and we won’t be yanking on the blinds that often anyway . . . and he left quickly to replace all of the tools and to cool himself down to a more Alaskan shade of purply hubbymoose.

:s

Do they work? Well, they work as well as blinds can work – but we are having cloudy days right now – when the sun goes down and shines in, I’ll let you know. Heh.

Good thing we learned all those years ago to just close our eyes and let the sleep come in as it will. 8)

Hope you all have a great week – hubby moose is home for a few days and then he goes back for another 4 day stint away from home. He’ll only be just across the river (THE River, of course – Kenai River) from home, but he will be in charge of several teenagers and unable to leave them alone so I will have another several days to myself (insert quietly shouted YAY here – heh) thinking up new moosiedo lists.

:moose:

Okay – I don’t forward (generally, I don’t forward) emails – but sometimes, I just gotta share one:

A woman was sitting at a bar enjoying an after work cocktail with her girlfriends when an exceptionally tall, handsome, extremely sexy, middle-aged man entered. He was so striking that the woman could not take her eyes off him.
 
The young-at-heart man noticed her overly attentive stare and walked directly toward her. (As men will.)

Before she could offer her apologies for staring so rudely, he leaned over and whispered to her, “I’ll do anything, absolutely anything, that you want me to do, no matter how kinky, for $20.00……on one condition.”

Flabbergasted, the woman asked what the condition was.

The man replied, “You have to tell me what you want me to do in just three words.”

The woman considered his proposition for a moment, and then slowly removed a $20 bill from her purse, which she pressed into the man’s hand along with her address. She looked deeply into his eyes, and slowly and meaningfully said………
 
“Clean my house.”

and all of us echoed her words – amen, sistah!!!