State of Grace

Pretty Little Missile Silo

Behold our propane house, made of recycled gates and fences. Last October I planted delphiniums, coral bells and catmint in the little patches of dirt I piled up with compost on either side of the gate. The patches were reinforced with  borders of large and small river rock I picked up around our property. I took pieces of Arizona flagstone remnants from our patio for the entrance. This little project turned out charmingly well, if I can say so myself. It also looks inviting - come on in! But, I've not done anything inside the propane house because there's a big-ass tank in there that's shaped like a military missile, and anything that looks like that, I will not touch.

But, I will adorn our little missile silo with flowers, sort of like what the hippies did at protests, popping daisies into the mouths of the National Guardsmen guns. Much to my disappointment at the time, I was too young to be a fully credentialed hippie. Instead, we were wannabe flower children in the early 70s, with beads draped around our necks and flowing hippie skirts not in the Haight Ashbury, but in a tract home development in the suburbs.

In other news, and this is very important news, one of the dearest people I know is in a tough spot. It's a spot I have been in when I was that little hippie chick in the suburbs, a stark contrast to that sweet peace and love of my youth. It's the body, heart and soul killing experience of domestic violence. I can't write about it completely on my blog as today I'm feeling overwhelmed. The subject turns me into a fire-breathing monster, angrier than Jesse Ventura on the subject of Dick Cheney (and that's pretty angry). It also triggers very difficult memories of this childhood trauma, and though I'm much better at managing the anxiety and panic that shakes me when facing those memories head-on, it still knocks me out for a day. Today was that day.

Instead, I will let my wonderful fierce mama friend Squid explain it all to you. Please follow the link below to our fundraising campaign in support of Gwendomama, who recently survived an assault by her ex-partner and was re-victimized yesterday in the court.  It's a nightmare and we should try to help her.

Gwendomama Fund:  Make a Real Difference to a Real Person

Thank you so much.

Your Testosterone Moment for Tuesday

Enough with all this talk about balance, yin/yang and aging! Pah! Let's have some Major Dude Action from Barats and Bereta, the very funny dudes who brought you the Mother's Day video I published two posts back.  Have some MAN-TAGE people!

You're welcome!

May 11, 2009

Cute Lil' Teacup Lights
Originally uploaded by GraceD

Life is at a precarious balance these days, dollins.  Consider my last post, which went yin and yang all over the place - Hey! Look at these funny guys in the video! And, hey! My kid and her boyfriend who went to the ER and passed a kidney stone under heavy drugs took me to lunch! Then, wow, I have a sibling who's an asshole and my mom is not doing so great in the memory department. And, does anyone know how to get your fuzzy minded mom to the doctor's for some Aricept?

I really do need help in approaching my mother with this tough information. She doesn't believe she may be in trouble and it insults her when we hint at it. Perhaps it's just another little tempest in a teapot and maybe not.

In the meantime, here's a little gift for you dollins - teacup lights I found in a hipster store in downtown Santa Cruz. They were $35 each and I'm sure one can make them in an hour. But, for the purposes of this post, they're meant to sweeten and maybe balance things out around here.

Namaste, good people.

If I had sons, they'd totally be like these guys.

Happy Mother's Day, ya muddas! As I write this, I hope you're enjoying your Mickey Mouse pancake breakfast or dining out at Denny's, a Grand Slam brunch from the kids who saved their allowance for two months. Or, if your kids are older, and they have a job like my Molly's, they damn well be taking you out to the nearest themed seafood restaurant, as my daughter and her boyfriend Jordy did on Friday afternoon.

Here's a picture of Jordy and Molly being mauled by a giant sea otter on Cannery Row, Monterey.  We had just finished consuming shrimp entrees at Bubba Gump's down the street. Molly and I have a long history of dining at Bubba Gumps, and it was therefore a sweet, comfortable and familiar setting for her to celebrate, well, me.  Jordy was kind enough to want to celebrate me, too.  This was truly a heroic gesture as he had just passed a kidney stone 6 hours earlier.  Our poor Jordy woke up with massive, massive back pain, alleviated with massive, massive doses of narcotics administered in the ER at 5am. The ER docs introduced the different narcotics with a preface that revealed how well they knew their Santa Cruz young dude population  - "Whoa, you thought the last drug was gnarly? Well, you're gonna love this next one!".  Another doc showed up, took up Jordy's hand and reassured him, "Brother, I know what you're going through. I passed a kidney stone, too." 

Molly is not with me this morning.  She was doing some underage drinking at her stepsister Jenn's bachelorette party in Southern California.  I dropped Molly off at the airport for the short hop down to Burbank yesterday, then drove up to my Mom's house in the northern far reaches of the San Francisco Bay Area.  My Mom, despite some short term memory loss and still grieving my father's death, is doing pretty well, looks a great deal younger than her 76 years and was snappily dressed in a cute tie dye top that coordinated with her turquoise slacks and matching sandals. Her well being was in sharp contrast to the doomsday portrait one of our siblings painted of our Mom, and the art references are intentional, the sibling being an artist and a temperamental one, at that.  Arty sibling and my Mother have been at war since my Dad died.  I know that this sort of business can be part of the fallout of a family death, but things are going a bit too far, with arty sibling sending group emails to the rest of us, claiming that Mom needs to be institutionalized and we should do something about it.  This is hardly the case, and if anyone's crazy, the fingers point back to arty sibling. Life's too short for this.

(Ha! Blogged the family drama! But, really, what are these damn mommyblogs for, anyway? I'm just doing my part.)

Otherwise, I carry on with my blissfully boring life.  I enjoy the boredom tremendously, my simple life of tomato gardening, resting my hip (doing a lot better, people!), waiting for my Hubs to come home from business trips, the Cialis moments thereafter, shopping at Ikea for my new office/craft-sewing room/War Room, and the usual Jack Russell Terrier wrangling.  Our extended family of six beautiful kids, the next generation of four even-more-beautiful grandkids, thrive like the big showy delphiniums blooming in our yard.  And, our beloved home of Santa Cruz, California has never been more glorious and peaceful. 

(The only thing I can ask for is that my Mom gets evaluated for her short term memory loss and if any one of you dollins has convinced their aging parent to go to the doctor for their fading memories, please, please, please, tell me how you did that.)

As to the title of this post, I present to you this Mother's Day the answer to a question I ask myself now and again, "What if I had a boy? What would that have been like?"  I know that there are two guys are involved in this brilliant YouTube video, but I'm damn certain my male offspring would be a composite of both of these endearing dorks: