Woah, Time Warp...

It's been about 7 years since I put anything on this blog. It's how the Dad for whom I'm now the 24/7/365 care-giver used to keep up, somewhat, with my life. Now, he wishes I was living anywhere but here, sometimes. Or, at least, had taken him up on that travel-trailer parked in the side yard so we both would have some privacy. But that is verboten per the geriatric Doctor, who says it would be considered neglect if someone wasn't living with him. 

Sigh.

And my Bearded Dragon is on Walkabout, an Aussie thing. Meaning, she, George, absconded when I took a couple seconds too long to turn around and see where she went, about a month ago Thursday. I think she was making room for the 2 Siberian Huskies I have accepted into our small cabin near Lake James, NC. It's where some of "The Last of the Mohicans" was filmed, roads dug up and residents mad that they had to drive 20 minutes out of their way around the lake to get home from work. Anyway, back to George. I've been on some Bearded Dragon boards and am somewhat hopeful that I may see her again, since it's in the middle of the summer and there's plenty of food and places to skedaddle to if a predator is around. Like the 6 cats and 3 dogs. Well, 2 of them never go off leash. The new pets. Dexter and Mina.

Dexter is the darker dog. Mina is the reddish-brown Husky. She's a bit fat and lazy, like me. Dexter is higher strung and too skinny, like my Irish twin. Heh.

OK, that's enough for tonight. 

Peace, 

a

What day is it again?*

I've been saying that a lot lately. Since the last weekend of April, I've been out of town or had obligations of some sort or had a guest every weekend. Me very, very tired.

And we won't talk about the state of my apartment or the fact that I neglected my new pet George for the first month we cohabited. He's a juvenile bearded dragon lizard and should have been handled every day. Alas, now he just scrambles away as fast as his little legs will run and then bristles and hisses his displeasure, when he's not actively trying to bite me.**

I'm not sure what this blog will turn into, but I've been thinking about doing a SciFi/Fantasy book review once a month, since I am a scifi geekstress. Mwahahahahha....

OK, I'm officially too tired to blog coherently, so I'm signing off. With a scifi poem from a couple years ago, written for Robert Lee Brewer's Poetic Asides Wednesday prompt series. I think it's from March 2013.

Let's Fly To The Moon

Let's take a trip among the stars.
Sleep through space and time.
Embrace the death we leave behind on Earth
while we breathe deep the gas
that gives us long life
and dislocated stars.

* This was written last Friday but not posted then because my laptop ran out of juice. 'Cuz I lost my power cord and had to buy a new, and very expensive!, cord from the Mother Ship, aka the nearest Apple store.

** I will eventually post pics of George, once I excise 70 G of photos off my laptop and have HD space available for backing up my phone again.

Hi again, in the same week, sorta!

View of the Nice Bridge spanning the Potomac River

One of these days, I will be a computer geekstress to match my other geekiness factors. Right now, I do a dang good Yosemite Sam impersonation. Frequently. I'll leave it at that.

I must now go contact a computer guru to help me with the old, but still working, Mac. I have issues. As in, the issues are user error issues not laptop issues. Well, that's a sorta, kinda maybe true statement.

Er, Hi?

This is the knee which has been swelling on and off for almost a year now.

Yes, the edge of my sleep shirt says:  Sleeps with dogs.

I think it covers all the possibilities, if I ever think about lying down with two or four-footed animals again. Hmm, it's gonna be awhile, folks.

See previous posts on sucking at this whole blogging thing.

Sigh.

Well, a lot has happened since I last logged on here.

Since April of 2014, I have been separated from the SO who was less than supportive of my creative process, both the photography and the writing.

I survived another winter with SADS. Barely. There were some weekends where the only time I left the bed was to pee, eat or plug my phone in. Sometimes I only ate once a day.

I read a lot of crap on my Kindle, my Nook for iPhone. Total escapism reading. Will not be divulging the utter crap titles.

I impersonated an ostrich a lot, with my head in the proverbial sand, not thinking about the upcoming divorce.

Cried only a bit.

Lost custody of the spotted dog.

Running/exercised occasionally. Knee swelled a lot. Finally got an Rx for physical therapy. PT does not think it's a meniscus tear. Just the tracking of my patella.  Lots of strengthening exercises later, my patella still is too wonky medially & laterally. But it's better. And I have an ex-triathelete's brain to pick about getting my running gait less like Grover's (he taught me everything he knew, which is why I ended up in PT ;)

Gotta get to Freddy to talk to my phone carrier about running out of data prematurely.  And kill some Zombies so I'll be prepared for the Zombie Apocalypse.

Hopefully, I'll be back before 2016, Zombies notwithstanding.

Oh, I almost forgot!  I had a poem published in the 2015 edition of The Gunpowder Review. I'm actually attending the reading in Bel Air, MD on June 14 at the Barnes & Noble there. Starts at 2, if anyone is interested. Here's the Lulu link:

http://www.lulu.com/shop/vonnie-winslow-crist/the-gunpowder-review-2015/paperback/product-22119908.html

What's in a Name?

I'm a waffler.

Almost 50/50 split between right and left brain.

It's damn difficult for me to make a decision, YEARS in some instances. But once I do, I usually do not look back. (Just ask exes who aren't in my life anymore. : )

I've ruminated upon this idea for a couple of years. Actually, since the first time my SO pitched a hissy-fit when a slightly risque poem was published in a regional mag -- "My 'clients' might read that and get the wrong idea? This is a small town. I have to be careful..."*

Still haven't laid that particular argument to rest. So, when I get published, what name goes on the by-line? My maiden name? My initials and my married last name? Or under A.N. Ymouse? (yeah, that was bad. I suck at puns.)

So, Universe, I ask, What is in a name?

* I slightly fudged the semantics there for obfuscation of said SO's profession

Her last walk*

Her name was Scully. Yes, she was named after Dana Scully from The X-Files. I am a terminal geek. She had inoperable cancer and had to be euthanized summer before last. Less than two months later my Mom died, also of inoperable cancer. That summer sucked.

So did last summer, when my 11-year-old GSP** got sick with some undetermined bug that all but shut down his kidneys. There is nothing like giving an uncooperative dog 2 ounces of water every 15 minutes to appreciate his emptying a 20 ounce water bowl at one long drinking session. Oh, did I mention the IV saline we had to rig up for his dangerously dehydrated spotted butt?

That was July, halfway between the anniversaries of Scully and my Mom's deaths. I disappeared for about four months and only started coming out of my depression when I weaned myself off of anti-depressants, ironically enough. And started exercising again. And writing my morning brain-drain pages while basking in front of a blue light for 20 minutes in the morning. It wasn't just one thing, it was a combination of activities which propelled me toward healthier thoughts.

I will always fight SADS (expletive Seasonal Affective Disorder Syndrome). It affects me in summer (expletive heat) and winter (expletive lack of usable wavelength sunlight). But I must remind myself that it's better when I write, when I play with images, and when I move my lazy @ss.

Let's hope I continue to post here on a semi-weekly basis. Yes, I have another RLB*** challenge, and blogging is one of those things I should do...

* Scully was 14.3 years old.
** German Shorthair Pointer, AKA spotted dog.
*** Robert Lee Brewer, poet, editor (Writer's Market, etc)

Suckage

Yes, I know, I still suck at this whole blog thing.

Well, I had a good weekend, even if my SO was home stuck with the dog because his niece backed out of dog-sitting at the last minute.  Never trust a teenager. 

I still am about a week behind in my online Literature of Science Fiction class.  I put off reading "Frankenstein" that first week of class and have yet to catch up.  I have a solid A average, but prolly will never take an online lit class again. I like the actual class atmosphere.  And reacting to class discussion as opposed to reading a boat-load of responses on the computer.

I get to write my final on "Farscape," which tickles the crap outta me.  Gotta find that fan-book to see if I can get any useful quotes to use in my final.

Who-hoo!  I actually posted on my blog.

And I'm not doing Camp NANO this year. Too effin busy.

Post-Mortum

This is the weekend I meet my 2 sisters in NC and we head to my Mom's small hometown to spread her ashes around her headstone. We are planting daffodils I have yet to dig out of my back yard. And I bought some Iris bulbs to plant. Guess we'll have to plant them close to her headstone so they don't get mowed over by the groundskeepers.

My older sister feels like this should just be us girls, since the memorial service brought friends and family together to remember her life. I'm of two minds. I feel that we should warn my Mom's closest friend in her hometown to let her know we are coming rather than just calling her out of the blue, so she can make plans. And two days notice is better than day of notice, right?

Anyway, my Mom missed 23 years of North Carolina springs while living in the Alaskan Bush. It's appropriate that we embrace spring for her this year.

Miss you Mom.

Dang (To quote my favorite soldier)

I meant to be better about writing this dang blog. [Sigh]

Maybe I'll even figure out how to post a picture on this thing. I am soooo not techno-savvy.

Short post today. Just gonna bitch about being self-employed. Ready or not, here it comes.

My 10 am apt forgot about me, so I had to run errands for a half hour. My noon apt cancelled at 10. My last apt is gonna confirm sometime today that he will be able to make his 5 pm time slot. I am driving to him and schlepping my stuff as well, which means my 1 hour apt will more than likely take close to 2 hours, minimum. (Sigh) At least I figured out how to use my phone credit card reader with a regular client who doesn't mind me making an ass of myself as I muddled through the program.  : )

I am in week 8 of an 8 week online poetry class. I am behind because I was running around like a muppet (Grover, of course) for 5 days. And my body betrayed me by succumbing to another effing sinus infection.  Damn auto-immune crap.

And so, I have 5 critiques to make up, need to write my last poem and have 5 more critiques to look forward to in the next week. I can do it!

Now, what lovely photo am I gonna upload now?

It's a iPhone closeup of a tree I turned around in order to photo, then realized I had left my Nikon at home.  Again.  So, it's not the greatest...

Ahem, it's been awhile

And I'm not going to apologize to anyone but myself.  'Cuz all this blogging stuff is mainly for me anyway.  I'm also thinking about changing what I do on this thing (not that I have a specific theme or anything), mainly because it's not that interesting to me to write about writing.  You can read all about that other places.

I think I'm going to do a couple of different things.  Maybe a science fiction book review, which would mean me actually getting back into reading them on a semi-regular basis.  Maybe a photo day, to get me back into playing with (& learning about) my digital camera.  And the maddening photo-shoppy programs that I persist in fruitless attempts to learn to operate.  [Sigh]   Not sure what else.  Guess links to little things which tickle my fancy.  But, maybe not 'cuz you can see LOL Cats on FB all you want.

I'm only 71 days behind my NY's Resolution schedule here.  

Feeling a little strange now

I've been at my Mom's for about a week and a half now.  None of us felt good about leaving her cabin in the "holler" unoccupied so soon after her obituary stated where all her children lived, ranging from 1.5 hours to the entire continent away.  Plus there's some other issues with her estate I won't go into here. 

I keep thinking that she'll come around the corner from her bedroom and give me hell for spreading all my crap out over the majority of the horizontal areas of the living room.  I tend to do that when I'm stressed.  Or mad.  Or sad.  Or all frelling three.

I slept on the couch for 3 nights, finally going upstairs to suffer through a bout of insomnia last night almost as bad as the night she died.  Won't go into that here.

Her memorial service was focused on her, her faith and her life -- though some thought her pastor mentioned her choir and Sunday School class so often that it came across like a commercial for them.  They were a big part of her life, as was her writing group, which I crashed yesterday.  It was a dual purpose visit, returning some things they had left with her -- though I forgot to ask about a strange pyrex dish which showed up in her kitchen -- and getting two of my poems critiqued.*

I have watched a lot of mindless Law & Order SVU reruns and some Netflix online -- might as well enjoy the cable TV and internet while I'm here, no?  And I've done some other professional things, like fulfilling the ethics requirements for my Va CMT renewal.  And finally getting all the poems from the workshop I took in SF revised to the point where I'm comfortable sending them out to the other participants.  Twice, because I forgot to put my name on them before I sent them out the first time.

I can't seem to focus for long periods of time.  Grief, I believe.  I did so much grieving for both my Weim and my Mom, before she actually died, that I feel pretty numb at the moment.  That's normal too.  Gotta go, as my blogging time is up.

 * I have found that very few writing groups know what to do with the rough drafts of poems presented for constructive criticism, so I've about stopped attending meetings.

I have a valid excuse this time...

My Mom had been fighting cancer since 2007.  It metastasized in her lungs last fall.  After two sessions of chemo, she called into the hospital because she felt horrible. And then spent several hours on IVs to get her electrolytes in-balance and re-hydrated, she and her oncologist agreed to stop the chemo.

So she focused on quality of life rather than quantity.  And focused her energy on self publishing a novel and a slightly fictionalized memoir of the 23 years my family spent living in the Alaskan Bush, from the early 1960s to the early 1980s.  I read about 100 pages of it before my life exploded this past summer.  I also haven't read her novel.  Any of them -- published or unpublished.  It's like I am too close to her and them to be objective.  And I feel bad about it.  But I still haven't read them.

So, they are on my "to read" list.  Whenever I stop reading the head-candy crap I've been able to focus on lately.  Wonder why that is?  Dog died.  My Mom's dying.  I can hear her gasping for breath right now as I'm writing this.

I'm waiting on my younger sister to come back here to my Mom's cabin tomorrow.  I left a message on my older sister's answering machine.  Guess I should call my brother-in-law and see if he can get her a message at work.  Since I don't have that particular number.

I'm signing off and going to write my mid-afternoon pages, a la the Artist's Way now.

If I can focus on it, that is.

Another me!

OK, another blogger with the same blog name, across the pond.  Different font and different capitalization. And is mostly cat pictures.

I should leave a note on the cat's blog...or Dyoji, as the cat has been named.

: P

Crap, can't leave the cat a note...for I just tried.  Talk about synchronicity. How many other cats named "dog" are out there?

Vote for your favorite Olympic Poem!

Vote for your favorite Olympic Poem here on NPR. 

I'm not telling which one I voted for.

But I reserve the right to whine if mine didn't win.

Cuz I voted.

Hmm, maybe y'all should vote in November too.

Just saying.

Crap, has it been that long?

I so suck at this blogging thing.  And the other social media stuff.  Maybe I'm just being pulled in too many ways and need to cut back on my obligations.  Especially with my "mundane" job picking up steam and my Mom's health deteriorating like it has been in the past month.  She's about 7 hours away, if I speed and don't stop to pee.  So, a weekend trip isn't fun if I have just 4 days to make the trip. 

I have a college friend who recently contacted me and wants me to see her in the Durham/Chapel Hill area of NC, which is on the way.  If I make the trip next weekend, I plan on lunching or having dinner with her on the drive, either coming or going.  I haven't seen her since the year after graduation, in 1994.  Damn, that admission makes me feel old.

I was in San Francisco Bay area a week ago, at my Aunt's house about an hour north of the city.  I hadn't seen her in about a decade, since the last time she and my Dad had flown in from California to visit a great-aunt and attend a family gathering.  At least my Dad's side, anyway.  Since my parent's divorce, we kids have felt a bit like the black sheep of that side of the family.  Everyone loses something in a divorce.  And since we weren't especially close to any of the extended cousins -- how could we when we grew up in Alaska, the entire North American continent away from them? -- it was easy for us to just fade away. 

I attended a poetry workshop for 3.5 days of my 6 day trip to SF.  I learned a lot, got to see the SF symphony perform a lot of Latin songs from West Side Story, Rodeo, cha-cha-cha & mambo medleys where the crowd started dancing at their free concert in Delores Park.  I think I took a gazillion photos of the dancing -- from toddlers in the crow to practiced couples who looked ready for competition.  Gotta download some of those photos for the participants of the workshop.  And get my poems revised and sent back out to everyone else. 

If you get a chance to participate in an on-line workshop with Diane Frank, do it.  Or her annual workshop in her home in San Francisco.  It's a great experience.  Multi-cultural, no, not the word I'm looking for -- multi-disciplined, with the music and the sight-seeing and the poetry. 

Just ran out of time for this blog.  Gotta go work out now. 

Travel delays

I swear when I booked my flight, I was supposed to leave Richmond at 11am.  Maybe I'm going quietly mad, but I would've bet money on it. But my itinerary showed me leaving at 2:52 pm Wednesday.

So, I did call in a favor to get to the airport, but not from my BIL.   Asked a friend who has Wednesday's off & she agreed to help me out. And she had enough time to get her hair cut on the way back from the city. ;)

I was early, which meant my flight was delayed. I had distractions, iPhone, books, including an Ethics book I need to read some out of to get CE's to renew my license in 2 states. And we boarded the plane 30 minutes after we were supposed to have taken off, then sat there for another 30-45 minutes while the pilots recalculated the flight plan & asked for more fuel to be loaded onto the plane -- so we wouldn't run out of gas and fall from the sky like a lead paperweight.

We arrived in Cleveland in time for me to receive 5 updates from the airlines telling me I would not be leaving at 5:42pm, but at 10pm. There were flight delays and cancelations all over the boards & disgruntled passengers 10-20 deep at the airline customer service counter the entire time I was at the Cleveland airport.

I ate expensive crap pub food, had another beer (before, I whiled away time in Richmond observing 4 new GI's revel in being off-base), and actually went on-board a mere three hours late. I napped, wrote in my journal & watched the complimentary direct TV for 2 shows. By the time we arrived at San Fancisco, I was over three hours late and I barely made the last BART train out of the airport.

I arrived at the stop where my Aunt picked my up after 1 am, got to her house after 1:30am and she kept trying to feed me as soon as I got into her house. You can take the girl out of the South, but can't take the South out of the girl.

My S.O. has bad restaurant luck. I have bad traveling luck. Give me flight delays over frozen entrees any day!

I leave my Aunt's house a bit later today to make my way to the hotel I'm sharing a suite with two other poets to keep expenses down. But first, I'm swimming in my Aunt's pool.

Go West, young woman

So, I fly to the west coast tomorrow. I still have to shove my clothes in my bag, confirm my flight, decide how I'm getting to the airport and if I'm gonna call in a favor to get there. Or if I'll leave my car in long-term parking & pay the fee.

But my car needs to be seen by the body-work guys who worked on it last year, to see if they can find the intermittent leak which occurs when it's raining like hell or when I go through the car wash. And it would be nice not to have it looked at while I actually need it to run around in. 

Anyway. I'm going to a poetry workshop offered by Diane Frank of Blue Light Press in San Francisco. And I'm visiting an Aunt for two days. I haven't seen her in about 10 years, since the last time she came out to visit her Aunt with my Dad, who was living with her then. I think. Then I'm sharing a hotel room with a view of the Pacific Ocean with two other poets in the workshop from Friday night til Monday. I'm not sure if I'm going back to my Aunt's house or not after that. I may try to extend my trip for a day or two, since I was an idiot and booked a red-eye for myself on the way back Tuesday night. That way I'll be sure to catch up with an acquaintance I know from Greensboro. Since it took me three days to recover from the last red-eye I flew on, last fall, that might be the smart thing to do. Oh, how soon we forget what a pain in the butt red-eyes can be. 

I need to run off some more poems, like pretty much all of a chapbook I've been writing on for the last year. It may be book length by the time I'm finished with the series. She said to bring poems of a project we've been working on. And that is a long-term project I have been working on.

I'll keep you updated!

I don't plan on

Posting many of my poems on this site, but wanted to share these two in light of last week's events.

I wrote the first poem as a response to Robert Lee Brewer's 2008 Poem a Day Challenge, day 5 prompt:  write about something you dread.  As Scully had just turned 10, I wrote about dreading "The day".

Decade

My ten-year-old Weimaraner,

the one whose leg may be broken,

who sports yet another set of stitches,

I fear the day I will have to hold her

muzzel close as she struggles

for air. I shy from the day I will see

her deep keel still, her eyes haze, her

tail cease to move, her paws lie still.

I avoid the thought of where she

will lay down for the last time, or

where I will spread her ashes, or upon

which mantle I will keep her urn. I look

into her yellow eyes and vow to spend

more time tossing the ball, scratching her

ears, rubbing her near hairless belly. I know

that I will forget that silent promise until the

next medical emergency will remind

me that she was 69 on her last birthday.

For Scully --

  June 27, 2012

I carry my grief like a gift,

tucked under my heart.

Encapsulated by my ribs,

absorbed like nutrition

with every heartbeat, the cells

of my body drink grief up.

It sweeps through cell

membranes, into nuclei.

Inserts itself into  my DNA,

becomes a permanent feature

in its permanent tomb.  My grief, a tiny 

reminder of the place you held in my life.

I suck at blogging

I sorta kinda wanna blog & really don't, all at the same time.

I have "blog" down on my weekly "to do" list, but then I push it back behind, say, work which makes me money or running errands or writing to my adoptees* in Afghanistan. I have two, one who has less than two months left in the sand, the other has less than three. One I email almost daily and hope to keep in touch with once he's back stateside, the other is deployed in a remote area and I haven't heard from him yet, if I do at all.

But back to the topic, blogging and sucking at it.

Sigh.

 I'm not sure there's much more to say, other than I need to move it higher on my priority list, if I want to do this thing at least half-decently. Or even half-heartedly.

Which means, back to the monthly platform daily to do list Robert urged us to set up in April and continue visiting monthly from then, er, now on. Frelling meevocks, this writing gig is tough.

Later, when I actually have something to say...

* Check out Adopta-Platoon.org

It's a great organization. And for you writers out there, it's an excuse to write a human being who may or may not be able to write you back. It's kinda freeing, in an odd sorta way, just tossing unanswered cards, letters and goodie boxes out into snail mail.

A Cat Named Dog: RIP, Scully

A Cat Named Dog: RIP, Scully: I euthanized my 14-year old Weimaraner yesterday.  Then went over to a friend's house with the young whippersnapper (10 year old) Duncan an...