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!