Traveling Assignments

~Blog about something you never leave home without. Prompt: "I never go anywhere without double-stick tape. I use it for _________.

I never leave home without:

A book to read (or six)
Sunglasses (I have crazy sensitive eyes)
Snacks
Music (I love the ipod. Our CD player in my car has never worked.)
A purpose. (Gone are the days of traveling aimlessly. I have too much to do and not enough time or cash. Sigh.)

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Homework: I will never catch up at this rate, so I am doing today's assignment today.

~Write a line from a song or poem that speaks to you. Explain why.

I have always had a flair for the dramatic. The romantic. The passionate. Maybe flair isn't the right word. Need, perhaps? Absolute craving? I guess that my life is so commonplace and secure that, even as a kid, I delighted in the scandalous and the overly ridiculous. If I could have watched soaps as a child, I am sure I would have reveled in the medium.

Now the years, they went by, and Old Shep, he grew old.
His eyesight had long since grown dim.
And then one day the doctor looked at me and said,
"I can't do no more for him, Jim."
With a hand that was trembling, I picked up my gun
And I held it at Shep's faithful head.
But I just couldn't do it; I wanted to run
I wish they would shoot me instead.

I would beg my grandfather to sing me sad cowboy songs--I cried and then asked for more.

And when it was night, how great was their fright!
The stars did not shine, the moon gave no light.
They sobbed and they sighed, and they bitterly cried,
'Til finally those babies lay down and they died.
Oh, don't you remember those babes in the woods?
Poor, poor, babes in the woods.

Poetry was just as intoxicating as songs were, especially the tragic ballads. When we had to memorize a poem in fourth grade, most of my classmates memorized something from Uncle Shelby; I went down a road with more pathos.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunsets glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields.

Can't you just swim in the tragedy? And I never outgrew it. High school had me eschewing Ginsberg (a perennial favorite among the Honors Set) for Yeats.

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

College introduced me to this gem from Donne, which proved perfectly pathetic, especially considering my choice in a spouse, and his choice in a career.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to aery thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two ;
Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.

And now? Well, I will give you a guess as to Jooj's favorite song that I sing. Hint: It features a dead canine. And I often read poetry to her in bed. Lately I have been reading her Leslie Norris.

How long I stood with ghosts of the wild fists
And the cries of shaken boys long dead around me,
For struck to act at last, in terror and pity
I threw some frantic money, three treacherous pence -

And I cry at the memory - into his tray, and ran,
Entering waves of the stadium like a drowning man.
Poor Billy Rose. God, he could fight
Before my three sharp coins knocked out his sight.

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Homework Homework Homework

~List your five biggest worries. Now imagine how each could become a blessing in disguise.

You will note, that for much of this post, I keep a glib tone. That is because I am prone to paralyzing bouts of worry. So while I will be reasonably honest, I don't want to end up curled in a ball rocking back and forth, waiting for someone to put heavy weights on my back so that I can calm down. (Side note: That really works with me. To calm the shaking. I need you to make me one. Because W is tired of literally sitting on my back while I convulse. /side note)

Worry: I am not enough. Of anything. Enough of a wife, mother, daughter, person, anything. I am fundamentally lacking

Blessing: I have to let people help me somehow. This makes me sick to my stomach to think about. I know that, in theory, it is good to let people help me, though, so it must somehow be a blessing. Ew. Another blessing could be that once I have failed in a tremendous fashion, I have no one else to let down. This could provide a wonderful sense of relief, although it would be a pathetic consolation prize while I was living in my cardboard house next to the van down by the river.

It is not that I want to be everything to everyone, far from it (although I secretly dream of being IT for someone. That special person. I mean, W has Hero Squad, Jooj tolerates me until someone else comes along...) but I know that there are things I can do. Things that need to be done. And often it feels like I am the only one around who will do them. Which makes my burden heavy. And I often forget to share the load. And many times, like when W is gone for fifteen months, failure is not an option. And if I am not enough, what will happen? And if people can get by without me, then what will I do?

Worry: I go to jail for murdering someone. Irrational, I know, but I have watched enough TV to know that, eventually, everyone goes to jail for murdering someone. This is one of the reasons I had to stop watching "Snapped" on WE and "City Confidential" on A&E, although mostly I stopped watching because I had seen them all. Does anyone know if there are new episodes?

Blessing: Lifetime Original Movie: "Mother May I Sleep With La Yen."

Honestly, those are my two worries. Sometimes I stress out about things, but I have enough faith in God's plan for me to know that I will survive whatever. Except for failing in a tremendous fashion, or prison. I can't make it in prison. And I would hate to murder someone. Sometimes people ask me about being worried because W is in Hero Squad and could get blown up by an Arab. I really don't worry about it. Now, I don't watch bloody war movies and get my head all full of ideas, mind you, but I am not worried about the safety of my husband. If it is his time, it is his time. And $750k would provide a lot of comfort during my time of grief in Costa Rica. And boarding school for Jooj. Because those Costa Rican schools are not the greatest, I have heard.

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