“Happy Birthday, Daddy,” big hug and a kiss on the cheek from 4-year-old Eddie. Jump on the bed and look at 1-year-old Jack in his crib. Stands up, stretches his arms out and throws his beloved stuffed puppy at me. Over and over.
And, finally, I made it back to be with my parents on my birthday – though I may not spend much time on the actual day. Had a family dinner at the tony Palisades restaurant Saturday and surrounded by love. Happy. Even with new contact lenses not in right, I had a great view of a load of smiling faces.
If you got through all that “icky” then I’m 39 years old. Don’t feel it, don’t care as long as things like the first two paragraphs are happening. People need fulfillment – in whatever way – for happiness and joy.
All the Facebook wishes make me smile – and really I have to leave now for Grand Coulee….
One legacy of my British upbringing is an addiction, affliction affection for snooker. I played it, long enough to stretch a good ways across the 12 foot x 6 foot slate. Went to halls, played for hours with friends Chris Burgess and William Lloyd, all of us over 6-feet tall. I was good enough to be happy, but it never crossed my mind to want to turn pro or even push for it.
Instead, I watched — frame after frame after frame — though never had a desire to go see it in person, which seems odd in retrospect. And Alex “Hurricane” Higgins was one of the players who caught my interest, like few others. (Here’s exactly how I remember him). It was the speed at which he played, and I think I subconsciously styled my game after him. He died over the weekend, aged 61. Seems extraordinary. Penniless and toothless I found out. You know, in a way you don’t actually want to find out. I only looked up his name because one of the podcasts I download comes from Ireland. It had Alex Higgins in the title and I, correctly and sadly, guessed it was about his death. (Other articles, here, here, and a judging personal account here – and some details here, though for an obituary it dwells too much, too eagerly on the flaws, the incidents.
It makes me wonder how some of the other players I knew then; how they’re doing now.
About every good player did catch my interest back then though. Ray Reardon I remember as the oldest. Jimmy White, the fastest. Dennis Taylor the stodgiest – yet with glasses like the ones I’d newly acquired; who somehow got them custom made to be able to see the balls better. Cliff Thorburn and Terry Griffiths are two other names that come to mind as in the mix.
Just the angles, the mental gamesmanship; I distinctly remembering admiring both of those traits in the game. It’s a far game far more centered on defense than pool, and the “snooker” comes from putting the ball behind another ball or pocket angle, so there’s no direct shot on the ball you’ve got to hit next.
Alex Higgins was the Rolling Stones.
The player I admired most was Steve Davis; cool, calm, collected. Red haired, focused. Didn’t care about hurting you on the table. Relentless. Skilled. Not as flashy or reckless. Skilled. The Beatles. The game still fascinates me; news of the game still grabs me. If it was available easily to see, I would. I can watch pool on TV; but i play a great deal more of that.
Snooker or pool, I need to play more. Want to play more. It brings me back to my roots, to my uprooted childhood.
Just that, I wore possible new contact lenses for just about four hours today. Tried to jam them in my eyes Monday and took almost 90 minutes I think to get them in. It was uber-frustrating and painful and every now and then on the edge of terrifying and giving up. It was one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in my life for which I had a choice. Made my eyes swollen and sore and Lerone, who helped me the most said it could be effecting my vision after I finally got them in; that my eyes would get better after a while, after practice.
They didn’t seem to work though I think my left one was inside out. I had all week to put them in, but did not because I didn’t have time to suffer through it and then see everything in blurness.
So today, they wee in and they seemed to work better. The one in my left eye felt better, too. It seemed easier to open my eyes wide enough to get poking, and I could function with them in, but something still seemed off with my vision.
Even though I have no idea how I did it, i also got my lens out in a very short time – about 15 minutes. Replaced the water / fluid / whatever the stuff …
This could work. After today, I would like it to.
There’s no way I can contact these guys without some serious input of time and possibly cash.
But on July 4, in Payson, after the fireworks were over, I found a camera in the grass. it was dark, it was a minor miracle I saw it.
Just glancing long enough to get some ID, for anyone looking for these photos the name Nathaniel Neddon has appeared. If you’ve searched for your name, I have your 4GB card. And just looking at the date modified dates, these photos cover a few years (which stuns the hell out of me because I download ASAP in case card corrupts or I misplace / lose my camera). So they really might be wanted. By someone.
Answer these questions.
1) Canon or Nikon
2) How many children in photo
3) Name of park where found
4) The mistake I made in this post
I’ve gotten resigned to the idea that buses will whoosh past me even if I’m close to the bus stop and clearly waving at them as a passenger that I want to get on.
It’s happened a few times.
So, leaving home to go to work – and after waving to everyone in the car as they went to daycare and work – I see the Valley Metro bus pull up into the left turn lane onto the street where I wait. I’m close to e corner. i half-heartedly jog to the corner as it turns, just pretty much as a token gesture. Yet it stopped. I bowed briefly, got on, said thanks you made my day better. And when I got off later I told him I really appreciated him stopping.
I understand that buses can’t stop everywhere; I understand that certain places are dangerous or unsafe to stop. And I did note down the number of the bus, but now I’ve forgotten it.
This weekend was marked by change. And unlike so many things, none of it was change merely for the sake of change. Not shifting papers – shifting lives.
Carrie started her first day at work today, Bard Peripheral Vascular in Tempe.
Eddie and Jack started their first day in a new daycare.
I eagerly await the skinny on both. Carrie has the chance to organize and give permanent direction for a new department within the company, or at least within a division of it. I’m not exactly sure. The boys have spent their whole daycare lives in Tucson, so their change is profound. For Jack, 1, there will be confusion but not too many feelings beyond that, I’m guessing. For Eddie, 4, who has been there longer and can talk, and has established relationships with Miss Amber and Miss Elizabeth and friends, it has to be harder. But everyone adapts, and the younger you are, the easier it is – or should be.
You can’t go back; the inexorable, inescapable reality of time – for most mere mortals – is that it won’t stop for you to adjust; it won’t reverse itself for do-overs or to fix those things you really really really wish would rather have not happened. And despite everything that means, both good and bad, it can be no other way. If so, even then, people – of any age – would continue to fail to live in the moment. The push for perfection – where perfection is not needed – already holds too much sway.
There are new beds, new rooms, new stairs, new faucets, new ceilings, new reflections, new angles, new layouts, a new person more regularly in their lives – and four walls. It’s a world of change and they’re getting a big dose of it all at once.
You can’t turn around a life. You can’t retreat a living. It doesn’t do anyone any good.
Carrie moved to Scottsdale this weekend, and since Saturday has slept there; in a place well located to all that Scottsdale has to offer. New place. New job. New – me.
And I tend to downplay my own thing, but, yes, some serious adjustments going on, as well, in my peabrain. My brain has to be alert more during the off-work hours with two amazing children in the house; in my life. With a strong love growing every day; with seemingly everything equally important with equal priority, with me not wanting to screw anything up – and still figuring out what screwing up looks like in these new venues and situations, it’s adjustment that I would indeed wish on my best friends.
It means I’m neglecting some things in my own life to make sure things are going right in others. In very short summary it all means I’m learning, which is always good.
It means I’m now taking the bus on the opposite side of route 50.
Let him (the White Man) be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not altogether powerless.
Please remind me to write about Chief Seattle, a celebrated environmentalist, whose words we never heeded. A speech I read solidified my desire and effort and mindset to care for the land, even without the religious baggage of having “dominion over all.”
I have a booklet I bought or was given when I lived in Seattle and I think this was the speech it contained. Sadly the account here makes it seem that some of it might have been rhetorical floursh added decades after the occurrence, much like accounts of Jesus that have warped and shaped the Western world and the Manifest Destiny destruction of so many of the the Native American peoples, and some of their ways of living with and as a part of nature.
Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb and wander away beyond the stars. They are soon forgotten and never return. Our dead never forget this beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains, sequestered vales and verdant lined lakes and bays, and ever yearn in tender fond affection over the lonely hearted living, and often return from the happy hunting ground to visit, guide, console, and comfort them. … Ever part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as the swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch.
My mother died of breast cancer when I was six. I remember a few things about her. Her voice, her red hair, and the way she raised one eyebrow when she laughed. I sometimes wish she’d died when I was younger so I wouldn’t remember her at all. I remember her green eyes.”
– pg 5, “Flight” by Sherman Alexie
In turn, though this quote happens to be about a dead mother, I completely read it through as a quote about a dead father and had to do a double-take after getting about three or four paragraphs past it. I just started the book today. My first exposure to Alexie was through the film Smoke Signals. It was a story and film packed with reflections of a missing father, a failed search and breath-taking takes on the impact he had on the main character’s life. And the final reflection with the shot panning over a river, sticks in my head, though out of context it needs context:
How do we forgive our fathers? Maybe in a dream. Do we forgive our fathers for leaving us too often, or forever, when we were little? Maybe for scaring us with unexpected rage, or making us nervous because there never seemed to be any rage there at all? Do we forgive our fathers for marrying, or not marrying, our mothers? Or divorcing, or not divorcing, our mothers? And shall we forgive them for their excesses of warmth or coldness? Shall we forgive them for pushing, or leaning? For shutting doors or speaking through walls? For never speaking, or never being silent? Do we forgive our fathers in our age, or in theirs? Or in their deaths, saying it to them or not saying it. If we forgive our fathers, what is left?
Having lost my own father, having occasionally thought how life might have been different with any father figure early on in my life (none after about three to about 10) – who died when I was older but I never met again, it was devastating when I watched Smoke Signals and completely snatched my breath and ripped down tears. It will be again when I watch it again – and I need to read the book, as well. Now, when I do it will have new, painful layers of meaning because of new people in my life who I love dearly and deeply, whose father passed away. The film’s father is flawed, violent absent, as mine undoubtedly was. Still, father, right? And I’m stepping into that role with purpose and an awareness of the awesome responsibility it entails.
“We have to decide, are we ready to get what we pay for? And if we’re not going to pay for news then you’re going to get a different kind of news. Full stop.” — Jon Meacham. Editor-In-Chief, Newsweek. (on the Daily Show)
The headline refers to me. I’ve been away from being a journalist for a couple of years. I still care deeply about the craft (the political aspects get so much attention but that’s really a small sliver of the journalism field), and am pained to see print going through the death throes. After all, my degree is specifically in Print Journalism.
Something else has to emerge other than the way people are getting their news now. The ratio of “maybe/rumor” to fact is depressingly low. Uncertainty cannot sustain a society; not one that functions well, in any case.
I actually bought Rolling Stone for the first time in years a couple of months back, because they had just gone to an online paid model for content. I support being paid. Now Rolling Stone has gone so far down hill they’re swimming in core lava, so I probably won’t support them. Especially since I’ve started my own music site.
Online advertising can work, but it doesn’t work enough to sustain an information business. Rare it is that people make a living from their sites. Or at least online advertising can’t sustain enough of them, though it can be improved and focused – just like anyone’s writing. Not right now will it be enough; its’s still considered an annoyance. And the more advertisers try to “enhance” their connections to people, the more the people, rightly get their hackles raised about companies knowing too much about them. They feel they are only a reflection of their purchases. Rant for another time there.
News has changed and will continue to change. Will people settle for being ignorant or uniformed?
So I thought it was the cheap glass of wine I had earlier in the day that was getting me all headachy. Turns out not having any air circulate in my place gets the temp inside up to 76. Just right for a PHX native perhaps but hot to me I just wasn’t noticing.
Kicked on A/C and on less than 10 minutes the headache is almost gone.
That’s a good thing. I need to drink more than the half cup of Coke I’ve drank all day otherwise.
No water. I rinsed my toothbrush with vodka ;-)
At Work
Vidration Vitamin Enhanced Fruitpunch flavored water
Bolthouse Farms Blue Goodness (not their best flavor, thought I would like it more)
Numi Organic Tea (moroccan mint (damn good).
“You’re too much – and I can’t get enough.”
Yes, pretty much sums up the entire weekend
There is an artist with my name, sort of. I have an extra name in there and surprising to many, who’ve never heard me I’m not a woman.
Ruth A. Temple Anderson – Fulton and Broadway with St. Paul’s Church – Artwork details at artnet.
At about 9:45 I heard a knock at my door on a Saturday. As we’d established on my Twitterline just a couple hours before I was up earlier, having fallen asleep in my chair from having not slept the night before. It’s a thing I do. I’m about as anxious as man with a brick and a scorpion at his feet. (Not very)
With “Treat Him Good” by the Love Me Nots ringing quietly in the background (I’d turned it down after I heard the knock) I looked through the glass seeing two men in black suits, with thin literature in their hands. I thought they were Mormons having completely forgotten about Jehovah’s Witnesses. My roommate had met them last time they came a few months ago and I’m sure talked to them with more Godly knowledge than I.
My relationship with religion goes as deep as my fascination with the people who believe and how they live.
I said I probably didn’t have much time to talk. The older guy, Larry, opened the gambit (is that an appropriate phrase here?) pointing to The Watchtower, page 4, saying he wondered why people abused alcohol. He pointed to the scripture there showing that indeed Jesus didn’t eschew alcohol having served it at a wedding. But he also pointed to the scripture about not getting drunk.
As he was talking about the benefits of wine (“to make us happy”) accorded to us by God (don’t want to push people to hard to stop drinking or anything), the phrase “and doctors say a glass of wine is beneficial, too” came to mind and reached my lips – but not my tongue.
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Cake, “Short Skirt, Long Jacket”
I want a girl
With a mind like a diamond
I want a girl
Who knows what’s best
I want a girl
With shoes that cut
And eyes that burn
Like cigarettes
I want a girl
With the right allocations
Who’s fast and thorough
And sharp as a tack
She’s playing with her jewelry
She’s putting up her hair
She’s touring the facility
And picking up slack
I want a girl with a short skirt and a lonnnng jacket……
I want a girl
Who gets up early
I want a girl
Who stays up late
I want a girl
With uninterupted prosperity
Who uses a machete
To cut through red tape
With fingernails
That shine like justice
And a voice that is dark
Like tinted glass
She is fast and thorough
And sharp as a tack
She’s touring the facility
And picking up slack
I want a girl with a short skirt and a long…. long jacket
I want a girl
With a smooth liquidation
I want a girl
With good dividends
And at the city bank
We will meet accidentally
We’ll start to talk
When she borrows my pen
She wants a car
With a cupholder arm rest
She wants a car
That will get her there
She’s changing her name
From Kitty to Karen
She’s trading her MG
For a white Chrysler LeBaron
I want a girl with a short skirt and a long jacket
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Posing in the hallway at work with a simple poster I created for a friend whose mother died of AIDS in 2000
* Note I did back date this entry. Actually published Dec. 3
First couple of drinks tonight after about two weeks. Vodka and sprite and vodka and pineapple juice (from can of pineapple for stir fry). Oh and the heat seems to be broken in the house. It got down to 58° last night inside. It might actually stay warmer with the fans off.
Um I’m calling landlord tomorrow, telling them I’m just past surgery and too cold = slowing recovery. Which, you know, may actually have some truth.
House-sitting day after Christmas. Could make it hard to get home for Christmas. Need to break it to mom gently.
Thanksgiving. About 90% sure it’s with a group of friends, same thing I did last year – Tweetsgiving. Gonna try and cook something up this time, though.
Freaking a close friend out. She thinks I’m sicker than I am. Or rather, sicker than I’ve been letting on. And, yeah, maybe I am. Trouble is, I don’t know but she wasn’t happy with news of my “blood bag” and staples and why I stayed in hospital so long. It’s good she cares because she tends to give off the vibe of not caring. Which can be a little rough.
Having trouble catching up on everything I want to do. Just getting little snippets of dreams cut off the whole cloth rather than grabbing the entire bolt and wrapping myself in it.
After yesterday’s half day, today was my first full day of work and my side hurts a little more than it has been. Finally got Percocet tonight after not having any pain killers. A lot of people say get good drugs. It’s not my mindset. I avoid anything I don’t need along those lines. But doctor yesterday said I should be coughing and prescribed it.
Still weirded out by the whole thing. Wanting this “blood bag” and stitches out, so I can get to sleep not on my back and wear tighter shorts instead of the loose ones I wear during day and night.
Doctor said I was still draining too much to take it out.
I showed my “blood bag” at work just to a couple of guys and they PHA-REAKED out. It was strange and so funny.
