Inspired? You tell me.

Weather Bug Shows Local School
or
Nostalgia via Broadband Connection (a poem in five minutes time)



The camera angle (live shot)
shows eight rectangles of green green tennis court
red clay running track oval circling
and tan institutional building
with
no
windows
no
wasteful daydreams outside while the teacher talks
here.

No
children running or
planning lunch dates
or (even) dodging bullets. (Today)

Of course,
it being
winter break (Christmas holidays being the
unpolitically correct thing to call it
these
days)

one would expect emptiness...
Wouldn’t one?

But what empties a school yard
faster
these
days?

Disgruntled child in a long black trench coat
or the bell ringing afternoon classes over?
It’s probably a toss up.

And wouldn’t one get a (live shot)
camera angle of that on one’s
weather program too?

Dear old golden rule days?

Wasn't there plenty of empty space before?
But at least then a young poet girl with dreamy brown eyes
could stare out the window at pollen dazed bees
ignoring the mathboard equations
for a minute or two.


Kaw Dec 05

*************************

et aussi:
I sneak away a guilty moment
to scrawl useless lines of poetry

babies squeal and push buttons
to play Pop Goes the Weasel
in tinny electronics
in the other room (again)

What is the point, anyway?
Some sanity, some trace of my former self
the one who wore fuschia ribbons laced through
shoelace holes on shiny black patent leather manshoes,
and listened to the Cure loud on a walkman
destined to cause hearing loss one day?

Poet. Mommy. Not words destined to be very often congruent.
Daddy washes dishes and grandma comments on various cute baby games.

Mommy sneaks away to have three minutes stolen time.

Enough? We’ll see.

Kaw Dec 05

Merry Christmas And All That Jazz

Hello?? Is this thing on? Tap Tap SQQQQEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!

Testing. One. Two. Testing.

I know. I know. I've been terribly terribly borrrrrrring. I don't even know if anyone is going to read this.

I figured, when the whole baby thing happened, that I would still keep up with blogging. There are lots of people who do, you know. With kids and all. And eventually, I will have more time to do things other than sit on the floor with two lovely babies and blow raspberries on their tummies and kiss them and waggle teething rings at them while sneaking in a trip to the kitchen for a sparkling water or a bowl of ice cream for mommy. Apparently I am not one of those people who keep up with the blogging well. Who knew? After all this time to stop and really not feel much of an urge to blog is weird. But I generally only get the itch now and then. I'm sure I'll get it back when I start back in writing every day on the dissertation. But then I will be away from an internet connection and being so disciplined a Mistress of S&M would be proud. (Of how disciplined and not naughty I'll be).

But for now, I am still truly, truly enjoying those things above.*

And often, I think, just as I have for the past two years: This would make a great blog entry. And I write it, in my head. It just rarely (or never) makes it to the computer screen. By the time Andrew is home and able to watch babies for me to make a quick trip to the computer, there are other things to do. Shower, for one. :)

And by the time I get here, at least half the time there is no more blog entry.

I thought about one yesterday about the fat guy in the tiny red pickup truck with the bumper sticker with an alien on it that said "You Don't Scare Me I'm a Teacher/Roswell NM" who cut into my lane (I knew he was going to and I backed off to give him room, being all Christmas spirit and all). He waggled his arm at me. Then, as I pulled up behind him at the next red light, he shook his fist into the general direction of the rear view mirror. I thought "Is he waggling that fist at me? Man! I let the fat bastard over!" I guess his interpretation of the event was that he had to force his way in. That me, soccer mom in minivan, wasn't going to let him over. What a wanker.

But I couldn't really think of anything more than the mere observation that the guy was so clueless he couldn't tell the difference between himself and a person (me) who cut his bad driving some slack and wasn't even flipping him (the bad weaving last minute lane changer).

Anyway.

We leave tomorrow for our Christmas plans. Off to Louisiana where the family (my side of) meets in the Baton Rouge area for Christmas Eve day festivities. Which will include a turkey of some sort--probably one of the nephews (insert drum riff and cymbal crash) (and food too.) We'll come back either Christmas day or the next day. It depends on how much "fun" we're having there. And how much we can stand the 100 bucks a night for a hotel! (It's hard to get a hotel in that area still with the Katrina refugees still holed up in a the cheap ones).

So. We've got presents in gift bags (breaking my own rule about bringing gifts to some family members... they're very small, nice but inexpensive gifts to give since I haven't seen some of these folks in a while). I haven't packed yet but it won't take too long.

And the babies are sweet and mommy has developed a new addiction to Digital Scrapbooking. You don't want to know. But for now, just visualize the addictive power of heroin plus the crack rush of cute little pink and blue baby book items to print out and put in a book that the kids will probably only look at when they one day have their own kids.

There is no twelve step program for scrapbooking. We don't have a problem. We have lots of files filled with backgrounds, and fonts, and elements, and......

I'll see you all next year some time.

*The baby things. Not the S&M things. That's what I get for adding text without proofing it as I go. Disjointed Dangling Modifiers. Which I'm leaving. But trying to clarify.

My movie....

The Movie Of Your Life Is A Black Comedy

In your life, things are so twisted that you just have to laugh. You may end up insane, but you'll have fun on the way to the asylum. Your best movie matches: Being John Malkovich, The Royal Tenenbaums, American Psycho

If Your Life Was a Movie, What Genre Would It Be?

courtesty CCW

You thought the Santa picture was cute didn't you?

But you didn't know about these:



Warning: this blog is not responsible for you dying of absolute cuteness.

Adventures in Bovine-Land

As of today, I have officially burnt out FIVE (count them ladies & gents) breast pumps. Three of those were of inferior quality and shouldn't be counted as more than one, probably. But two were high grade, supposed to last you through three kids type pumps. I am extremely careful with them. And I pump a lot, since what we do after much trial and error is I pump all the good stuff out and then put it in bottles. It was the best solution for the babies. But man, it's still ridiculous!!

Today's fun started when I was sitting down to do the pump and all of a sudden it made a funny noise. Then it started wheezing asthmatically and no suction. I called the manufacturer and the place I bought the pump and I'll be getting a new one Tuesday. In the meantime, there is an impressive looking hospital grade rental over on the couch waiting for its 3 am duty call (Yes, I get up, even though the babies DON'T, groggily and grumpily at 3 am to pump milk. I am dedicated to this crap. At least till the end of December. I think.). There had been omens & portens of the end, now that I think of it. The last week has shown a decrease in output, and I thought it was cause I was sick and thought seriously of quitting this weekend. I have freezerful of milk so that the babies will still be "breastfed" till at least a month from when I stop pumping. So being sick, and not getting as much as I ought to, I was seriously considering stopping. But I think it was the pump wearing out on me and I'm re-dedicated to trying again for a while.

But it's absofreakin'lutely amazing how difficult it can be to do this. The traditional mom who breastfeeds whips out the boob, little junior goes to town for twenty minutes or so, falls asleep happy. Mom gets the added bennies of weight loss and more calories allowed. Baby gets all those health bennies. But with two at once, and the "issues" I have which caused several emergency room trips before I found out Sean did not have that pyloric somethingorother* puking thing babies get.... it's been a wild ride, to say the least.

It's weird though. Today, before the pump broke while I was contemplating how I would cope with the holiday travels and transporting frozen breastmilk (which I would have to do if I were no longer producing fresh stuff myself) I started to feel sad and not wanting to quit, in spite of my HATING to get up at 3 am while the whole damn house is happily asleep (usually even the cat. Not even a mouse. Santa has a thankless job, I'll tell you).

Motherhood is so weird. There's this mixture of intense love and pride and fierce protectiveness tied up with guilt and exhaustion and the knowledge that you would cheerfully kick the crap out of anyone who hurt your babies. And all those feminist arguments you make about equality are still as valid, still as important, but even more important is the absolute joy you feel that you have a hubby who is ACTUALLY one of the good ones, who gets up at 5 am with you to feed babies, who the babies actually like to hang out with (sometimes even preferring him to mommy). Who comes home and is glad to see them.

And even if it means you have to wash bottles AGAIN and your knuckles are a bit raw/red like an old washerwoman's, you don't care. You'll do it.

And when the babies eyes light up because you've got a small bowl full of strained prunes to feed them, you never knew that prunes could cause so much joy in anyone under the age of 70 and you start to think of all the other things you're going to learn.

And then you remember that you have to get up at 3 am again for another month. And this damn next breastpump better be up for the effort.

*Stenosis. Means a tight valve. Not as in Confederacy of Dunces.