When Dinger and Bobby Keller dance I smile.

We walk to school through a path between two houses and it rocks my mind how much it reminds me of the movie "Dream a Little Dream" and the way the kids walk through Jason Robards yard and he is all deep in his meditation that will keep him and Piper Laurie together forever in dreamy space time shit.

It's like my goal this school year to download the soundtrack to that movie and jam to it while walking down that path.
It's like each step would make me feel really old, but really happy.

I am trying to find things, all the little tiny things to do to keep me buoyant.
I think perhaps I am skirting with depression.
Or this is just life.
I don't know the difference right now.
Most other times I have felt like this it dissipated after a bit.
At least for sure after a month of Sundays.

Richie had a falcon named Mordecai.

I was reading a Sir Lancelot chapter book to Finn and Blaise today and one of the stories was about this damsel in distress who had lost her Falcon. It went on to talk about how the bird was on a leash and shit. I try continually to explain to those around me how dumb I really am. I had no idea birds were ever on leashes. I am still trying to get over the fact you can train birds to send love letters or secrets through the air. My mind doesn't want to believe it true.

Birds of prey are scarier than most birds really. I mean they are huge. You can get a license to be an apprentice and matriculate to a Master Falconer. Never met one of those. If I did meet one in a tavern I might buy them a drink and ask questions. It is just something that sounds fascinating. Training a raptor to fly away from you and go get you stuff. They kill for you. I am not so sure that I believe in it but I would love to go to a falconer convention. I bet there is one someplace. I am fairly certain there are interesting people there. I am so sure. How do we ever know what we will become? I never thought in one million years I would be a toymaker. I will never be a falconer though.

I think the people at the falconer conventions might look like Hemingway and have a Hitchcock edge to them. I would float around and learn and flirt and find the secrets to devotion.
They have to put love in those birds.
Love makes them fly.
Love makes them come back.
I know they would tell me that.

and I'll cry if i want to

it's not new
and to the more seasoned veterans of the asphalt jungle
it is old news

The release of the young to the others.
We stood there today and felt quite awkward just like we should have.

Standing there and really fighting back the tears
with a hand on his small shoulder
nudging him to the teacher
to the new important adult in his life
to someone else who will tell him things
and see his mouth open with amazement
tiny teeth sparkling

We stood there and it was like the adults were all struck mute-
only able to motion to their young.
like hand signals in baseball or something
Everyone was just waving and blowing kisses and acting strange.
and there was a lot of flash photography involved


We stood there and watched the ten seconds it took for the Kindergarten class
to disappear in tidy formation into the brick schoolhouse...
I looked until his blond hair snapped around the corner and he was gone from me.
We all then
deflated
and walked to our cars
and pushed our strollers towards the future.

biochemical changes are taking place in my muscles

Today we walked the route to school. Practicing. It was a sweat 14 minutes, but not all bad.
Our route takes us through the very posh Frank Lloyd Wright Mid-Century modern village near our home. It also entails a wooded staircase and a path through a tiny forest.
It is very quaint.
It is kinda charming although my ass cheeks are throbbing.

We did the whole power walk thing on the way home. Snow is going to suck.
I am strangely aware that in four days I am going to be initiated into some new society.
The playground moms.
I see them at the playground after school.
They look cool.

I am an ass throbbing misfit.

For the record-Finn is very excited about school.
I am the nervous one.

It is the only song on the album that looks forward instead of backward

and in four days he will put normal clothing on
five days and week and start school
he runs along the whole highway of my heart like this
and it is so perfect that it is almost as if Van Morrison
songs emerge from the ground and float him
inches above the green green grass
and he is just up there
and all I can do is stare
and he just walks around with this certainty
and tells me things are fine
and I believe him and all I can do is just open my eyes
and drop my gaze
settle in and look
I will look at this person
my Sugar-baby with champagne eyes


photo from my pal

Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it like my heart's going to cave in

Sometimes I google yr name just hoping
that there will be some sort of obituaries website that might have yr info for me to read.
I get sad thinking that you died before everything was on the Internet.
Before you had a life on the Internet.
You don't exist on the Internet.
I am unable to type to you.
I am unable to see words that might make me cry for a moment.
We all need moments, even years and years later that let us just feel for pretty seconds.
Like how I have to curl my shoulders around my heart about once a year and think of you.
I will always think of you.
I am just certain of this.



title post- American Beauty 1999

days like these/book deal day dreams and large lattes

I am excited about my day.
Joe's work fell through and the workshop is closed for an expo today and it is raining.
There are about 5,000 home projects that Joe could do if it were a sunny day. GRRR.
But- Joe is giving me a gift later.
After nap he is spending some time with the boys and letting me write.
Like all day.
Like in a coffee shop and everything.
Heaven.

My poor novel.
I am such a tease to it.
I love it like a bitch one month and then ignore it the next.
Life is so frantic but I need to find more dedication.
I need to finish this beast and find an agent and learn about what comes next.
I need a book deal and attention and I am so crabby.
There are little strokes spread out on pages of white
that when looked at with love form something magical for me.
I feel like this story is a good one.
I hope you will read it.

My friend Megan is announcing to the world her desire to write a book too.
I feel her exhale and everything. I feel it.
It felt good to tell everyone I was doing this- but at the same time it scares me that it has taken so long to get to even this point.
I had no idea that a new business and freelance writing and life
would take away this precious time I had planned to devote.
Man. Man.
Today will be a big help.
Loads of people don't even get a stretch of four hours to themselves.
I know this.
But.
I just feel like I need three days in The Westin or something.
Hole up and explode.

Just three tiny days
to tell you all the things
that will make you want to curl up someday with me
in yr hands
and go someplace
dreamy

because you must not give up on yr dreams.
Keep repeating that all the freaking time.

A for Alfie

Joe has been back in the workshop and it is equally good and bad for him to create again.
His mind is off his grief for a bit while he makes- but if the workshop is empty and without others he gets a bit lonely I think.

He made some gorgeous handcrafted rattles the other day- personalized alphabet rattles.


What lucky little babies
who get to mouth and play with these
I know they have goodness infused in them
You can check em out here

Camper Van Beethoven and the Sunday mean reds

along the way

There are times in our lives that just get marked by music you know.
Little scenes that turn in our minds for years.
We have so many and often they are not as cool as we wish they were- but they are ours still.
(like the night in my old college apartment when my friends and I were so convinced that I could sing "In Your Eyes" as good- if not better than Peter Gabriel and we all sat there rewinding the CASSETTE and smoking bowls for about three hours)

There was this one night in Michigan a way long time ago when me and Joe and two friends sat in a compact car and listened to u2 for about 3 hours. It was bitter cold but we were so young that nothing could touch us. It was like our love was a barrier and we just levitated and sang our hearts out and not in the way that you politely sing along to a tune with others around- but singing our hearts out like madmen against black starry skies.

So many times music slices right through reality and takes you to a place you never knew you needed until it happens. It just happens.

Last week in the North of England my delicious brother in law Andy wrangled three dogs, three little boys, and me into his Land Cruiser and drove tiny tiny country roads to take us to some old closed water towers. We all needed to get out of the house and burn some energy and he knew just the adventure. The towers were rad and climbed high into the dreary sky and the kids flew like birds across the beat down land. Old wellington boots and trash littered the ground and it felt so Hitchcock or something similar. There is supposedly a Peregrine Falcon that lives in one of the towers. I held my hat down over my ears and shivered with mysterious delight. It was cool- but really my babbling leads to the drive home. The boys were all quiet and the dogs all calm. We listened to Bob Marley.

It was one of those moments- a sweet spot- where you find a bit of solace from whatever shit is hanging round yr neck. We sang together. We sang together and for that moment nothing was the matter and everything had a distinct shimmer of being alright.

I harmonized a bit and Andy sang like a right dude and we bounced along in the rain and my heart pulled love like taffy.




thanks for that moment Andy- I love ya babe!

old man

I didn't know what he was talking about the first few times he said it.
old man
old man
fat finger pointing towards the hallway
I sat up from the sofa the next day and heard it clear as day
OLD MAN
Blaise said it and pointed at the cellar door
while me and my brother-in-law had coffee in the kitchen on afternoon.
OLD MAN
And he has continued to say it randomly throughout our time here.
We all want to believe it is dad.
And we do now as in the country garden wake at Uncle Richard's estate he looked at old photographs that a friend of dad's had brought and took the thick little finger and pointed at the handsome man we all now miss and said clear as crystal knocking off a surface and breaking into thousand tiny pieces:
OLD MAN
and his finger lingered
mushing cake and other food bits
right on the reflection of dad
OLD MAN
Last night he told me in two year old broken toddlerish
that old man was sitting beside me
I wasn't afraid
sad
but unafraid
Dad was a spiritualist- he told me so much about his beliefs in the last decade.
I believe. I know he would try and come to us now.
I guess none of us thought he would find his way through a fat little boy in his last year of babyhood.
Through a small mouth that made things real.

days and days later

like a puzzle that has been wet in the rain
left just by glee when laughter ran inside and sprinkles started
like when later two or three days you think you may play that puzzle
pick up a piece and turn it round yr fingers
stiff from the sun
but shaped differently
and when you try and line the sides up
place the snap
they don't fit the same way they once did
they never quite will
because they are changed
they are

like tiny words that make you cry

I am at the moment obsessed with homing pigeons and the dreamy thoughts
that they carried thin slips of paper
with words
with messages
with secrets
and always knew their way home
from anywhere really
innate abilities

we always find our way home
to our nest
to our mate
to our place
even across snare traps and rocky terrain
we always know the way back to the arms that hold us
like it must have felt when our mothers did so many years ago
we always know how to get there if we just go
go
go

I dream like a carrier pigeon
and I shoot straight to you
straight to you
wings beat down and tired
but my message is here for you to read
like tiny words that make you cry

I have not even had the time to process blogher- it meant so much and yet life shook me right from there to here...anyhoo- PepsiCo and BlogTalkRadio gave me an interview and I wanted to share it with you if yr into it.
John Havens was brill and I got to meet the adorable Mommy Melee!

Get me delivered to yr email xo

grief is a circular staircase

been reading some old Linda Pastan and drinking far too many lagers
watching these siblings bond and find places to be
inside of their grief
crawling towards nooks and arms and memories
safe places that exist between the part of life that goes right on
and the insanity and blur of life being lived after someone just dies
not having siblings I find this particularly fascinating
I find this beautiful
and full of sadness
that is still and full
I try and float here
careful and helpful
trying to just fade into the backdrop of need
ready to catch a fall or come quick with a joke
and for a moment we all laugh with mouths wide open
able to forget just for a moment
what makes us find sobs in dark bedrooms
and in gardens bright with sun
and we all miss him
so much and in such different ways
but he is all around us
he is everywhere