The Read-Through

It was 2004 when I first started my blog. That was at jenorama.blogspot.com  Then I got Moveable Type and a domain name and moved to jenorama.com. I found it difficult to blog there because the blog reminded me so much of my friend Karl, with whom I had originally started blogging. Karl passed away in August 2008, and it is the first time I have experienced a death that reverberates through my life even today.

I have recently been thinking about taking up blogging again, so here it is. I decided to return to this blog, because even though I chronicled taking care of my father until his death of melanoma in June 2011, it's been long enough (hey, I stopped blogging in about June 2011-- coincidence?) that I can write here comfortably. And I am tired of sprinkling blogs through the Internet.

One of the reasons I decided to start blogging again is that I have so much going through my head every day that I feel like my head might spin off if I don't try to get some of this out and organized. It's like my closet: I have clothes, but I don't know where all of them are all the time. So, I have been taking them out of my closet, laundry baskets, and drawers, and trying to organize them so I can dress for work more easily in the morning. It has actually been somewhat slow going, and this blog is going to be sort of like that.

I have also been inspired by my friend Bibi's recent return to blogging, too. I find myself looking forward to her updates, which is surreal, because I haven't really read/written blogs for quite some time. It seems like at one point we were all doing it, and then Facebook sort of eliminated the need to blog as a way to keep in contact with people, so gradually we all left off. And by "we were all" and "we all left off," I mean the five people I can think of who used to blog and now don't. I wouldn't want to generalize beyond that.

I left Kirksville in January 2011 to stay with my father in Utah during his illness, and so, not being in town, I didn't see very many people I used to see out and about.  But even after my permanent return to town in May of 2011 (I moved my parents here, and then my father died), I have been relatively reclusive. During my first marriage, I honestly did not know what it felt like to feel comfortable or happy in my own home. I remember Sam's first grade teacher telling me that she loved being at home so much, it was hard for her to leave. I really could not put myself in her place. But my life has changed now, significantly, and now I really would rather be at home than anywhere else. Even having to go to the grocery store really irritates me, though you wouldn't know it to run into me.

I'm a cheerful person. I am cheerful by nature. I joke around a LOT. I love to laugh. But I wouldn't say that I am a happy person or a content person.

Recently, I listed the ten most influential books on me, and I included Laura Ingalls Wilder books, Anne of Green Gables, and Little Women. Part of why I love these books is that they show people displaying incredible grace under pressure. And that has always been an admirable trait to me. However, I don't know that I am capable of grace under pressure. Sure, I'm capable of being polite, courteous, funny, compassionate, but I feel sort of broken. I have no ambition, and no hobbies. And very little interest in either. I feel like I am going through the motions of my life, but I haven't felt very engaged with it for years. Instead, I feel like I try to escape into my head so far that I'm not really left in the real world. I have recently gotten into the Red Hot Chili Peppers, so the line from "Can't Stop" iterates on repeat: "This life is more than just a read-through."

But I can't seem to get past the read-through part. I worry that I am wasting time, years, because I should be interested in more, doing more, participating actively in life more. The other day, I was smoking a cigarette outside of work (I have three jobs, and smoke at one because I have a pack of cigs to finish off-- I have, for the most part, quit and switched to my e-cigarette). One of my co-workers told me, "Aw, Jen, those are going to kill you," and I glibly replied, "That's the point!"

But I'm not really being glib. Life has been... difficult, crushing, abusive, good, ecstatic, complicated, up, down, whatever. But it hasn't really been all that. I find that it's like a movie or a book that I think is going to be really smart and satisfying and then I am left slightly unsatisfied and want to eat ice cream instead so I'll feel better. I worry that I will regret this attitude and my paralysis, my inactivity. However, then I think that even when I regret it, it won't be for long, because then I'll die and I won't have to worry about this crap anymore.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

So, I am driving down to Columbia today with Christian to go see his endocrinologist. We are having a great chat in the car, talking about lots of things. At one point, he asked me if it was bothering me that he was asking me so many questions.

"No, Christian. I'm your mother. You can ask me anything."

"Have you ever slept with a woman?"

"Yes."

"Wut."

"Next question."

Such is life without a wife or kids to do the dishes.

I think I don't know how to blog anymore. I once went from being a fairly open book as far as my life was concerned on these pages. Now, I am struggling to find things to talk about that are as interesting as what I don't want to talk about here.

The title of this post is something my grand, stately, elderly, frail, High School teacher Betty Hoyt Fuller used to say. That should jar a few of you :-).

Today, I had to get my car insured; my dad's insurance on it finally expired, so I got insurance, and will get it inspected on Friday and get new tags.

I have a cold that I can't shake because I stay up too late.

I had a birthday. I am older now.

Actually, here's one thing: Last week, I finally burned the 934-page grant that I worked on from roughly 2006 to 2008. I was telling my friend Chris that I was sitting there burning it in my fire pit in my back yard thinking, "No good came out of this grant. None. It exhausted me and broke my brain. I am still paying back taxes on it. I got a roof with it that needs to be re-done-- complete waste of money."

Chris looked at me for a second and said, "You got me."

And that is true. Chris noticed the desperation in my Facebook posts when I was struggling with the grant (even before Karl died), and would come over with a six-pack of cider and his motorcycle. He would hold out the drinks in one hand and the helmet in the other, and I would point to the helmet and say, "That first." Then point to the drinks: "Those after."

We had already known each other for six or seven years at that point, but we had slowly grown in different directions over the years, with hanging out turning into conversations in the Hy-Vee parking lot or the Dukum occasionally. That summer, we re-connected as friends, and we've been going strong ever since. So, it was nice to know that one of the best things in my life actually resulted from that horrid grant.

It still needed to be burned.

I am very much looking forward to summer. For me, summer begins Memorial Weekend when the lake opens for swimming. This indicates that the other lake (the one I actually go to) will also be warm enough to swim in. We will start heading out there for barbecues and swimming and letting our dogs run and swim.

Goldie is getting old. Her fur in her back and tail is hideous-- she seems to have eczema or some other, doggy form of psoriasis. She is ten now. Chris predicts she may pass during Sam's freshman year of college, which seems to happen with a lot of pets and college Frosh. Though, I think this past year with his grandfather dying will still have had a more significant impact. Tommy is the one who still enjoys and interacts most with the pets, though Goldie is definitely a large part of our family and household.

This time of year is marking some endings and some beginnings: Truman is out now. Sam is graduating from High School on May 27. Right before Memorial Day. Thomas is going to his first school dance with a girl on Friday night; he is wearing his father's suit jacket and needs a corsage. Christian is enrolled in Joseph Baldwin Academy, and will attend in July. Summer classes begin the first week of June, and I am teaching one of them. The one-year-anniversary of my father's death will be here in June, as will my court case for my divorce. It seems fitting that they will be within four days of each other. I am closing a chapter-- and have already been living in the new one.

Today, when I was looking for the car title, I had to wade through all of the letters and emails that people had sent to my dad when he was dying. I didn't linger, but it was jarring seeing his name so many times. Sometimes, it's easy to pretend that he's still out there somewhere. It's really odd not to have talked to him in   SO long. But I can still remember his voice and face and laugh like he is still here.

In the same title search, I ended up going through the folder of personal documents that D and I had shared in a filing cabinet his father made for him. I removed from the folder what was mine and the children's, and looked at a few pictures and cards there. Then I put them back in the folder, and taped up some boxes and started filling them with books.

This time of year is always more of my New Year's than anything in January. Out with the old, in with the new. Time marches on, and I'm still here. So it goes.

A Chance Gardner kind of week

So, today was interesting. Actually, there have been a few interesting things this week. I know that Kathy Howe is a big fan of when I use bullet points, so Kathy? This is for you.

1. Twice in the past ten days or so, I have gotten to sit in the co-pilot's seat of the little eight-seater Cessna that flies between Kirksville and St. Louis. Actually, I lie. I am not sure it's a Cessna.

It was a pretty fun experience. The first time I realized the seat was open and went scrambling into it, I said, breathlessly excited, to the very bored young pilot next to me, "I mean, how often do you get to do this?" (The answer, of course, being: Six times every day. Erego: bored).

I took some pictures. (You are hereby forewarned that this post is the result of insomnia. Therefore, there are massive amounts of pictures* here. But not a lot of words! Enjoy.)

*The pics were supposed to be larger. But I spent too much time inserting the pics into the code that organizes them a little bit neatly [read: When I first wrote this post, the amount of bandwidth it chewed up rivaled Finnegan's Wake in length.] to change that for this post. Fear not! If you suspect that any might strike your fancy, pop me a message and I will be happy to send you a larger one.

I have come to realize that my favorite thing to photograph is the sky. That is what most of my pictures end up being of:

But I don't want you to go thinking I'm a one-trick pony or anything. And I have completely neglected to tell you what was interesting about today. I had just gone running (4 miles) and showered and dressed when Christian sprung on me told me that he had an art open house he had to attend for school. 

"When?" Said I.

"Right now."

So, being the good sport I am (and having mostly jimbalaya in the dinner plans), without further ado, we hopped into the car and drove up to the local arts center. 

It was amazing. It will be up for two weeks. You should go check it out. Christian and I already want to go back. 

Portrait of a Young Artist

Himself's. He has inherited his mother's abilities in the visual arts. You may draw your own conclusions about that.

Finally (and, yes, I realize that I have abandoned all pretense of bullet points. Deal.), I had the surreal experience of walking past ayoung woman with no makeup and ponytail, very pretty, in Lambert airport Sunday. I thought, "Wow, that looks a lot like Elizabeth Smart." Turns out there was a good reason for that.

Me being me, I couldn't help approach her and say hello. I remembered at that moment that she was actually coming to Kirksville to speak at the Catholic student Newman Center. I did not realize that I needed to buy tickets ahead of time (because I am a moron), so I didn't get to hear her speak. But I know her story.

After meeting her, I sort of nodded to myself, because for all of the tragedy she has undergone, she strikes me as a very typical Utah, LDS young woman. I do not know if I can really explain what that means, except that even if I hadn't known her exact identity, if I had met and spoken with her, I could have told you that she was a Mormon girl from Salt Lake City. Something about  her accent, her clothes, the hair color (blonde on top, brown underneath), the clothes (casual, but very nice). She reminded me of some of my cousins. 

I never imagined, when I was walking into the grocery store near my parents' house about ten years ago, and saw signs about a missing teenager, that she would ever be safely recovered... let alone that I would meet her a decade later and speak with her.

Life? Is funny.

What, dear Reader, is funny with you?