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I’ve got a binder full of poetry.  I burned everything that reminded me of him.  I had a beautiful watercolor I painted with him in mind.  Two figures, encircling each other, more than just yin and yang.  I lost my favorite poem in that fire.  I sent it up in flames to forget, to let go.  Months later,  I looked into eyes that weren’t the right color.  It wasn’t his arms around me then; it never was.

Four years of self-torture, only to walk away like I could just pretend he never existed.  Remember that dream I mentioned?  The one that I didn’t want to share too many details about?  I saw him again in my dreams, like it was yesterday I last saw his smile.  And I reached to touch him and the world shifted.  He looked up at me and said, “Why did you leave me?”  My only answer was, “I had to.  Please understand.”  But, that’s just the dream.  With so many dreams, at what point does one have the chance to explore reality? 

How do you sit across the table from a man and say, “I’ve been here before.  Right here, just the two of us, time and time again.  Only, this time, I’m scared because it’s real.  And if I can’t smile, it’s not because I don’t want to, but because I’m facing my one and only fear.”

I sat there, watching him be him.  Drawing on the back of a receipt, when words just aren’t enough for a concept.  His eyes alight with excitement.  That’s the look I always lived for…

So, I walked into my fear with my head high and walked away laughing, but for what?  What I wanted was closure, one way or the other.  I told Wuss that I just want to move on… I guess I was hoping that I could walk away with either a beginning or an end.  I’m still stuck in the middle.  I get just enough to keep hope alive and not quite enough to really justify it.  How do you tell a man that for the past six years, you’ve been unable to have a meaningful relationship because you can’t stop dreaming about him and he won’t let you go one way or the other?

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The beautiful and illustrious Jane came over last night and helped me rescue a kitten trapped in my fence.  The poor baby had his hind leg stuck between two slats of the wooden fence and was just hanging around crying… We got him out, gave him some food and water and he rested in a carrier overnight.  This morning, I spent way too much of my time and money at the vet’s getting him x-rayed and tested.  Jane may or may not take him.  If she doesn’t, I’m hoping someone else can take him in.  I am going to arrange to have him neutered, but I don’t think I can pay for the vaccinations… Is anybody interested if Jane can’t take him?  He’s between 7 and 8 weeks old and I think I’ll be able to socialize him fairly quickly.  He’s already stopped hissing everytime I get close and he even purred for me earlier today!  I’m going to bathe him tonight and will give you a picture if you want to know more. 

Oh, and I’m trying to decide on a name.  So far, there’s the classic “Lucky” option.  I’ve also considered “Trois”, as in the number three in French.  You know, cause that’s how many legs he’s got working for him right now…  Of course, it’ll be only a matter of days before that changes.

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So, Burger King is doing this Campaign for Your Cause to support local groups.  My sister emails me this and asks me to please go vote for City Park.  One can hardly object to this cause. 

City Park suffered a lot of damage from the storm and has been having a lot of trouble bouncing back.  I went out to the golf course a few weeks ago.  It looks more like a forest with broken down paved paths now that a golf course.  It’s certainly beautiful, but not what it was intended to be.  Many of the other park services are operating on limited budgets still and there’s still a ton of cleanup left that they just don’t have the money for.

 So, I forgot about it for a few days and then she sends me a gmail message: Did you vote for City Park today?  Then… I look at the results.  Now, I have nothing against private schools for wealthy girls, but I really don’t think that their need is greater than City Park at this time.  Please go to http://www.campaignforyourcause.com/ and click Vote for New Orleans and vote for Friends of City Park.  You get one vote per day, so please try to go back every day.

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While I was up in Dallas, one of those good looking Tyler Guys gave me a copy of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.  Sometime during Chapter IV, I became hooked and I’m having trouble putting it down.  Darn you, Wuss!  I have things to do! 

I have a small problem with this book.  It’s not the contents of the book troubling me, but some images from another book… I KNOW that I have read a book (or story) which unabashedly references this book, even going so far as to have the characters talk about the book.  One of the characters has a building made and places a statue of Atlas in the lobby or atrium or some other large central room…  Only, I can’t for the life of me remember what this other book is.  Every page I turn, I can see quick flashes of images from this other book, but I can’t remember names of characters or places.  Can anybody help me here?

Some of the images I can see are:

In the opening scene, the main character is on top of the tallest building in the city.  He is at the highest point of the building.  Something tells me that this building is his.  He is looking out upon the city as if he owns it or is preparing to own it all.

At some point, there is construction (for his grand building?) and there’s something about a bomb.  This bomb is cylindrical and rolls along something, but why?  Does it go off?  I can’t remember…

There are only vague images in my head, like it’s a book I read half awake many years ago.  I really want to know the name of this book so that I can get a copy (or find it on my bookshelf) and read it when I’m done with Atlas Shrugged.  Plus, I need to buy a copy for Wuss…

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For some reason, a lot of people down here seem to be reprocessing our “collective experience” with each other lately.  This might be because there are some new guys at work and part of the process of “getting to know” each other’s stories means we have to share this part of our lives with each other.  Everybody has their “story” that we share with new friends, but in our cases, there’s a shared story we can all relate to.  I think part of this reprocessing is that so many people are finally detached from it enough that it becomes a little easier to process.  We can relive it without quite smelling it again…  We can laugh at it now.

I was chatting with one of the Tyler Guys on Tuesday when he asked for a refresher on my timeline of moving in relation to The Storm (kinda like He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named or something).  Plenty of guys up there asked me for bits of my “story”, but for some reason, this one conversation changed my view of it dramatically.  He didn’t ask for nearly as much detail as some of the others (ahem, Mike).  It was really a rather simple question.

“How long had you been back when it happened?”

“A month.  Very nearly to the day.”

“Wow.  What bad luck.”

I nodded.  Yes.  Bad luck.

But, it made me think about my reasons for moving back and why it is I’m “done” with this city now.  I think, in many ways I had to come back in time for it.  I think I had wonderful luck to go through this. 

Most of you know that I went off to boarding school for my junior and senior of high school.  What you probably haven’t thought about his how this means that I pretty much moved out of my parents’ home at the age of 15.  Sure, I went home one weekend a month and I had three summers with them afterwards, but those weren’t exactly pleasant times.  I left my family in the middle of a crisis.  In many ways, I felt I abandoned them to pursue my own opportunities.  Then, I come back 11 years later just in time to be with them through this crisis.  I think that’s why I came back.  Now, the crisis is over and it’s time for me to pursue what I need for me again.

To quote our Grandpappy, “I’ve always known it was just a matter of time…”

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So, I took this trip up to Dallas for about a week.  It really gave me an interesting perspective on where I’ve been in the last two years and where I’m going, etc.  As happens all too frequently, my greatest moment of inspiring self-observation came in the airport.

I was standing in line B waiting to board flight 2182 when I noticed this perfectly manicured woman sitting near me.  In her lap was one of those magazines that is full of pictures of celebrities and what they’re doing wrong with their wardrobes and love lives.  While I’m looking at this woman and her french pedicure, I can’t help but compare myself to her (women are conditioned to do this, I think).  Should I spend more time on my makeup?  Should I go to the beauty parlor to have my hair done more often?  Am I enough of a “woman”?  Then, I look in my hands at my book, laugh and think, nah, I think I’ll stay this way.  Surely, something must be said for a woman who’s inclined to read The Elegant Universe in the airport…  And it’s probably not, “I can’t believe her toenails haven’t been painted in the last week!”

No, I will never be the kind of woman that other women compare themselves to and say, “Do I waste enough time looking good?”  I’m OK with this…

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This morning I noticed that the FEMA trailer is gone from my neighbor’s front yard.  My block is now empty of FEMA trailers and blue roofs.  I gave a little cheer and did a little sitting jig in my car.

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Last night, I had this incredibly emotionally intense dream involving yellow shirts, foot rubs and jungle gyms.  OK, those are just the amusing images from the dream, I don’t want to bore you with the emotional details.  At the end of this dream, I was faced with being physically seperated from Z with no way to get back to him.  I could see the door I needed to go through to get to him, but getting there was impossible and I knew it.  I woke at 5:20 with this sense of dread and loneliness at not having him, along with all the other emotional images in this dream.  I remained in bed, trying desperately to get myself back to sleep, knowing that sleep was a long way off…

About 10 minutes later, Z came in and said, “Mom, I don’t think I can get back to sleep.”

So, I did what any good mom would do… rolled over and mumbled, “You want to get in bed with me?”

The simple act of scratching his back and soothing him back to sleep lulled me right back into my own sleep.  Now, that is comfort…

So, this morning, I ask him about the dream he had that woke him up.  “It wasn’t a dream.  It was Emily.”

It turns out that the cat got in his bed and annoyed him awake until he got out of bed and joined me.  Smart kitty.

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This morning, I found a treat from a stalker on my front door.  The remains of a bird, with the insides and apparently tasty bits missing.  The result would make a fine headdress piece…

Somewhere out there, I have a four legged, five pointy ended friend who’s trying to get my attention…

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Some of you may have heard about Drunk Donna, the crazy lady who lives down my street.  She’ll walk by my house at 8am on a Saturday drinking a beer on her way to the shop a few blocks away for more beer and smokes.  For the most part, I consider her amusing.  She adds.. uhm.. color to the neighborhood.  She’s mostly harmless.

One afternoon she stops to chat (with a drink in each hand and a cigarette dangling from her mouth) about this, that and a little more of this.  She mentions some guy with blonde hair and blue eyes who stopped to talk to her about me.  He’s been checking me out, wants to know more about me.

“What guy?” I ask.  “I don’t know which one you’re talking about?”

“He’s always walking by here.  Lives a few blocks that way.”  She gestures with a drink, spilling some on her wrist and onto my driveway.

“Is he riding a bike?  Walking a dog?”

“No, no.  He’s just walking.”

“When?”

“All the time.  When you’re leaving in the morning.  When you come home from work.”

Now, despite the fact that this seems kinda creepy, I have to ask the obligatory female question…

“Is he cute?”

“Giiirrrrlll… He’s fine.”

Well, weeks go by and I make a few jokes to some friends about the hot duck in the road (three days one week, there was a duck hanging out in my street right by my driveway), even a few about invisi-stalker.  Then, Steve shows up next door.

My neighbor is trying to sell his house, but there are all sorts of little things to be repaired.  His dad is in the hospital, all sorts of drama… So, Steve informs me.  This is why Steve has offered to come over and help fix up a few things.  Within 10 minutes of introducing himself, he makes sure he informs me of the custody battle raging between him and his ex-wife (with some colorful language just for fun).  I have since met his son.  I have never seen an 8 year old who looked so prepared to join the Third Reich.  Bright blonde hair in a buzz cut just like his dad’s, bright blue eyes, camoflauge shorts, white wife beater and a expression that tells me I can F off!

I now see Steve every time I leave or return from work…  It’s really kinda creepy.

 Oh… and, he’s so NOT cute!

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