One little thing

Something went through my brain this morning...a scene from my past...and I was determined to write about it as soon as I could. Here. It was a little moment of a memory, but it was interesting as I hadn't thought about it in years.

But, of course, I forgot what it was.

I've been searching my brain, trying to remember, but it is gone until the next mental hiccup (I usually write "hiccough" but this time I didn't) when it comes up again.

Now, there's the pity.
At the time I thought about this event, I realized that it would make good blog. That it would enrich the reader and make me happy for posterity, as I do sincerely hope this blog never goes away...not like LiveJournal which is dead to me.
And I wanted, no, needed to share.

But alas, it is gone.

I don't know whether to blame chemo brain or descending dementia. I hope it isn't dementia as I wouldn't really like to burden my loved ones with that. I remember all sorts of stuff from lots of times before the cancer...but afterwards...sometimes I actually go blank.

Words are the worst. If I am near someone who knows me well, they usually can supply those pesky missed words that were in my head one second and the next, vanished...poof! Just like that.
I hate to be speaking and have that blank come and people look at me and wonder what the hell is preventing me from saying it...but it is gone. My grey matter blackboard is wiped clean.

It is very frustrating.

Though, yesterday, Karyn and I gave a talk to some lovely mystery writers. I didn't miss a step or a word. Everything came out smoothly. What was I talking about? Paranormal stuff, stuff I've known since before college...and that is a long time ago. But it was clear. I didn't miss a word. I even made some jokes that made sense.

So why am I forgetting so much stuff?
Herb told me today that last year he made leek and potato soup. I hope he did and I hope I liked it. I don't remember it at all.

My biggest fear is that this is really serious and I am on the verge of forgetting all the great and fabulous things in my life and only remembering those things that keep me awake at night, wondering why the hell I did what I did when I did it.
Or not remembering anything at all.

Gimme an ah-hah moment, please

From The Mermaid Arms

Sometimes two crabs would be feeding at the same time and both would come up together and continue to fight in the bucket. Scrabbling and scratching against the metal.  Gurgling and smelling like salt water and seaweed and…wet crabs. The girls happily pulled in crab after crab, going through all the bait quickly.  

When the bucket was full, Lee stood, rubbed his leg and stretched out the stiffness.  “This ought to please your mama and Posey,” he declared.  “Let’s pack up and go back.”

Sally got up and twisted a few times while Lulu looked over at the bucket once more and announced, “Yes, mama will be pleased.”

“You’re terrific crabbers! Wish we could take a picture of your catch. I bet your daddy would like to see how well you did today.”

The little one shot him a look he didn’t understand, though he never really could read her expressions.  Lulu’s chin lowered to her chest.

“Our Daddy was lost at sea. He’s in heaven with Jesus now.”

Lee had no words.  His voice choked in his throat and he closed his eyes at his stupidity. 

Can a person be gruntled if they can be disgruntled?

We were on vacation last week.
We were down the Jersey shore, one of my very best favorite places to be. It is there I got the idea for the Mermaid Arms story and I worked on it several times previously while there...we were in the same rental house we've used three previous times. It's a nice enough place, but it is showing its age and very little has been done to keep it up.

Anyway, I worked on the story that is being pieced together as I have mentioned about a million times before...following the timeline I wrote two years ago and tried to adhere to when the daughters helped me put all the pieces into one big file. Well, as I was reading, I came to two pieces of an event but could not find the first piece...the set up for the situation.
I searched, using those little helpful hints in  WORD like search and find.
Couldn't find it.
SHIT
It actually kept me up, trying to figure out where this part was. I had the file on the laptop, but it was missing the first bit, also. I checked and rechecked the hard copy I always carry with me and came to realize if it wasn't there, it had to be somewhere because I remember writing it!
Where was it?

Ah hah! Elyse had put all these little bits and pieces into a sort of junk pile that I had not sent to the laptop.

The minute I got home, I came upstairs, turned on the old machine and searched the junk pile.
I found it easily enough...the fourth segment attached to something completely out of sync...something I just kept writing on without thinking of putting it where it belonged.
STUPID MOVE on my part for sure.

But I have to say this now. I think there is something pushing me to stay away from this story. After the sickness and the resulting  broken legs and all that problem with them and not being able to get around easily, and all the other BS I've survived (infectious disease, breast incident, teeth, sleep test) I still have it in the back of my head that if I finish this story, I will die.

You know the story about the Winchester mansion. The builder's father made the famous rifles that were used to kill Native Americans, slaughter them, really, and used in the Civil War and to kill off the bison. She was told to build this huge house but never to finish it. The architects had to build in stairs that went nowhere, rooms with no floors, all sorts of traps to capture the spirits of the dead who were surely haunting her. If the house was ever finished, she feared she would die because the ghosts were sure to get her.

I kinda feel that way about this story.
It is rather frightening.
I've faced death far too many times to give up the fight, so this story may never ever be done.

Too bad. It's at least 3/4 of the way done.

I'm being silly, I know.

Religion and marriage

Opinion:
If I found out my husband was a rat bastard who lied and cheated on me and molested little girls, no matter what religion I had, I'd dump the guy so fast his dick would spin off.
What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.
Well, if it is the man who is putting things asunder, let God punish him, not the wife who has to look at the lying, cheating, fornicating, perverse asshole every day.
Or better yet, if she feels some sort of obligation to remain in the same house because of the kids, I'd make sure there were plenty of separate bedrooms and locks on the kids' bedroom doors with access windows for them to escape.

Or something.

I hate liars and cheats. I also detest grown men who lie and cheat. Worse yet, I hate men who think it is perfectly okay to have sex outside of their marriage.
What would they think if their wives strayed?
Or worse yet, what would they think if their wives had a profile on that cheaters' website and they were matched?

Yes, I like pina coladas, getting caught in the rain.
Just not caught with someone else in my bed.

Rant over for now.

Changing times

Congratulations to Cpt. Kristen Griest and 1stLt. Shaye Haver for making it through West Point and the Army Rangers' program. It couldn't have been easy.

How do I know?

A long time ago, I was in the Women's Army Corps. I was a WAC. They don't exist any more and I wasn't in long enough to do much damage. There were plenty of young women, strong, courageous, talented, intelligent young women who were in for a full enlistment. To them, I tip my hat.

Basic training back then was hard, though not as hard as it was for men during the Vietnam War era. I wasn't athletic, but it sure would have helped. Most of the women who were with me (150 of them) were as soft and girly as I was. The physical pain and endurance was hard. Staying awake all night and marching five miles with a full pack in one day was hard. Attending classes for hours in the Alabama heat. Crawling on your belly, getting tear-gassed, buttoning buttons and zipping all zippers, scouring toilets and polishing floors...I consider that hard.

What these two abovementioned women did was stupendous.

I was a WAC because there was no other way I could support the fighters though not the war. I had to prove to myself that I could DO something, not just sit around and complain or watch television news and wonder if that was my brother being blown up. (He was there.)

But as much as I admire these women, something inside me, the real inner me who is old and physically past any prime I nearly had, wonders if it is going to be worth it. Is it going to be worth being the two Rangers in a field of so many strong, brave, powerful men who in the long run will probably be physically more fit because they're made that way?
Once again, I am thinking of myself in their boots and that is wrong. So wrong.

I wish you both enormous luck and safe journeys. Godspeed.
I'll be praying for you.

Daddy and the Hundred Dollar Bill

It was the 50s, to be sure, possibly '57 after we got the Pontiac.
I think, unless I am disremembering, that we were going on vacation...somewhere. We went on vacation every year, even if it was just upstate NY to see Niagara Falls again, hoping against hope to see the colored spotlights on the falls. It never happened, even when Herb and the girls and I went there some years ago.  I must bring on the breaking of the spotlights. Lucky me.

Anyway, we were going to go away. Dad must have gone to the bank to take out some traveling money because he came back with this great smile he was capable of smiling, the one he practiced in the mirror.
Mom called it his "shit eating grin". I think that was an ancient Ukrainian expression because I never heard anybody else ever use it. Stands to reason. Ukrainian expressions tended to involve fecal matter or wishes for dread diseases. I digress.
So Daddy walks in the side door with his grin in place and calls my older brother Jack and me over, he has something to show us.
We're all excited because Dad was not the demonstrative type, not really. But that grin let us know there was something afoot.

He bends down and takes a $100 bill from his wallet.
We gasp!
This is more money than we had ever seen in our lives. Jack had a paper route and regularly made about five bucks a week from it. He was a wealthy, hardworking young man. I probably had never held a dollar bill in my short life at this time.
And here was Dad, showing off his hundred dollar bill!
He was rich!
We were rich by proxy or proximity.

I don't know what happened to the money, how it got spent, if it got spent or put into the bank. Maybe we visited relatives in Canada that year and gave it to them...I don't know. They didn't seem poor to me, but Mom always gave them stuff. They were refugees, I was told. They came here with nothing. They couldn't come into the US for some reason, not to live, but I never knew or understood why. Not that Canada isn't a nice country, but, really. I was a kid, full of Eisenhower and patriotism.

That would be the end of this little story except for a little footnote: While driving our brand new Pontiac with a huge engine on one of the president's new superhighways, Daddy floored the engine and we went 100 miles an hour for a brief couple of yards! I know because we leaned over the back of the front seat and saw the speedometer slide over the 100 mark.

Wow. Such a little thing, such little things were so cool to unjaded kids in the '50s.

Lee the ogre has an epiphany

     "Don't touch that!"
     Lulu and Sally jumped away from the guitar. Lulu's eyes rounded while her sister's immediately filled with tears.
     Lee stood framed in the doorway, scowling, looking down at the two girls who had edged away from the instrument.
     "Ah...no. Don't cry!" A sharp blade of guilt stabbed him.
The girls' reactions had ratcheted up to fat tears rolling down their rosy cheeks.
     He'd seen tears before. The little Italian kids, half starved and tattered, had rivulets of tears coursing down their dirty faces more often than not. At first, he had tossed chocolate bars and gum at them. After awhile, though, there had been so many damp faces, he realized no chocolate or chewing gum would make their world any better.
     Lee allowed his humanity to surface.
     "Two things," he said softly. "Two things are important right now."
     Lulu wiped her eyes, leaving a wet smear. Sally blinked several times and sniffled. Their expressions were ten times worse than any little Italian kid's.
     "There are two things you must know." He paused.
     Lulu looked up, wiped her nose again. "What two things?"
     Lee straightened, felt the cramp in his scar and chose to ignore it.
     "Thing number one," he began, "is that the guitar, this particular guitar, is  a very delicate musical instrument. It is not a toy. Only people who really know how to play a guitar should touch it. Gently. Carefully. Do you understand rule number one?"
     They nodded, solemn as a pair of tiny nuns.
     Lee choked back a chuckle and continued. "Rule number two: if you really want to learn how to play the guitar, meet me back here after supper and lessons will commence."
     Lulu scrunched her nose. "Is that a rule?"
     "Yes. Yes it is."