"...and of better days from this town, we'd escape…"-My Morning Jacket

I'm home!


Man, I love my family, but nothing like spending 3 days with your loved ones to make you appreciate living alone again. My sister and her kids are staying with my folks. That's four adults to my sister's four beautiful little girls with all the eyes and energy of anime heroines. We were outnumbered. The youngest is so cute, she talks a lot, in a language only she and her sisters can understand. She calls my mom's poodle Ree-Roe. His name is Romeo. He responds to her; she's normally dropping food. He's not picky what you call him when there's food involved. He's spoiled anyway: my mom feeds him steak.


The last day, my youngest niece let me know it was time to go.


She hops on my leg for a half hour until I finished reading to the three others, then grabs a Disney book. Plopping it in my lap, she slips up beside me and says


"Uncle Rob, I find Beauty and the Beast slightly misogynistic and trite. Although the key character is female, she's treated disrespectfully. It's not until the third act that she's allowed to come into her own, and by then the damage is already done. As I young girl, I am unable to follow her a role model."


"But what about the furniture? They treat her well."


"That's just a hallucination of her Halcyon addled mind. It's obvious the Beast is drugging her and plans to keep her that way for the rest of her life."


"I see, but what about…"


When I start understanding her every word, it's time for me to leave. My sister is just stared at me like I'd lost my mind. That's possible too.


The memorial ceremony was nice. It was long enough to be thoughtful, but short enough to not become maudlin. The pews were full; many people already missed my grandfather. I was happy to see them all there. I figure if 5 people show up to my funeral, I'll stand up out of the coffin and wave. Sure they might pass out, but that's more people than I expect.


I did miss MyUnwife a little during the proceedings. I sat watching my uncles' wives comforting them as the priest gave the eulogy, and I wanted that. Not their wives to comfort me, but I missed having someone there for that. Despite all the mean nasty cruel things I say about MyUnwife, there were times she could be caring in just the right way. I miss that.


After the ceremony we went back to my grandmothers place. Walmart donated all the food we could ever need, and everybody ate laughed and remembered grandpa. He would have liked that. My dad and I sat in the back room, where he asked me questions about my divorce. He's great that way. He cares, so he starts asking all this qualifying questions. Not to change my mind or anything, just to make sure he understands what's going on, and by proxy, I understand as well. Yeah sitting over ham and cheese, Dad helped me work through a lot of things going on in my life.


When all the well-wishers went home, we did the same--after making sure things were picked up and good with Grandma. There, My sister showed me what Mom had done to all the photos of MyUnwife and I. She'd put stickers over all the faces of MyUnwife.


Family is great. They know what to do to make me smile.


You're the greatest, Mom!

Third box on the top

Oh yeah and that's my cousins. 4 feet on the ground.

Waiting for 21 gun salute

Today

Hey! I just got a few moments, thought I'd send a few pics from my
day. I'll try to post later if I can get the time. This is the view
from the chapel this morning.

Here at last

Refuel

Refuel and refresh on the Arizona border.

Crap, Late!

My computer broke this morning. Now I'm on the road!

"I have nowhere to go but home."-Eve 6

I'm fading.

I've been averaging 5 hours sleep per night since Wednesday, and my mind is slow cooking like a crock-pot roast. Now it's Sunday, and the clock says I'm in for more of the same. Yup. Just drop in a few potatoes and then peel the neurons back with a fork.

My friend from Phoenix left this morning. In a few hours, I'll drive out the same road he did. I wonder if I travel over his tread marks if it will be like sitting in the same car. Ok, of course not. That's stupid. It's good and tender in my skull.

That's one of the things I miss about MyUnwife. Not the tender skull, I miss riding in the same car and talking. Especially the trip to my folks place. That's a 6 hour drive, and even when we didn't talk, the silent companionship was all I needed. It was sort of like love by osmosis.

Other times we talked about the music on the radio, idiots on the road, or whatever crossed our path. A rabbit and a bird crossed our path the last trip. She took them both out. The rabbit almost got away. She swerved. She's nothing if not single minded. Her brain doesn't mush.

Other than animal target practice, our last trip was silent. It was Thanksgiving, didn't feel thankful. She felt mad. She told me later she felt like dividing our assets. I've told you this story, so there's no reason to scratch the scab. I think she smiled, pretending the wren wedged in the cars grill was me. I quickly removed him. I couldn't have her getting ideas.

"He was picking up the newspaper and I accidentally ran him over. Oh he rolled away when I pulled through the garage door, but I backed over his head. Problem solved. I mean, oops."

Yeah, good-bye mister bird. In reality, I do remember that she felt bad about the bird and rabbit. I also remember that my folks have a daybed with a trundle that we slept on when we stayed. Last time we went, the trundle was turned backwards so that the head of one bed was at the foot of the other. I turned it around so that we could "Sleep together."

MyUnwife shrugged, turned out the light and fell asleep. I remember the silence that night. She didn't feel bad about that. In fact, I'm sure she'd be happy to know that It affected me. That's one round she won.

This trip will be another. My last 10 years of trips to Prescott included her. This will be the first time in a long time I've gone back alone. Nobody in the car, nobody to come home to.

Wow! That sounds kind of pathetic when I type it out. That's what I get for cutting my sleep so short. The darker shadows seem so much longer when cast against heavy eyelids. That was the other thing about driving together. We kept each other awake.

Hey! That's what you can do! Call my cell. I've got a bluetooth headset, you can talk to me, just like you're in the car. I can babble about whatever crosses my brain, and we can sing to the radio. You can even tell my how bad you need me to pull into the next rest stop, and then you laugh when I do.

"Ha ha! Fooled you again!"

"You are so tricky." I'm also pretty punchy when I'm tired. I'll fall for anything. It's like shooting birds and rabbits in a barrel.

So, I'm going out alone. It may be tough, but I think the small furry critters will be relieved to hear that I'm doing it.

Now to get my next 5 hours of slee...

Translating my Life

So check this out. I was assembling a piece of Ikea furniture. We've all done that, but unlike you, I like to read the directions first. Oh, don't worry, I'm not going to follow them; I just like knowing what they think I should do. Sort of like a fall back plan should my assembly efforts fail. Thats when I discovered they wanted me to do more than I was prepared to do:



I've been told I have a split personality, but I've never had one recommended for throwing together furniture.

"I need a hammer."
"No I don't."

I'm not sure why this is supposed to work, but they think it works. Luckily I never follow directions...

"Does anyone remember here…"-Toad the Wet Sprocket

"She just hit you with a soccer ball, what are you going to do about it?"

That's what I hear as I'm sweeping the sand dunes from my driveway. The winds have subsided and now's the best time to get rid of the silt before the neighbor kids try to build sand castles. It's not a knock to their talent, I just don't need to give them something to hide behind. They're violent and they have soccer balls!

Kids resole issues the best way they can. When I was a kid, Jenny Gardner whipped me with a jump rope until I apologized. I don't even remember what I did, but I do remember the welts. She may have hit like a girl but she cracked a whip like a woman.

I think she grew up to be a dominatrix.

But that's not where I'm going with this. Things were simple then. That's what I'm trying to say. Now as adults we struggle and strain to draw things out. We've learned to enhance the pain, making it unbearable for everyone involved. That's the grown up way.

Maybe Jenny being a dominatrix is where I was going with this.

One thing hasn't changed: Pride and comeuppance are more important than forgiveness and mercy. We hurt and somebody must suffer. If somebody doesn't bleed, how will anybody know I was wronged?

That's divorce. It's adults in a courtroom sandbox flinging sand and kitty treasures at each other. Even the friendly divorce leave room for shin cracks with a baseball bat.

"Oh, I was trying to hand that to you."

"That's ok honey." I wait till you find the barbed wire on the toilet seat.

The problem is there's no playground monitor to make sure the adults play fair. We're expected to play nice because we're adults. Who thought that was a good idea? That's like my mom leaving my little sister to guard the cookies. She always got the good gigs.

Even MyUnwife and I had our little spats. She took my blender! You saw that. Well, not her taking my blender but you saw the tantrum. It was a good tantrum too. I could have done something nasty in return. I should have. It doesn't matter if it was an accident. I was wronged. Somebody must bleed.

How do we work around this? How do we find a way to be nice?

She hit you with a soccer ball, what are you going to do about it?

The passive aggressive warrior sees the ball as half the reason she'll get in trouble for something she didn't do, later.

Me? I'm done. I just want to take my ball and go home. But I can't. She's still got the stupid thing and it looks like she wants to play bombardment.

Yeah, things haven't really changed at all have they?

"Music Is My Aeroplane..."-RHCP

Dress shirt?

Check.

Socks and underwear?

Check.

Music?

Crap! I forgot to fill the iPod!

There's a rush and a scurry, and I'm not really sure why. I'm not leaving for Prescott until Monday. The memorial service is Tuesday. Nonetheless I'm little white wheel-mouse over not having enough music for a road trip. Call me futility.

I have satellite radio in the car. You think that would be enough, but no. In the old day's MyUnwife and I used to carry a grocery sack of CDs. The last time we did that, some lucky Vegas bellboy made off with that sack and our camera.

What you pack for Vegas, stays in Vegas.

MyUnwife used to tolerate my musical eccentricities. I think she knew that was one of those things. I'd spend the week before a trip plotting songs I might want to hear on the way. Towards the end, MyUnwife got pretty good at making sure to check the list for stuff she wanted to hear. She also got used to handling the superfluous stuff like sundries, shoes, and suitcases.

Now it's much easier. Click and drag, and I'm all good. Still need the suitcases though.

Last week I ripped tracks from some of my old discs; preparing for the funeral. I found that MyUnwife had stolen some of my music. Not as in she slipped a disc in her purse and ran off. More like there's stuff I can't listen to anymore. Disc that dare me to press play. I know I've discussed a few of these things, but this week I happened across a few that I would never have suspected.

The Cars first LP. I got that in grade school. By junior high, it was on heavy rotation. I still have the record but it's so crackly with over-use that even the Rice Krispy guys complain about the extra noise. Ok that was stupid. Sorry, I'm just upset.

I used to love the song, "Moving in stereo." Especially the way it flowed into the last track, "All mixed up." It's the perfect segue. It's so good, you don't listen to one song without the other. It's like, "We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions," you don't do it. You might as well cut the guitar solo out of "Freebird." The segue was so tight, it made me want to be a DJ so that I could blend music like that.

I tried playing it. I can't. Every time I hear it now I think of MyUnwife singing "Except for my shoes." Her and her shoes. Figures I'd remember that line in reference to my own Imelda Marcos. It's simple it's stupid, and it's her way of stealing my music. She sang! Not well, but that didn't matter, her voice covers my favorite songs, and not even a corkscrew can pull it out of my head.

She took other things too. She took the Motley Crue, but that was no great loss. I'll find a way to live without "The Looks That Kill." I kind of wish she'd grabbed the Bon Jovi while she was in there, but we only made fun of them anyway. I can still listen to them if I want.

If I want.

Jewel is persona non grata since MyUnwife moved out. Ok, not Jewel personally, she can come over any time she wants, she just can't bring her guitar, and no singing. Especially not that song. You know the one. She can read from her book of poetry while feeding me grapes though.

I'll allow that.

It's awful the way music attaches to people and events though.

I knew a woman who said she couldn't listen to Stone Temple Pilots anymore because of her grandmother's funeral. The song "Dead and Bloated," played to a less than subtle reality. I'm not sure if she gave up the whole band, or just the song, but either way, it seems like a loss.

Why do we feel the need to sacrifice treasures to memories like offerings on an alter? I don't remember God ever asking for songs, movies, or mental trinkets. Yet we still slaughter them and toss them on the flames, praying for their delivery, praying for his blessing, praying for our freedom, praying to silence the ghosts in our heads.

My head.

I want to give you an answer. I'd love to make a cute quip, slap it on as a band-aid and be done with it, but I'm bloated and floating here too. So many questions, so much music. So much loss.

I'm sorting my songs, and now I need a new stack: stuff she took. It's not fair. I loved a lot of these before she came. There are other's I get to keep. I managed to wrestle the old Cult tracks out of her memory's grasp. Good thing, I could use a "Love Removal Machine" about now, and it's a perfectly good road track. That's one point for the home team.