Happy Birthday!

My blog is a year old this week, hence the really scary cake. And what the Hell is that cake trying to communicate to us? I love it! Just ridiculous enough for me to say, yup that looks like my kind of gif! (the freeze frame doesn't do it justice, see it here)

I don’t have much to say today except thank you to my invisible friends, real life family and real life friends who stop by my blog and read it. I’m honored and touched every time someone says,”Hey, I read your blog this week and I thought. . .” I do the Sally Field thing in my head: “they like me they really like me!”

It’s been a weird week: I got it in my head I needed a break from the Chaos of the Fifth Circle Of Hell and worked a couple of night shifts. Just enough to screw up my circadian rhythm and make me appreciate I don’t have to work nights. It didn’t help that after Night 2, Bob the builder was crushing concrete about 30 feet from the side of the house, shaking the house and my precious perennial garden. I didn‘t bother to go to bed until about 4:30 that afternoon. Once upon a time I could sleep through anything: including having a roof installed directly over my head while I slept off a night shift. But that was 22 years ago. I seriously slept through our bungalow roof being stripped of shingles. The noise was steady enough it became white noise. What I couldn’t sleep through, nine years later was a two year old poking me in the forehead with his wet thumb saying: “Mommy UP! NO SLEEPING.” The Beav is still a post night shift buzz kill. He called the second I shut my eyes Monday evening to lecture me about NOT taking something to the post office.

I’m pretty shy about telling people I keep a blog. When they ask me what it’s about and I say ’stuff’, I get the baffled blink. What I should say, “It’s a place I can vomit my feelings and insights and goofy humor without being interrupted.” Sometimes that‘s all this place is, a big ole’ vomitorium. aren’t you glad I didn’t find a gif for that? I confess I looked for one but my 48 year old brain shushed the 12 year old so I didn‘t post either of them. Besides, I couldn’t decide which would be less offensive: Stan from Southpark just sort of letting bile run out of the corner of his mouth; or a smiley that turns to the side, pukes what appears to be a piece of bacon and then turns back to face the reader flashing us a big smile. Which is actually hilarious is you’re a nine year old but I hope there aren’t any nine year olds reading because my sailor mouth gives this blog a NSFW rating. I could change the title to Edgyjunecleaver’s Vomitorium. Or not. Because, ick.

I’m probably not going to blog next week because I’ll be working until the minute I leave for the airport for my high school reunion. I’m pretty nervous about going: I’m not the same person I was ten years ago. About the only thing that’s the same is my gender and my political affiliation. But if it’s boring or I am overwhelmed with shyness I’ll just hang in my hotel room or go home to Dad’s. The last two reunions have been a blast and completely without drama (as far as I was concerned if you experienced drama at either previous reunion, for the love of god, email me and dish about it!) This trip to Texas is going to be bittersweet because Dad has decided to sell his house and move to a different part of Texas. Except for a semester of college and the summer after I graduated I never lived in that house but it still remains the place I call “home”. Which is ridiculous because I’ve lived here for twenty-two years and haven’t lived there since 1984! I suppose it’s home because it’s where my parents lived. So now a different part of Texas will be home? But it won’t be because I haven’t lived there since I was four. Oldest Friend has written several essays which deal with feeling homeless and wandering. She was an army brat and her parents continued to move every few years after her father retired. She refers to herself as a wanderer and she has indeed continued to wander as an adult; living on the other side of the globe. Her parents last home was the city where we met. It’s a place that haunts me because this is the place the façade of my safe little family began to erode. According to OF, our “raw suburban houses were without soul”. Twelve years ago, I returned to the neighborhood after her mother’s funeral. The trees had grown and the edges were softened but the souls acquired were sort of desperate and sad; like the mesa that once surrounded them. That the city is perhaps one of the ugliest on Earth doesn’t help with the whole emotional subtext, either. The only other place more repulsive than Albuquerque is Lubbock Texas. And I can’t get away from Lubbock because I dream about it. And I’m dreaming about I more because I’m working a story set in Lubbock. It is rare I dream of Albuquerque. Thankfully my parents didn’t settle there; I would have felt without roots long before now.

I can’t imagine how my father must have felt this past year; his house being a sort of monument to my mother. Gah, I would have sold it last November but he is sensible and waited to be sure he was ready. The only reason I’m not ready is I’m hopelessly sentimental. It’s just a simple house in a quiet and humble neighborhood. It isn’t like they lived there from the time they were married until my mother died. My family wandered until the early seventies and I in turn wandered for ten years until I settled--purely by default--where I am now. I know the attachment rests in the fact my adolsesnce was spent in North Texas with all those rights of passage. I guess my definition of home is where the most important rights of passage occurred. My only right of passage in San Antonio was my birth. (insert groan or guffaw here, your mileage may vary on the pun)

We are planning on moving back to Texas after Beav is finished with high school but this sentimental bent to my personality leads me to waffling about ever leaving here. I’ve been here almost half my life and I’m contemplating leaving late in mid-life to start another life. I’m compelled to leave because I despair over winter and the cost of living is much higher here than it is in Texas. But are my sentimental feelings cloaking a fear of making a decision? I’m not one of these people who travels in a big posse of friends so it‘s not like the going away party would be at a hotel with caterers to accommodate all the well-wishers and friends. Trust me this absence doesn’t bother me because the idea of a huge posse of friends exhausts me on a core level. But I do have enough history with this city I can experience three degrees of separation. It’s a cozy feeling for me when I‘m out with a friend for coffee or whatever and we run into someone we both know who knows someone one of us knows but the other is meeting for the first time. However, this kismet is something I’m likely to miss out upon if I leave because I’m just introverted enough it has taken years for me to achieve this sort of thing. Besides that, the place I live is a small town wrapped up in a big city package. Where I want to live is much bigger. My other consideration is my boys. If I moved would I be taking the roots with me? Would my sons feel homeless if I left here? Fortunately, I have four years to beat this with a stick. I just hope my tiny cadre of readers comes along for the ride.

Thanks for reading. Thanks for being my friends. Happy birthday blog!