free associate (by which I mean random gibberish that NO ONE should read) on:“Always a Woman” by Billie Joel, “Meet Virginia” by Train, “3AM” by Matchbox Twenty and “Layla” by Eric Clapton

Have I mentioned that you shouldn’t read this?

I can’t begin to tell you how little I want to do this one.  I’m just doing it today because I’ve been music obsessed and I want to check this one off while I have no creativity at my disposal.  I do happen to think Always a Woman is a beautiful song, full of sadness and wisdom.  I don’t like that Train song all that much.  3AM is catchy.  Layla is Erica Clapton and that’s pretty much what it has going for it, in my opinion.  Aside from not being so wild about all these songs, I think the theme is one I’m not that eager to address- mostly because it hits so close.  Women are complicated: hard to understand, impossible to please, a study in opposites.  To recognize this in myself makes me uncomfortable. To change seems an insurmountable mountain of a task. (Perhaps men are just as nuts, but since I’m not living inside a man’s head, it doesn’t worry me so much.)  Speaking of being inside heads, the radio station I listen to in the morning plays this great little special thing called “one minute inside a woman’s head”, which never fails to amuse me.  Apparently it’s on a bunch of stations.  I thought about linking it, but that required more thinking that I currently have the capacity for.  So google it your own self, you lazy bums.  Anyhow, yea.  It is random in there.  To divert your attention, here’s Billy Joel.

You know what?  I don’t want to meet Virginia.  Who the heck isn’t lonely at 3AM?  Maybe always being a woman isn’t really a compliment, so now I’m a little annoyed at BJ too.  How dare he judge me?  The best part of Layla has always been the end where it gets softer, gentler, more lyrical.  Maybe he’s gotten over Layla or maybe they’ve consummated their love or some such.  But it’s definitely not so frantic.  Not so hard to listen to.

I don’t feel like putting together anything that is well-thought out.  So here are the lines from the songs that spoke to me with some lovely commentary.

She never gives in, she just changes her mind.  Duh.

She’ll bring out the best and the worst you can be. This is true too, isn’t it?  Where would they be without us?  Wearing ugly shirts and sitting around with their hands down their pants.  

She can ask for the truth, but she’ll never believe you. No matter how many times you tell her.  No matter how true it is to you.

She hides like a child. And I’ll cry too, if it helps.

You catch her stealin’ she won’t confess. Do not bother me with those facts.  Irrelevant.

She wants to be the queen.  I don’t really wanna be the queen. You think what I want is what I really want?  How ridiculous.

It’s all gonna end and it might as well be my fault. If it’s going to end anyhow, I might as well have it end on my terms and the sooner the better.

The rain’s gonna wash away what I believe in. This one is actually kinda deep.  Because a little trouble can easily divert from the chosen path. 

She’s got a little bit of something, it’s better than nothing. I dated a guy briefly in college and he asked me if I was going out with him just to have someone to go out with.  I hadn’t realized this was true.  Felt like a shit, for sure.  He didn’t ask again.    Spouse wants to know if I went out with him just for someone to go out with.  No.  He had a car.

You’ve been running and hiding much too long, you know it’s just your foolish pride. Pretend so you don’t get hurt.  Makes perfect sense to me.

Honestly, only a woman would think this the most romantic song on the planet (or in this blog today).  “I’ll wear out the words I love you.”  if “I ever get the nerve to say hello in this cafe.” 

I warned you not to read it.

metaphoric sonnet.  aka So Not June

It was about this time two years ago that I interviewed for the best job I’ve ever had.  It was a couple months later before the lady I was covering finally left for her surgery.  So it hasn’t been quite 2 years yet.  Duh.  I’m blessed to work with kids in a situation where I get tons of hugs and don’t have the stress of being in charge.  The biggest part of my paycheck is the hugs, which doesn’t put food on the table, but does feed my soul nicely thank you.

Three months with those kiddos was enough to make me fall in love with them.  I still get greetings and hugs from some of them even though they are big 3rd graders now.  In that class, there was an adorable boy with curls and big brown eyes who had lost her father unexpectedly early in the school year.  While I was there another boy, more in space than on earth, lost his father too.  And a third boy, an ouchy kind of kid and the younger brother of one of my daughter’s classmates for more years than not, had his mother diagnosed with breast cancer.  I was so worried for her.  Watched her lose her hair.  Watched him get a little more withdrawn.  Wished that he was a kid who liked hugs and prayed, as much as I do, that he wouldn’t lose his mother.  There were three boys, they couldn’t lose their mother.  I saw her recently.  She looks great. 

I work at the same school my kids go (and went) to and we live very close.  So I did a lot of walking to and from.  When spawn was young, with a stroller carrying little loud one.  I saw the same people day after day.  Knew which mother went with which kid.  Watched a beautiful woman bring her kids for years.  They were car people, but I still saw them.  Then one day, I looked at her and I knew.  She was wearing a wig.  I paid a little bit of attention, this was her second round of breast cancer treatment.  Then one day, she wasn’t there driving the girls to school.  And she never was again.  I think this happened the year LLO was in 3rd grade.  Because I saw LLO’s teacher, who was a horrible match for her, out and about in town with the younger daughter of this woman who she’d had in class the previous year.  Obviously close to her and loving to her.  (Which she never was to my daughter.  Granted, my daughter didn’t need it as much.) 

My daughters are friends with a pair of sisters. They’ve been friends forever.  Probably 8 years- the older girls were in 1st grade together.  Several years ago, do forgive my inability to remember dates (and I’m certainly not going to ask), their mother was diagnosed with breast cancer too.  Thank God that it was caught very, very early.  And she was and is fine.  In fact, she was so very fine that the discussions we had had much more to do with the re-inflation of her tatas than the course of her treatment. 

It hits even closer to home too.  When I growing spawn, I was also growing a tumor.  It was played as nothing while I was “increasing”.  But 3ish months after she was born, I finally did the follow-up and the speedy quick action of getting surgery scheduled should have given me a clue.  It didn’t.  April 1, no joke, spouse found out that it was cancer.  It wasn’t until the next afternoon that I did.  Again, the shell-shocked look on his face should have been a clue.  But what the heck, I was on good drugs and good and sleep-deprived to boot.  And I would have clocked out of life for a while, I’m sure of it, except that I had the most beautiful baby in the world.  And she needed her mother and I needed her.  The good news, of course, is that if you have to get cancer (and why in the heck does cancer even have to exist?), thyroid cancer is the one to get.  It’s slow growing stuff and radioactive iodine doesn’t hurt a bit.  You just can’t be around people for a few days.

So, yea.  I have a knee jerk reaction to cancer.  It sucks.  It attacks people who didn’t deserve it.  Kills people who are needed. 

Yes, some things are better left unsaid, unshared.  But I married into a family with the motto, “nothing goes without saying”.  Either I’ve been converted or I fit it perfectly well all along.

Write something incorporating the clause (as a sentence or otherwise), “The streets were the distilled grey of Athena’s eyes, clouds gathering over an impatient sea.”

Spouse said:  trippy and are you sure you need a box of wine?  I snorted.

There’s a place in my head right now.  I can’t get it out.  I don’t think I’ve ever been there or ever seen it.  Although maybe I have seen it.  When I’m watching time pass me by at places with fancy cable, we do watch some riveting house shows.  And cooking shows.  And really horrendously stupid musicals like Anchors Aweigh or something like that with Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra in which the best part of the show was the title song played at the end of the movie which happens to be the song the band plays when our high school football team scores a touchdown.  Anyhow.  I digress.  Slightly. 

The place.  It’s heaven.  On earth.  This huge place on the side of a hill overlooking everything. Trees and sky and more trees and more sky and color and peace.  And it’s filled with windows floor to ceiling, side by side, wall to wall.  And where there isn’t window there is soft colored wood, the color of what is it the color of?  The color of sunny sand.  The color of newly baked white bread just barely done. The sun is always shining in the daytime and the sky is always blue.

And it’s quiet.  So quiet I can hear nothing.  But it’s not empty or lonely.  In fact it is very full.  It’s full of thoughts and touching.  A place where if you need someone to listen to you, someone will.  Maybe even without words penetrating the air.  And if you need silence it is there for the taking.  And if you need someone to touch your shoulder or your heart, there is someone there to do it.  Without asking.  If you need someone to tell you the answer, you just close your eyes and the answer comes.  If you need laughter, you have but to open your eyes and see it.  If you need to cry, the tears come without pain.  If you need a smile, it comes through the air.  And a feeling of connectedness.  Like everyone you have ever needed or will need is right there.

(this song was delivered to me this morning by serendipity)

………there’s plenty of room.  Come on over.

can’t help feeling this one.