100 Things About Me – 2009

1) I am peaceful,
2) Well maybe not if you’re one of my exes.
3) I’ve been eyeing a solar water fountain for my new garden since last summer
4) It is the only thing I wanted for my birthday
5) Well, except chocolate and that is a given.
6) I got a lot of truffles and a chocolate bear for Valentines day.
7) Let’s just smear them on my hips, that’s where they will end up.
8) For years, really years, I’ve only drunk Celestial Seasonings’ Bengal Spice
9) Now suddenly adore their Apricot Peach Honeybush,
10) A box of Perfectly Pear White tea is waiting, patiently to be opened.
11) What, suddenly at 53 I am embracing change again?
12) What’s that all about?
13) Wow, I didn’t come to snakes until number 12, that may be an improvement.
14) I have a freakish memory
15) When I was a child… er an older, I would make myself fall asleep by naming all the kids in my childhood neighborhood
16) House by house, street by street.
17) My favorite place to be is in my hot tub
18) Watching the stars
19) Hey, I didn’t say these were all facts you don’t know about me.
20) I am annoyed at the people who are perpetuating this economy
21) In the mean time I’ll keep shopping.
22) I have a Bassett,
23) He was named after a mellow, folksie music guy, Arlo
24) There are moments I hate him (my dog, not the folksie music guy) – which makes me cry
25) Really, he is incapable of being house broken,
26) He’s a retaliatory pisser.
27) I’m still not a vegetarian
28) I have begun liking my steaks pretty darn rare,
29) I will refrain from sticking Arlo on a spit and roasting him.
30) My dog, not the folksie music guy.
31) There are moments that I really miss my dad
32) He once put electric wire in his house because his dog couldn’t be house broken
33) He too, was a retaliatory pisser
34) It must run in the family.
35) I love the frosting on bakery birthday cakes,
36) And those really good mini cupcakes you can buy these days.
37) But we should just smear those on my butt too.
38) Despite the butt, 53 isn’t too bad so far.
39) BTW Natalie’s birthday is Tuesday.
40) Thank God my butt size is much smaller than my IQ.
41) Have you noticed there are fewer people who blog consistently over their out put of last year?
42) Sad, to paraphrase a folksie dude, “Where have all the bloggers gone?”
43) Being at peace with myself translates in to boring
44) I don’t mean to be boring, I just don’t get out much
45) I love it at home, with Ducky.
46) The last movie I saw in a movie theatre was Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull
47) I think the last movie before that was Second Hand Lions.
48) I told you I don’t get out much.
49) For vacation this year I think we are going to Vegas
50) a reunion of sorts for the people from my childhood neighborhood
51) You know how I say friends are gifts we give ourselves?
52) This year I gave myself the gift of renewed friendships
53) Such as Pammy, the girl who grew up the street from me
54) People are songs to me
55) Pammy is three songs: Angel on my Shoulder, Something Stupid, and Never On A Sunday.
56) And I am lucky she doesn’t remember what a bitch I was as a kid.
57) Last summer I put a courtyard around our hot tub.
58) This summer I have to pull it up and redo it….
59) There are so many waves in it you could hang ten on the south forty.
60) Last year I started a Teen Volunteer program at our local hospital
61) Five months later I may have our first teen volunteer
62) The speed of some progress is five slph (slug lengths per hour)
63) I may give up patience as my only virtue.
64) I am addicted to over the counter sleep aids.
65) Sad, but true, and I’m not likely to kick the habit soon
66) Addiction free lack of sleep is highly overrated.
67) I can get more work done on a Saturday air-shift when no one is there
68) Than in a whole day at work Monday through Friday.
69) Again folks, my name yelled loudly does not mean, “Come here quick my computer in put isn’t out computing.”
70) I cut my own hair
71) I burn out on hobbies
72) Except gardening, it appears.
73) My favorite flower is the Nasturtium and all it’s viney glory.
74) Jane Austin rocks
75) So does Duffy, Jason Mraz, and Five for Fighting
76) But Crosby, Still, Nash, and Sometimes Young
77) Is my favorite group
78) Followed by Cat Stevens.
79) I buy a minimum nine boxes of Girl Scout Cookies a year
80) One for each year I was in scouting
81) My favorites are Samoas.
82) I once had a monkey.
83) I phone flirt (everyone tells me so.)
84) I love deeply and forever
85) I can’t hold a grudge
86) Crap, I don’t want to hold a grudge.
87) I do at least two Suduko puzzles a day
88) Sometimes up to five or six
89) My best friend in childhood was my radio
90) As a child my half of the bedroom was immaculate; my sister’s really, really not so.
91) Today she is a better house-keeper than me.
92) Once, long ago, I was a negative personality
93) Not anymore (thank you husband number two)
94) Now I strive to always be cheerful and glorious
95) Some people find this grating – others love it.
96) You can’t please some people at all
97) But I still try.
98) In my fifties I am becoming a clothes horse
99) But all my shoes are still black
100) except my moccasins.
101) Wow, I only mentioned snakes once, that is truly progress.

Sith,
Cele

Talk Thursday - Bail Out

Talk Thursday: Bail Out

Through out my childhood there was always an inboard boat in some stage of construction jutting out of the garage; my father’s blueprints either tacked up to the wall or laid out on his draft board. On occasion my dad would let me sand on a section of fiberglassed hull or hold a board while he nailed or screwed it into place.

My dad’s boats are twined deeply into the good memories of my childhood. There’s a few bad memories too, like when my eldest brother, Butch wrapped me up in a sheet of fiberglass. Or the time I popped the clutch on my dad’s VW sending it into the garage, just left of the bow…umm, through the closed garage door.

And of course there was the time during the summer between sixth and seventh grade when we went Bonita fishing off Dana Point closer to Catalina. You know the heart of shark infest waters between mainland and the Channel Islands. My cousin Lenny (who from here on out will be called Snakeboy- for reasons not revealed in this adventure) lived with us, and he and Butch were the two who usually got to go fishing with my dad on the Sea Horse. But for some reason my dad allowed me to go along one Saturday morning.

Major, but applied digression. My baby brother had died the day after being born that June; suddenly family time was important. My mom has always said things happen for a reason, David’s arrival and departure from our lives was a family cementing for me. I distinctly remember weekends Pinecone and I spent with my dad camping, motorcycle riding, hiking, and fishing, while the boys spent the weekend with my mom learning the finer arts of cafeteria dining, miniature golf, or roller skating. The following weekend we’d swap parents. Those are cherished, focused times for me.

I distinctly remember leaving San Pedro that morning while it was still dark, the heavy tang of salt scenting the air, the harbor clock striking the quarter hour, motoring past the Queen Mary and feeling miniscule in comparison. We stopped to gassed up and buy bait at the breakwater before heading out to open water. The ocean was relatively calm and my father opened the hatch so we could stand up in the bunk and let the wind and spray hit us in the face as we made out way out to sea.

Dawn was breaking over the horizon when we first saw the flying fish off our bow, seemingly keeping up with the Sea Horse as we flew over the waves that morning. Flying fish made me search for dolphins in front of us, sadly I never saw one. Those first two hours were fantastic. Then we stopped so we could drop lines and begin fishing. I remember baiting up, letting my dad show me how to cast and being envious because Butch and Snakeboy could do this themselves. Then we sat, and the ocean rolled, and I heaved, and heaved, and heaved again. Someone, with a kindly heart gave me saltines to settle my stomach… I’d call my aunt Dot a bitch if I didn’t love her so much.

Note to the Unwared: Saltines and Seven Up do not settle your stomach on a rolling sea, it just gives you more to heave…

A lifetime later the sun shone, the fish were biting hot, and I finally quit puking. It actually was a great day, egg salad sandwiches rarely tasted better, and I caught a big ass Spanish Mackerel. A fish called such because when landed it slaps its body about with unequalled enthusiasm, sounding much like a pair of castanets, very entertaining and musical. My dad accidentally hooked a seagull and then let it shred him as he gently unhooked it amid claws and savage pecking. Snakeboy hooked the first shark of the day, a blue about 6 or 7 feet long, freaked out and dropped his rod and reel over board. Luckily, both rod and reel were retrieved and the shark allowed to escape.

Right before my dad discovered the strange noise coming from the bilge and the sump pump. Yep, the loud gurgle meant we were taking on water. The sump pump had burned out…about 15 miles out to see between Dana Point and Catalina. It’s a weird feeling to see land to the west and then to the east and know you can’t swim that far. Did I mention sharks? Because they live pretty vividly in my memory, so does the empty, three pound Folgers coffee can he thrust in to my hands with instructions to bail—fast. My dad used empty coffee cans for everything. Butch, Snakeboy, and I bailed as my dad and uncle stowed away the gear, lifted anchor, and headed for port and dry land.

Once we were moving we stopped bailing and enjoyed the ride. We had plenty of fish (my dad loved to fish, hated to eat fish) for my mom’s roses, a great memory, and I can honestly say I’ve had to bail out a boat or sink.

Snakeboy lived with us for a year (our seventh grade – we’re the same age) before he returned to his mom in Ohio. That trip was the last time I went out on the ocean in the Sea Horse. I later learned to water ski behind it on Shasta Lake. Butch now is land locked racing Sprints in Sioux Falls. My uncle died in the 1990’s from lung cancer and cirrhosis of the liver, I don’t think he and Snakeboy ever had the relationship they had that year. My dad quit building boats after we moved to Oregon, he started building Ultra-lights instead, and yes he did build an aquatic one…which he crashed into Siltcoos Lake on it’s maiden voyage..no bail out was going to help it.

Boats, planes, and people pass, but memories remain, glorious and golden in my mind.

Sith,
Cele

Talk Thursday: Hot Summer Nights

Summer in Los Angeles can get blacktop jungle hot, with little relief at night. June through August in our neighborhood meant backyard sleepovers several times a month over the summer, usually in the Furby backyard. My mom laid out tarps to keep the dew from soaking our blankets, slumber bags and sleeping bags. Then she brought out huge bowls of popcorn and cups of lemonade before we were too deep into storytelling and trying to gross each other out. Above our heads Orion and the Big Dipper peeked through the Chinese elm’s canopy to where we laid just outside the back door.

There were usually eighteen children of assorted ages munching popcorn while telling each other campfire stories. Each tale growing spookier than the one prior as the sky grew dark and the night older. George, Mike, and I were the oldest at thirteen and we were getting obvious pleasure at telling some really spooky tales. The sky was pretty dark, so I’m judging it was a round 10 o’clock when my father came out the back door with another bowl of popcorn and one hell of a spooky story.

Growing up in the back hills of West Virginia my dad was the youngest of eight children and use to walking long distances to get from one place to another. Remembering back that night, he reckoned he’d been about twelve or thirteen and had been picking beans in the fields on the far side of town, on the opposite side of the valley. It had been a hot dusty summer day, with a mile or so more to walk he realized he was hungry, thirsty, and he was dead tired. The sun was beginning to ease low over the mountaintops; the shadows were growing long across the dusty road when up ahead he could see a boy nearing the bend in the road. The shadows were getting deep, but the closer he got he was certain he recognized him from somewhere.

Unable to lay a name to him, but feeling a familiarity my father picked up his pace in an attempt to catch up with the boy. The faster my father walked, the faster the boy walked. If my father jogged, the boy ahead of him kicked up his heels to a jog without even turning around to see who was chasing him. The heat of the evening and the length of the workday had sapped the energy out of my father, but curiosity made him run to catch up with the boy ahead of him. Then just as the boy reached the bend in the road, he vanished.

Vanished into thin air. My father reached the bend in the road. Nothing. Looking ahead into the dusk, there was no one walking ahead. My dad was alone in the growing night, there was no friend walking with him, no one running ahead to get away. He was alone in the night. No crickets chirped in the ticket. No hoot owl hoo-hoo’d from the pines, his only company was the summer night that lay hot and heavy on the air.

Some of the younger children had fallen asleep on their sleeping bags, popcorn kernels and empty cups were scattered between. The older children sat there hanging on each of my dad’s words, feeling the silent, hot West Virginia night wrap around them from three thousand miles and three decades before. He said it wasn’t until the next day that he discovered it was at that very bend in the road that Daniel Smith had died. Died walking at dusk around the bend on that dirt road when he was hit by a car just two nights before. No one knows who hit Daniel Smith, they just know he walks that same stretch of lonely West Virginia back road, night after night, looking for his way home from the bean fields.

As most of you know my father passed away December 29th at 5:30am this last year. Tonight he would have quietly celebrated his 75 birthday. Happy Birthday dad, I miss you, but you live forever in my heart and memory like those hot summer nights when you would hold the neighborhood children captive with your story telling those four short decades ago.

Sith,
Cele

Gone, But Never Forgotten

We live all of our life to pass away. Yesterday morning (Saturday, December 29th) at 5:30am, my father passed from this plane to the next. Later that evening, 6:30pm, my brother in law passed. It’s been a rough 2007.

My father was my hero. My father was a constant inspiration to my siblings and me. My father was my first boyfriend. We went on dates, we fought, we made up, and we always loved each other. My father helped carry me along on the days when it seemed to hard to do it myself. And I knew when I grew up I'd marry a man just like my dad.

When I was five my father played hooky one afternoon from work and took me to the racetrack. It was my first time, the first of many, and I remember it as clearly as if it happened yesterday.

We were seated up in stands, my father was intent on the track, race form in hand, his tie loosened at the collar. I was being swept away in the fervor as each race began and ended. Until one race found me standing up, jumping as high as five-year-old legs can, screaming, “Go Joe, go!” My father leaned over and asked me which horse I was rooting for? I pointed out the horse of my fancy and my dad happily said that was his horse too, and continued rooting with me. For the rest of that afternoon he helped me chose horses to pin my hopes on.

Later years would find us sharing interest in Indy and formula one racing. A tall man my father worked in the pits for my Aunt Dot, a childless woman my father worked with, and who owned midget racers in Southern California. Usually my father would work the pits, my sister or brother and I huddled under blankets in the bleachers, hands wrapped around steaming cups of hot chocolate as my father worked on the cars. Several times my father would sit in the cockpit of a car and race himself. I’m sure it was just for the thrill, but it was a passion he shared with us kids.

Another was fishing. My father hated fish, but loved to be out on the sea in a boat he built with his own hands from blue prints tacked on the garage wall. As I was growing up there was always a boat in some stage of construction, either in the garage or on blocks in the yard waiting its turn in the water. Later that passion turned to planes and flying, and the laughter that would be evoked when my father would relate a crash in his ultralight, saved by the fate of landing upside down in the Rhododendrons that line the Florence Municipal Airport. Yes, crashes, plural.

My father was an adventurer, he gave that passion for adventure and travel to his children, and with any luck we have passed his lessons and passions on to our children. My father was a storyteller, with a silver tongue and a gift of gab. My father was far from a saint, but he was honest, forthright, and plain. My father has now gone to a much gentler place, free from pain, where he can breathe deep and walk unimpeded.

I will miss you so very much, but you will ever live in my heart, in my memory, in the smiles of my daughter and nephews, and their children. You will ever walk in my dreams, whisper to me in the wind, and hold my hand in the dark of night. I will never let you go and I pray I will never let you down.

Dad, I love you

Later that night Ducky’s younger brother died after his nine-month battle with lung cancer. It didn’t come as a surprise, but it, like my dad’s passing creates a loss and an ache that will be a long time in easing.

Gwynn was a gentle man with a massive heart and a love for his partner, his children, and grand children. He fought for each extra day of his life after the doctor’s told him his cancer was incurable. He spent time with his siblings, his children, and his grandchildren building memories to take them through the rest of their lives.

He had two wishes for the end of his life. First to make it through Christmas, and second he wanted a white Christmas. On Christmas morning Ducky called Gwynn to wish him a merry Christmas, as they discussed health, the holidays, and life in general. During the call Gwynn suddenly stopped and after a moment pause said in wonder, “It’s snowing.” That was the last conversation Gwynn and Ducky shared.

Yesterday morning Gwynn suffered a major heart attack in the hospuital. Last night after the family drove from various parts of Oregon and Washington to gathered at the hospital, the nurses removed Gwynn’s life support. Forty-five minutes later he was gone.

Our tears flow like our memories. But unlike our memories the tears will dry, our wounds will toughen, and our pain will ease. But they shall ever live in our memories and our hearts.

Sith,
Cele

Happy Father's Dad, Late

My dad has always been my hero. A handsome hero, with whom I always butted heads, And yet today he is still one of my best friends. My father taught me that there is nothing I can not do if I can imagine it in my head. It is an ideal that has served me well through out my life.

Raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains of West Virginia to a mean, good for nothing, alcoholic farmer, from a good family, my dad probably shouldn’t have raised above his beginnings. I am so blessed he did. My dad has never forgotten those beginnings. Wears them like an albatross at times and hates the phrases “you might be a redneck” and “hillbilly.”

a really cute picture of my
dad at age 6 should go
here but it wouldn't load

The baby of eight children, my father was oft times raised by an older sister who also made well of herself despite the performance of her parents (she is my favorite aunt, an eclectic character of esoteric thought and beliefs.) My grandparents often left their children to fend for themselves. I kid you not, once when my father was about four they left the four youngest children (the other four we off to their own lives) alone at home for over a week with no food in the house, save a pot of soured beans. My dad once told me of a time, my drunken grandfather beat a mule to death with a chain. He was not a pleasant man, and my grandmother (for whom I am name) followed my grandfather wherever he went. My father, in turn, does not drink to excessive. I think his limit was about four beers a summer, never more than two at a time.



I remember my dad taking me to my first horse race. I’m not sure but I think it was at
Santa Anita. I remember him wearing a white shirt and a tie, his flat top hair cut, intently watching each race. I was about five and at one point so impressed with my surroundings and my father’s intentness at each race I jumped into the frenzy.

With the start of each race I would start shouting for my horse to go faster, screaming, “Go Joe, Go Joe.”

My father leaned over to me and asked which horse I was rooting for? I remember pointing out some mount from the field, and my dad saying, “Good choice, that’s my horse to.”

My father never graduated from high school, shit, high school ended at the tenth grade. This sits hard on my father, who suffers from anxieties over his belief he is unworthy, because he is unschooled. Rubbish. Regardless of the tremendous strides and accomplishments my father has made, he doesn’t feel he meets the mark.

Example, through out my childhood there was always a boat in the garage in some stage of construction. From the upside down frame of a hull to the itchy spider web of fiberglass, to the almost finished product that was moved to the front yard my dad was building. The Three D’s (Debbie, Dale, and Denise,) the Four D’s (& Darryl,) the Sea Horse (my dad loved racing.) My dad had a boat. A boat he built himself, on evenings and weekends. When the boat was finished we went fishing. Till he sold it and built another.

When I was a junior in high school my dad quit working for Southern California Edison, cashed out his stock and my parents bought a trailer park in Oregon. Always strapped for cash in those early days he cut firewood, picked moss, sold and serviced as a propane dealer until they modernized the park and it became a viable business.

Boats were a thing of the past, now it was planes. For years there was an ultralight in some phase of construction in the garage. The hull became a fuselage, sometimes made of wood framing another time made of foam, duly wrapped in fiberglass, sanded with love. Painted, polished, flown, and on at least two occasions....er counting the water landing I guess three...crashed.

Today my dad, my hero is in the advanced stages of emphysema. We have been blessed with extra years with him for which I am grateful.

He is now grounded, but I know he still longs to soar in the sky. And I know someday all to soon he will with his own wings. Until that day dad, I hope you know what a special angel you have been to me on this earth. Thank you for the laughter, the adventures, the debates, advice, conversations, friendship, tears, and love. Most of all thank you for not holding my idiocy against me and for allowing me to become me.