Did you ever notice how things always seem to hit all together at once? Good things, bad things, it doesn't seem to much matter... I'll be chugging along at an easy pace and my world will be quiet and peaceful for weeks, and then all of the sudden three friends will all call at once and want to do different things--all on this Friday evening. Or the car will break down on the same day the color tube in the TV goes out, just as the hose from the washing machine finally loosens itself from the faucet, unbeknownst to my 15 year old, who will do three loads of laundry before it occurs to him the entire garage is flooding... It just never fails--everything always seems to pile on at once, making this game of life an interesting road to maneuver.

I have learned to take care of myself, I have learned to get myself from place "A" to "B" with little difficulty. But I still can't be responsible for getting someone else there. (Assuming that someone else is a fully grown adult male.)

Some people just have no motivation. No inner drive. And they'll just float along on my wake for as long as I let them. I wish allowing it didn't slow me down so much, but it nearly halts my progress. I can't take care of everything necessary to make someone else's ride smooth for them. It makes me angry to try, it's too much work, when added to my own; frustrates me and makes me wonder why I always seem to feel the need to take on the weight of the world in the first place. I'm just not going to do it this time. I'm not taking anyone else to their destination. They are just gonna have to find it themselves. I had hoped things had changed. I had hoped that my friend would be more in control of his destination now that I haven't been creating it for him for years. Old habbits die too hard I guess... Maybe he'll never sail his own ship. =( That's sad to me. But I have to let sleeping dogs lie if I'm not willing to kennel them and haul them along. It's hard for me to leave sleeping dogs. I worry about them. It's not my job, gotta remember it... Make it my mantra.

This weekend is all about me. I'm taking my dog and going camping with an old friend, and his dog, who my dog will be delighted to see again. I'm really excited about it. Been looking forward to it all week. Today I'm by myself at the senior center, the building is closed for new carpet installation, so it's just an occassional phone call. The day is passing SOOOOOO slowly. Aarghhh! But once five hits--I'm outta here and off to the mountains, and the hot springs that await me there. I'm gonna get in and soak off the stress of the world. (The bottle of tequilla Ima consume first is also going to contribute to the whole shaking off the weight of the world thing... ) hehehe

I hope your weekend goes as lovely as I expect mine to. =)
Be well!

There is a joy in my heart today that is greater than any I've known in all of my years. It's deeper, more passionate, more hopeful, more encompassing. It's going to spill out of me and burst me open, drenching anyone who gets within a mile of me. I can't focus on anything else. I can't maintain a thought pattern cohesively. I can't stop grinning, loving, and laughing with happiness. I can't believe my luck; yet I can. I WILL BE AWARE. This is my mantra, this is my ambition. I will be careful, in the true sence of the word.

You are amazing. I am amazing. We are amazing.
No more fuck you's. Only I love you's.

(But I'll say them on the inside, most of the time, so you will believe them when they burble out unexpectedly.)

There is absolutely no characteristic about a person I can stand less than his/her inability to take personal responsibility for his own actions (nor one I admire more in those that have and use the ability to do so consistently.)

I will stand by someone who takes personal responsibility for their actions through nearly ANY of their actions--regardless of the actions' ugliness--so long as when the time to 'fess up comes, they do so with honesty and strength, risking whatever dignity they may have left. There is little I can stand less than someone who tries to turn a situation they themselves caused to go badly and make it the fault of others. That is the epitomy of shallow, the equivalent of the worst kind of lie.

What's so wrong with blaming others for ones own poor actions? The worst of it isn't that it makes you a liar in another's eyes--the worst of it is that you are lying to yourself. One who can convince himself that his own lies are true will never be a person of value or substance to me. If you believe your own lies--I'm certain you'll keep telling them to anyone who will listen, sometimes under the misguided opinion that you aren't even lying. Know that my ears are shut to you--I will not give you the gratification--nor should you give it to me--which is clearly what one seeks when one conspires to blame another for their own poor choices. Someone to validate your lies so you can think of yourself more highly than you ought. It's inflated self value, though, and honestly I don't understand why anyone would care to be someone so hollow! Hollow things, hollow men and women, they crack and break so easily when push comes to shove. And if there is one thing in this world that I am certain of, it's that push always comes to shove.

Learn to be a person of substance! It's not too late. It's never too late.

Fake it till ya make it. You looked at me with the most serious of expressions and replied, "Is there any difference?"

I've been trying so hard to fake that I'm over you. I've been faking it a million ways. I've been telling it to myself everyday. I've been acting like it to anyone who will watch my performances. I've been carrying on as if you didn't exist. As if we hadn't shared the moments we did.

But you do exist to me, every day and in a million ways. What if all the faking in the world never makes it, and what if there IS a difference? I miss you so much. I don't know how to stop. I don't believe I want to stop.

Everything is wondreful, I'm happy and cheerful and feeling like my old self, better perhaps--my new and improved self. I'm walking the dog and watering the Belladonna (the one I took clippings of and sprouted roots on to grow for you.) It turned all brown over the winter, and I thought it would die. But it didn't. With it's sprouting up bigger and greener than ever, I am reminded that every thing may be in a state of decay--but some things grow back beautifully anyway. I'm pretending I never knew you, that it was all a dream. But I can't let you go, silly as it seems.

When no one is looking, when no one knows, I cuddle up on my bed and pull your tee shirt out from under my pillow where I've kept a shirt of yours since that first time you left. I don't even need to bury my face in it, just taking it out fills my room with the smell of you, and stops my breathing and makes me ache in a delicious and decadent way. I know I'm not faking it well enough in these moments of weakness. I know I'll never "make it" this way. But I promise myself to fake it some more later on, and secretly I revel in the missing of you, and the closeness of you that the scent always brings to me.

Maybe there is a difference in faking it till you make it and making it. When I fake it, I always come back to the truth in the end.

I love you. I hope you are well.

Paddy was driving down the street in a sweat because he had an important meeting and couldn't find a parking place. Looking up to heaven he said, "Lord take pity on me. If you find me a parking place I will go to Mass every Sunday for the rest of me life and give up me Irish Whiskey!"

Miraculously, a parking place appeared.

Paddy looked up again and said, "Never mind, I found one."



Father Murphy walks into a pub in Donegal, and says to the first man he meets, "Do you want to go to heaven?"

The man said, "I do, Father."

The priest said, "Then stand over there against the wall."

Then the priest asked the second man, "Do you want to go to heaven?"

"Certainly, Father," was the man's re ply.

"Then stand over there against the wall," said the priest.

Then Father Murphy walked up to O'Toole and said, "Do you want to go to heaven?"

O'Toole said, "No, I don't Father."

The priest said, "I don't believe this. You mean to tell me that when you die you don't want to go to heaven?"

O'Toole said, "Oh, when I die, yes. I thought you we re getting a group together to go ri ght now."



Paddy was in New York .

He was patiently waiting and watching the traffic cop on a busy street crossing. The cop stopped the flow of traffic and shouted, "Okay, pedestrians." Then he'd allow the traffic to pass.

He'd done this several times, and Paddy still stood on the sidewalk.

After the cop had shouted, "Pedestrians!" for the tenth time, Paddy went over to him and said, "Is it not about time ye let the Catholics across?"



Gallagher opened the morning newspaper and was dumbfounded to read in the obituary column that he had died. He quickly phoned his best friend, Finney.

"Did you see the paper?" asked Gallagher. "They say I died!!"

"Yes, I saw it!" replied Finney. "Where are ye callin' from?"



An Irish priest is driving down to New York and gets stopped for speeding in Connecticut . The state trooper smells alcohol on the priest's breath and then sees an empty wine bottle on the floor of the car.

He says, "Sir, have you been drinking?"

"Just water," says the priest.

The trooper says, "Then why do I smell wine?"

The priest looks at the bottle and says, "Good Lord! He's do ne it again!"



Walking into the bar, Mike said to Charlie the bartender, "Pour me a stiff one - just had another fight with the little woman."

"Oh yeah?" said Charlie, "And how did this one end?"

"When it was over," Mike replied, "She came to me on her hands and knees.

"Really," said Charles, "Now that's a switch! What did she say ?"

She said, "Come out from under the bed, you little chicken."



Flynn staggered home very late after another evening with his drinking buddy, Paddy. He took off his shoes to avoid waking his wife, Mary.

He tiptoed as quietly as he could toward the stairs leading to their upstairs bedroom, but misjudged the bottom step. As he caught himself by grabbing the banister, his body swung around and he landed heavily on his rump. A whiskey bottle in each back pocket broke and made the landing especially painful.

Managing not to yell, Flynn sprung up, pu lled down his pants, and looked in the hall mirror to see that his butt cheeks were cut and bleeding. He managed to quietly find a full box of Band-Aids and began putting a Band-Aid as best he could on each place he saw blood.

He then hid the now almost empty Band-Aid box and shuffled and stumbled his way to bed.

In the morning, Flynn woke up with searing pain in both his head and butt and Mary staring at him from across the room.

She said, "You were drunk again last night weren't you?"

Flynn said, "Why would you say such a mean thing?"

"Well," Mary said, "it could be the open front door, it co uld be the broken glass at the bottom of the stairs, it could be the drops of blood trailing through the house, it could be your bloodshot eyes, but mostly.....it's all those Band-Aids stuck on the hall mirror.





I WISH YOU ENOUGH...

I wish you enough sun to keep your attitude bright.
I wish you enough rain to appreciate the sun more.
I wish you enough happiness to keep your spirit alive.
I wish you enough pain so that the smallest joys in life appear much bigger.
I wish you enough gain to satisfy your wanting.
I wish you enough loss to appreciate all that you possess.
I wish you enough "Hellos" to get you through the final "Goodbyes".



My friends, I wish you enough!