Over the Pipe

Mood. What a silly word. Silly sounding. Something a cow did. Must look up the etymology. Starting to think Wikipedia is more useful than google. Reminds me of a joke.

That was cheap of me. Cute tho, no?

I am in the slough of despond, I think. I am in an adolescent place. For sure. I did one of those Kindle Select promotions, and it was so important to me that I forgot to start promo til half way through the first day. So it pretty much tanked. I felt so desolate. For a couple of minutes. Whatever I didn't do to enhance that promo, my blog stats again went through the roof. Then I got some kind words about my "craft" from another source. So if my life is a see saw, I am standing on the board in that middle place where you could make it rock back and forth. You know exactly what I mean. In our playground it was over the pipe. Which sounds much cooler than 'mood'.

Then we had a recent family event where an aunt by marriage died and all the other strings tied to that part of my life are already gone. I hold grudges till like eternity, and found less and less reason to deal with those people, but the aunt was always nice to me. She kind of treated me, when I was little, like she knew I needed someone to be nice to me. My brother did some really mean stuff to me, like the story about the swimming pool and the watch, Bobby. And auntie Edie was kind. Maybe she was kind to everyone, or maybe I noticed it cuz she was the only one kind to me at that time, but when I went up to the casket, I was thinking, Auntie Edie, this does not look like you AT ALL, but where ever you are you are fine now, and thank you for teaching me the easy way to learn to swim.

You go to these things to offer condolence and to say good by and "pay respects". Because you are supposed to. They had this slide show thing about her with many wonderful pictures of her and her family and these certain friends of theirs. One of the sons said, "You are in there a couple of times." No. I wasn't. Nor my brothers. Nor my grandma who was her mother in law, one glimpse of my mom who was Edie's husband's sister, that I got ticked off about at his wake cuz my mom, his sister, was left standing in the rain, and one glimpse of my dad. This family was so close to mine when I was small. I would take the bus to go stay over at their house. My cousin, the godmother of my first child, used to ask me everything about the facts of life. And at that wake, I realized, we were nothing to them. Not even a memory. And all my instincts to draw away from them over the latest years have been correct. When my mom was dying, they did a couple of things that displeased me, but I chalked it up to them trying to be nice and it being an awkward time, and most of them are kind of slow, but now I don't think I am going to have anything to do with them if I can possible avoid it. My circle of friends and relatives is growing smaller and smaller. It seems convenient to me. There are so many things in life you can't control--that you have to put up with, and up to this point I thought I was growing more mellow and tolerant, and making peace with some of the crap that is my life, but I'm not. In my head I am more angry than ever, and at the same time, I feel so good about so many things. One thing I would love to tell younger people is that they need to be more selfish, but I can't because I don't know how to tell them how to do that with out hurting anyone's feelings. That has been the consistent thread running through my life. I was always teased about having hurt feelings, (which I always had)and I always worry about hurting people's feelings. This from the person who has said, "I hope a truck runs over you on your way home." Yeah, I apologized.

"The problem is all inside your head", she said to me.

The gospels should be Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul and Art.