untitled, as of yet

the brightest flash
in ink-sot night
leads searching eyes
on jagged path.

twink of silver
a burst of gold;
weave back and forth
in boundless blue.

no match the stars
hung heavens high
evading moon
and giggling grasp.

on outstretched wing
the glimmer glows
from blade of grass:
the firefly dance.

junk hauler

The plane was dark. There were a couple of portholes in the front of the plane and a window in the door where we boarded, but that was it. The dim running lights drained power from the aircraft, so the main power was saved for the operation of the plane, not us passengers in the back. It was relatively quiet; the rattling of the aircraft and it's cargo could never actually be described as quiet, but there wasn't a lot of internal human noise from where I was seated.

We rose at 4:00 to drive almost 2 hours in the fog and rain to get to the terminal by 6:20 to get on the space-available list. Then we had to load up the luggage; fortunately my husband was there for that. Loading onto the aircraft was something else entirely. Exactly how do you buckle an FAA-approved carseat into a webbed jumpseat again? After some help from a couple of obvious dads clad in desert BDU's, the three of us were satisfied with the tightness of the safety harness on the carseat. One of them even boosted her into it, buckled her in, and handed her the Pooh Bear that had dropped on the floor. My tired, grateful smile was returned with a tired, wistful smile. He'd get to hold his own again soon.

The takeoff was shaky, as expected. Someone who had slept through the stop at my terminal fell off their perch on the cargo and landed with a loud thunk, followed by peals of laughter. I smothered a smile and looked away. I wasn't part of their world; I didn't want to seem obtrusive. I busied myself with entertaining my daughter, all the while keeping us strapped in, just like we were on a "real" plane." She played with toys, got bored, ate small snacks, got bored some more. It was a long flight ahead of us and I was running out of amusements....

The miles slipped by below us and I could feel some of the stress of the day slip away along with those miles. That stress was replaced with a gnawing worry or slight fear. I'm not afraid of flying. I looked out the window to see how far above the earth we were. I love to look at the ocean from waaaaay up high and see whitecaps, like fine white pencil-lines on a canvas of shimmering blue. The clouds lazily drifted by under the wings and the sun laid golden fingers along the very edges of those clouds almost daring the liquid gold to spill into the ocean below.

She wriggled out of my arms again, desperately trying to free herself. She kicked the baby in my stomach and I dropped her to her feet, but never letting go of that precious baby hand. She was bored out of her skull. I led her back to our seats where and the backpack stashed with fun toys and snacks. Her juice cup was almost empty so I cracked open a bottle of water and urged her to swallow those last drops of juice. I remember them telling me that the environmental controls were iffy around Iceland, so we had to stay hydrated. It was starting to get chilly. I pulled the sweater over my daughter's head, carefully pulling the pigtails through and helping her with her arms. I put my arms through my own sweater, but my 29-week belly prevented me from buttoning it up.

She wanted to romp and play again, but I just couldn't. The baby was zapping all of my energy and my daughter wanted the rest. All I wanted was to curl up into a ball and go to sleep. One of the guys approached us from the middle of the plane. He had a great big wad of newspaper tightly scrunched into a ball and hastily secured with some electrical tape. He asked if she could play with them and I looked skeptically at the area and the guys. I heaved myself to my feet and walked her over to where they were playing some kind of make-shift soccer/kickball game between crates of cargo and canvas tie-down straps. My mommy-eye saw several potential hazards for an almost-three-year-old, not the least of which were several pairs of large feet in desert suede combat boots. They kicked the ball gently to her and encouraged her to kick it back. She did with gusto and the whole bay area broke out in laughter. The game was on.

One of my carseat helpers gestured me back to my seat and the warm Pooh blanket scrunched up. He assured me that she wasn't going to go anywhere, and that there were several dads present. He even pointed to the first aid kit above my head. Well, duh. A planeful of dads, coming home to see their kids....she was in good hands. I laid down on the webbing of the seat, the straps digging into my hips and shoulders, draped the blanket over me and dropped off to sleep almost instantly.

My nap was far from quiet and my mommy-sleep mode forbade me from sleeping deep enough that I couldn't hear what was going on. But when I finally dragged myself up again, I was rested a bit and starving. We hadn't had time to get food before boarding the plane and I was saving all the snacks for my daughter, hoping they would last another 5 hours. I was surprised to find my daughter sleeping, buckled into her carseat again, her sweater carefully folded on the seat by the backpack. One of the dads told me they "wore her out but good" and she fell asleep on the loadmaster's shoulder. So much for that mommy-sleep mode of mine. I stretched and peeked out of the porthole and saw that we were over land again. It was considerably warmer than when I went to sleep; I estimated that we might be over Jersey or New York.

Ahhh, home again. Just knowing we were in American airspace made me feel all tingly and happy. The stress of finishing out this pregnancy and possibly delivering the baby without my husband slipped off into the back of my mind. I was taken by surprise to see the loadmaster come up to me and tell me to buckle up because they were preparing for landing. I must have been out for three or four hours. That meant we were over Iowa, not Jersey. Almost home. My stomach flip-flopped.

The plane tilted several times and I held onto the webbing, the jumpseat harness squishing against my swollen belly. My girlie woke up during the descent and the pressure was bothering her ears, but I had no bottle or pacifier to giver her; she'd already outgrown those. Thankfully the rattling cargo drowned out her whining to all but me. We banked again and several hard bumps later, we were screeching along the runway, slowing down.

All the dads had their duffel bags slung over their shoulders, but they still managed to wrangle my 75-pound suitcase, the steamer trunk and the carseat down the steps for me. They left us at the terminal, the only civilian passengers, and milled around joking and laughing about delivered pizza and 24-hour Walmarts. Some of them were home, greeted with big hugs and squeals of happiness, walking away in small clusters of tears and laughter. The rest of them loaded onto the base shuttle bus that would take them to billeting for the night. I never did learn any of their names, even though they were written on their uniforms plain as day. I made a call to my parents to come retrieve us, since they had no idea if I would even get on the flight, let alone know when it would leave and when it would arrive.

Then I was alone, except for the girlie-girl and our luggage, on a deserted tarmac, in the heat of July. The aircraft turnover crew unloaded the cargo. Forklifts and fuel trucks scurried back and forth between warehouses and the plane. We watched as one aircraft took off, banked around the airfield and landed briefly before taking off again. The obviously new pilot was practicing "touch-and-go's" while my daughter ran in circles, arms splayed out like wings, yelling, "I want to fly those airplanes like the soldiers when I'm a mommy too."

Nothing would make me prouder.

at least they try, right?

Aside from Yoda, most people honor and respect the "good ol' college try." Many people see the work invested, and brush aside the perfectionist attitude to praise that effort. So many people today are angered over the immigration issues...who is and is not welcome and/or allowed, whether or not amnesty should be granted, whether we should declare English as our national language (because it is not specifically stated anywhere, as of yet). The list goes on. In the midst of the heated and ongoing debates here, on the news and being carried out in protests, restaurant kitchens, landscaping firms, and construction sites, I received a new notice from a business in my area. Complete with a menu. I give you,

E for Effort

"NEIGHBOR'S KITCHEN is a traditional Chinese-Style Restaurant. NEIGHBOR'S KITCHEN pays great attention to the general visitor's health. So, you can taste the legitimate Chinese-Style here. NEIGHBOR'S KITCHEN requests in food choice aspect very high. For example: The meats, the seafood, the vegetables and so on. NEIGHBOR'S KITCHEN uses the superior quality to achieve the low fat and the high textile fiber and to increase food nutrition.

NEIGHBOR'S KITCHEN doesn't forget vegetarian diet! NEIGHBOR'S KITCHEN uses the pure vegetables rapeseed oil regarding our food. Therefore, no matter you are the common visitor or the vegetarian, all can enjoy all delicacies food in NEIGHBOR'S KITCHEN.

Good news! Our chefs have several years experience to provide the birthday party, the company party and so on. NEIGHBOR'S KITCHEN provides different situation food and the drink. Above this new service, lets the general visitors have the different choices.

Remembered: Only NEIGHBOR'S KITCHEN is able to provide you a legitimate Chinese-Style good food. Eliminates this, you can eat your health by the most beneficial price! No matter the Western-Style food or the snack, we all welcome you the presence. Can provide the good food for you, which is our being honored. In this, NEIGHBOR'S KITCHEN thanks you the support and the presence!

NEIGHBOR'S KITCHEN wish all our customers have a health and prosperity new year."

I am so not poking fun. I love our neighborhood hole-in-the-wall Chinese places. When they see us walk through the door, they have actually moved other customers because we are regulars, and they usually only have 1 or 2 tables big enough for all 6 of us. It helps, I suppose, having linguist friends, I have taught my children to say "thank you" in Mandarin. The whole staff was tickled pink and they gathered 'round the table all at once to hear it. I understand the gist of the text, but it is so funny to hear their grammar creeping into our language. I guess that puzzle is what made me want to learn all the languages I could. We, as Americans, could actually learn more than one lanuguage and soften the barriers around us, instead of building ever longer, ever taller concrete walls to block out the things we don't understand.

Just a thought for today, Yoda: try not...or try your hardest; we all have to fit on this marble somehow.

is that a chipmunk in your pants?

Dude, I am so serious.

I was sitting on the front porch, admiring the mudpatch in the front used-to-be yard, eating a king-sized Snickers ice cream bar, when my Lartian appeared around the corner of the house. He is, shall we say fashionably challenged, but managed to find an old red teeball shirt to stuff hap-hazardly into his red shorts this morning. He did good today, even with his white socks pulled stretched all the way up to his knees. He was running around the yard like a loon in good Lartian custom so his baby cheeks were a rosy pink. With all this red going on, it was hard not to notice the critter in his pants.

Peeking out of the waistband of my son's red ensemble was his small, brown, bewhiskered, stuffed chipmunk (named Chippy, if it matters). I couldn't resist. I had to ask:

"Is that a chipmunk in your pants or are you just happy to see me?"

He beamed in the way only my Lartian can, with a spark in his electric blue eyes, and a flash of a full mouth of baby teeth in that devil-smile, the one with the corners quirked up just so. Then he pulled Chippy from his holster, rubbed noses with him and tucked him back in, skee-daddling back to the "game" with the rest of the sibs.

Summer's just around the corner, which begs the question: "What kind of entertainment do you have in your pants?"

bucket, anyone?

i am currently laying in the lap of luxury, laptop within reach, feet propped up bathed in a cool, rose-scented breeze tickling against my bare feet as i sway in the hammock. there'sonly one thing wrong with this picture, and unfortunately it is just so very wrong. nothing can drown it out, nothing can take it away and nothing can stop it. someone please tackle the tone-deaf mutant with the karaoke mike. my ears are bleeding. somebody get that boy a bucket to carry his tune in.

a neighbor across the street (one i don't particularly care for in the first place) is having some sort of teen party; an "instead-of-prom," a graduation open house, a birthday, or maybe just a loud party of no real significance. whatever the occasion, i have heard about enough of the off-key, off-rhythm, beatles, neil diamond and tom jones i can stomach for quite some time. how do the snot-nose brats even know these songs??? the noise bleeds into my home from well over 50 yards away'and nothing we do can shut it out.

now they are pathetically trying to rap, or maybe they are among those people who only read in a monotone and therefore can't sing outside a monotone whilst reading the lyrics on the little screen. they suck so bad, half the time i can't even recognize the tune, let alone the words. why oh why are the people who cannot sing to save their lives attracted so violently to the karaoke machine??? oh and don't get even me started on the feedback......mikes+speakers =badness!!!!!!

i can't tell if they have been drinking because the singing has been steadfastly horrid for going on 4 hours now. i would love to leave just to escape the noise, but i am pretty drunk myself. i had a coupla ciders just as they were warming up and ciders stay with me for quite a while. so here i sit listening to the mad combination of simon the dog next door howling along with fragments of - i'm really trying hard to identify this....it's been 2.5 minutes and i still haven't got it yet.....they've changed songs twice and i still haven't figured them out - i'll guess that last one had the temptations backing him up. even the birds have a panicked shrillness in their chirrups. we're all going insane, one sour note at a time......

know thy circulars

We had occasion to go shopping tonight. So we headed out to our local S*Mart, where they had a few things on sale that we needed. Things like retaining wall stones and underpants; you know, the basics. I usually look over the various and sundry store circulars stuffed into our mailbox every Wednesday and plan out which store can give me the best price on stuff I need. That meticulous study and list-making was a monetary necessity for a few years and now the habit has stuck, much to the delight of our bank account.

Tad had already paid for and loaded up the stones and was anxious to take the van back home so he could get a drink of water. Alas, that was the one thing strangely lacking in our S*Mart. So he ditched me with the kids (volunteering to take the good one with him....I kept her for her entertainment value) while I got into the only open non-express lane behind a woman purchasing a butt-load of soda-pop and frantically flipping through the circular describing the "soap powder advertised as 2 for $5." She was adamant about that price. The store cashier was showing her the page where it was listed as $6.50 for one, but this woman wanted her 2 for $5. OK, yeah, that's a huge difference. I'd double check too.

Shopper-Lady decided to go back to the shelf and find the price there while Cashier-Lady went to get a supervisor to verify that the price was coded into the computer properly. I pried my childrens' hands from the candy once more and glanced through my basket. "I'm gonna guess....$165.00," I said to my daughter. "No, make that closer to $200. I bet we'll spend about $200 tonight." I pride myself on being able to accurately guess, but I love it when I end up guessing high. It makes me feel like I'm getting a better deal than I should for some reason. Yeah. I'm a doof.

Meanwhile, the Express Lane was drawing flies. I poked my head over the top of the candy bars and gum and asked politely if I could hop over even though I had 21 items. She held her hands over her head in a resigned shrug and told me that it wasn't her policy; if customers walked up to the Express Lane and I held them up with my huge basket-full, they'd be upset with her. So I had to stay put. I could feel my hair turning grey. I was going to grow old and die before I could check out. I was beginning to wonder if my fabulous deals were really worth it....

Shopper-Lady arrived back on the scene with a hang-dog look. She coulda sworn they were 2 for $5. They were 2 for $13. Which was $6.50 each. Cashier-Lady rang her up and kept loading the soda-pop into her cart when Shopper-Lady announced she'd rather just get one soap powder after all. So now we have to do a void. Lane Three is still clear and I can hear the computer tapping at the Customer Service desk, there are so few customers in the store.

A shoving match and the clatter of several pair of sunglasses returned my attention to the rugrats behind my behind. We picked up the sunglasses, explaining that we aren't supposed to wear all of them at once. Three customers arrived behind me. Lane Three was so empty, I could park my minivan there and no one would notice. The customers behind me were beginning to grumble when Cashier-Lady walked around to the swipe card reader because Shopper-Lady didn't know why it needed her zip code. Then the pen was out of ink, so Cashier-Lady needed to go get another one from Customer Service.

At long last the transaction seemed complete when Shopper-Lady said she wanted root beer instead of the soda she already had bagged in her cart. Cashier-Lady veerrryyy patiently explained that she would have to void the other soda and re-run her card through because the two sodas were different brands. Shopper-Lady thought that since they were in the same aisle and the same price she could just swap them out. After a short bit of hemming and hawing, Shopper-Lady decided to keep the soda she had and just add the root beer. Now she had to dig in her purse for 73 cents. Jeez Louise. And some other choice words....

I moved my cart forward as Shopper-Lady looked over her receipt. The price of bleach caught her eye and she started to haggle about the price when I snapped. I've been standing in line for 23 minutes. I'm done.

"Lady." I used my best Mommy Voice and plastered a visibly fake smile over my clenched teeth. "I will pay the difference of the bleach if you would kindly get out of line and go home so I can get my kids to bed sometime before midnight. I have cash in my pocket. I will buy the whole damn jug." The cashier about lost it. She had to be nice, but no such company policy had a hold on my tongue. The woman behind me snickered.

Shopper-Lady carefully folded her receipt and pressed a smile into her face saying, "Thank you dear. I can buy my own bleach. I'll take this up with Customer Service."

As I walked out with my receipt for $147 in my pocket, (YES!!) I noticed that there still weren't any customers in Lane Three. There were nine behind me. Somebody is going to get a letter tomorrow.

the end of a decade

What a Mother's Day.

Gorgeous, even with a bit of a chilly wind. Good friends, good food. One last hurrah with our bestest buddies of the past decade. *sigh* Definitely not-to-be-forgotten.

My best friend and her family is moving to Hawai'i next month. We were stationed together in the United Queendom for three years, and became very close friends. Then their follow-on assignment just happened to land them here - where we landed. So for the better part of the past eight years we have been virtually inseparable. We have decorated and painted each other's properties. We have inspired and been inspired by each other. We have watched each other's children meet milestone after milestone. First words, steps, pigtails, bike rides, days of school, arguments & make-ups. We have scrapped together, leaned on each other, baked together, vented about our husbands to each other, and most of all learned from each other. I'm going to miss her so much.

We all keep joking about next summer when my family will take a cruise to Hawai'i to visit them, but I have a deathly fear of water to overcome. And a big fat vacation fund to fund before that can happen. Our kids don't remember what life was before we met. In fact, five of the six kids in our two families were born during our friendship. We have slumber party weekends which involve all 10 of us sleeping under the same roof. Late nights with lots of laughs and cards into the wee hours. Early mornings with kids jumping on beds. Waffles and sausage breakfasts, picnic lunches, sledding in the winter, sunning in the summer, yard sales, trips to the zoo, and in general, lots of merrymaking.

We spent our last Mother's Day together (for a great long while at least), doing what we do best. Mothering together. Three split lips, BBQ chicken & hot dogs, backyard swings, blueberry pie a-la-mode, my school's spring carnival, tearing down a broken shed to get ready for a new one, water bottles, vanilla sprinkle cookies, burning up dried weeds and fallen winter branches, baseball, huddling quietly watching bunnies play tag in the grass, and a small dose of Dora & Mario Kart, all topped off with hot apple pie last night before they hit the road.

I'm gonna miss her. The rest of them too, but who else will come over and make stromboli and pies with me? Who else likes to do crafts, go on a hike, or read story after story with their kids instead of plopping them in front of the television? Everyone calls me Martha Stewart because I don't serve up instant life from a cardboard box. I make it up as I go and have developed quite a few home-grown recipes of my very own. She is like me so we made great friends. So now it's just me. At least for a few years 'til they come back home again. *sigh*

What a Mother's Day.