Laughing at Marriage

The man changes socks 4 times a day.

Laughter has kept me in love and still keeps me.

He is the best person I know.

But he is resistant to making the cat's meatballs.

just for pretty's sake

past lives

it's taken me a long time to put myself out here on a page for everyone to read. the past is still a real part of me that i feel i must share. so, please forgive me if I go back and forth as I sort through this life. i fell like i am moving backwards. but, please sit and have a glass of cucumber juice while i am still into that.

friday night out

i still love the thought of a good friday. going out or sitting outside on the porch where the hope and possibility of something exciting is waiting to happen in the late evening - maybe a new love, maybe just a one night stand, some dancing, some sparring, getting high, drinking a bottle or TWO and hopefully getting some kind of attention my soul is calling for. it's an addictive night. i have had friday night lust for as long as i can remember. but that's just it....lust...nothing good ever comes out of a friday night, nothing that will stay anyway. the night will linger into saturday which is the best part, going over and over it remembering every little detail. it will soon fade away into the monotony of a monday and then it's the I can't wait til friday feeling all over again.

i have stepped into a new day with wilder shoes and my fridays are gone just like his whiskey days. it seems they've turned into tuesdays. it's lunch at taco waco with free beans, it's full of laughs about the life we share and the little things we know about each other that are comforting, it's about staying and being sober, it's about being with a man who never pushed me to be me. it's a new calm dependable day, a day i can trust and ease into without any expectations or hesitations. i married a man who loves that i smear homemade butter all over my body and that I am goofy as hell or that I do get it wrong sometimes. and for that I am forever grateful. thank you Robert, i love you.

Magic & Cicadas

On the brick streets of Tyler in a great neighborhood, I had been living in a big house with a lot of great people spending my time smoking pot, drinking wine, listening to live music and having some kind of relationship with a friend who I believed in with all my heart was and is something great, but for some reason, I couldn't express myself with him, there was an inner nervousness that I hated, but couldn't do anything about ... except leave. I am good at leaving people, in fact, I should receive some kind of reward for it, but before I left, I remember telling him that the day I was to open my Pilates studio would be the day I would open myself up to a different avenue of expression and I couldn't help but do just that. Just like that Cicada coming out of its shell. I was coming out of mine too.

I didn't think much about it but I would see him around, here and there, at Brady's Coffee Shop and even while I sat on the front porch of that big 'ol house smoking a cigarette I would see him sitting in his Landcruiser at the light. As I think back on it all I am pretty sure that he caught my eye because of the steadiness and the calm I could sense in him. I wanted that steady calmness for myself, and I knew it.

The morning the Pilates Studio of Tyler opened, I was at the coffee shop, which happens to be right in front of the studio and I was standing around talking to some people about the opening and there he was, in the crowd listening to me talk, and then showed up at the studio a little later where my friend Grace told him he looked like Billy Bob Thorton he just said "I am Billy Bob" and handed me his card. He returned later and asked if I would come to his studio that afternoon and pop balloons while he took photos, I said sure and he asked if I would wear what I had worn earlier that morning. I had been hanging out at the studio on and off that day and probably changed clothes 4 times.

He had me when he called that rattlesnake "cute" and he meant it. He was just telling me a story about his time alone spent in the desert while I was popping balloons and he was taking photos. It was an easy conversation we were having and then I left to go teach my one and only class of the opening day. He came back after I taught and showed me the photos and asked if I happened to be a single woman and I didn't even hesitate, I said "as a matter of fact I am". "Want to go to dinner?" he asked and I replied" Of course, let's do Don Juan's" since I was only eating cabbage and beans back then. Two weeks later I moved in with him, that was March of 2004.

On hot July evenings with mosquitoes buzzing around, Robert, fly swatter in hand will disappear into the night smacking water bugs on the trees, the house, and the ground saving the Cicadas.

Photo by Robert Langham III

I am back.....

Luci Lu, our new Jack Russell puppy. Took her swimming today for the first time, in this shot she is trying to eat the water. Funny dog. Everybody loves her including the 2 male pits that were there today. I love her to pieces.

When I was little I can remember having so much fun at the park and I also remember my family having fun too, but that has changed. I heard my aunt say this afternoon "this is just not fun to me anymore". It made me sad because I was feeling the exact same feeling. I usually smoke cigarettes, drink beer, things I don't let myself do on a daily basis and that's what makes it fun for me. My aunts and my mother bring all the food to eat, drinks to drink (except for the alcoholic beverages), tablecloths, all the things needed to make a great picnic. The men these women are married to never show up and never have. They are all sorry men. The kids, who are now grown and this includes me, bring nothing but themselves and whatever drug or drink they prefer. I feel a saddening loss that will never return, the excitement of being a kid, not thinking about politics or smoking or drinking or how your cousin just said mean and insulting words to his step-son, it was just pure splashing fun in the water with your cousins swinging on ropes into the water and loving your family, not judging or questioning who you came from or why you were with the people you were with, you just were. Just totally and blissfully in the moment. I miss that.

I have many male cousins and a brother that hates being with us and some of them are all living high dramatic lives. I want to throw in that I have some good cousins and they know who they are. Sometimes some are either in jail, or doing too many drugs or with spouses that create all kinds of havoc. So, because of this we all leave a bit earlier these days. We used to stay past dark building a campfire or even spending the night beside the lake. I remember falling asleep to the sounds of bullfrogs and the comforting sounds of the adults talking and laughing about whatever is was they talked about then. It felt safe and good to be alive.

Now when I leave, I feel like I am not finished, like I need to go out and tie one on... ya know, finish it off right. Instead I just come on home, throw that pack of cigarettes away with a dissatisfied, antsy feeling that has to settle back into calm as I ease back into my wonderful life with my sweet husband, Luci Lu, Miss Kitty, Brady's Coffee Shop, my Pilates studio and all the friends and clients that come with it and I will forget all the craziness of the family stuff until the next holiday when we all get together again. Until then, I will be sugar, caffeine, nicotine, alcohol and drug free.