Prints Charming (Yes. Yes, I did.)

One of these days I intend to replace my defunct printer.  It would be nice to have something that can scan/copy/print, is both color and B/W, and is good-to-high quality.  I have a semi-formed hope that one of my new-ish art-ish activities could be turned into note/greeting cards (does anyone use those any more???), maybe...so...any thoughts?

It'll be a minute before this firms into anything like action, but I like to plan ahead when it comes to the electronics I am destined to destroy by bringing them home to Casa de Crazy, where gremlins apparently nest in droves and anything that can go weirdly wrong does so with horrid frequency.

Now that I have written my intent, there is a printer somwhere huddled in its box wondering why it suddenly felt a terrible chill...

Bananas

I saw a show on one of those Discovery Channels a while back, and on that show there was a segment about bananas.  It seems that the bananas we eat today are not the bananas of our forefathers.

Most of the bananas that we eat in the Western world these days are Dwarf Cavendish bananas, ever since a fungus nearly wiped out the previous belle of the ball, Gros Michel.  There's been some fear that another kind of fungus is threatening the Cavendish supply.  Seems bananas are vulnerable to various fungi and blights, and there is some concern that perhaps we have a bananaless future.

Not to worry.  Even if the banana population is suddenly kidnapped by aliens, there will be banana bread at Casa de Crazy.  You see, I am eternally optimistic that the children and I will choose to snack on fresh fruit and vegetables rather than the highly processed, highly colored, highly chemical junque food that we all love so much, so I constantly buy said fresh fruits and vegetables to have on hand.  I have a funny little wooden thingy with a hook on it that lets bananas dangle above the other fruits in the bowl.  There they hang, day after day, until they turn a lovely sort of leathery black-ish brown.

I prefer to eat a banana that is bright yellow with a hint of green on the stem and creases of the peel.  Once it begins to get brown spots, I 'm not interested.  I was surprised to learn that a banana isn't properly ripe until the peel is browning.  I am content to be improper with my bananas, thank you.  The darker they get, the sweeter, but it's the texture that bothers me, not the flavor - I don't like them mushy.

So, when the bananas at the Casa have turned, I freeze them.

Given our distressingly blase attitude about fruit, I freeze a lot of bananas.  A lot. If I may be so bold as to employ a bit of hyperbole, I think I now have the equivalent to a small island nation's annual banana harvest in my freezer.  As I don't care for many other banana-inclusive foods, I use them for banana bread.  If I bake a batch a week, it would take a year or so for me to use up what I have right now, and the supply is growing as we continue to spurn healthy eating in favor of death-by-preservatives.

Oh, well - at least I know that we will not have to forgo one of our favorite baked goods for a very long time should bananas meet a sad, fungal fate.

There is a fine entry all about bananas over at Wikiwhatsis, if you want to learn more about the tasty yellow fruit and its family.

How do you like your bananas?

Comfort Food?

Okay, so I know that comfort foods are usually things like mashed potatoes, chocolate cake, macaroni and cheese, and other usually carb-heavy things.

But.

I made artichokes for dinner - it's just Sprout and I at the Casa tonight, and I wanted artichokes, so, why not?  They're a comfort food for me.

Is that weird?

I'm okay with being weird, I'd just like to know.

Do you have any unusual comfort foods?  If so, do tell...

Bond...Bail Bond...

Emotional, right now.

I thought I was about to go get Cygnus...but..no...because his public defender hasn't gotten the paperwork done and didn't know about another order that is keeping me from bonding him out, the investigator tells me. It's not a problem, she says, it'll be done in a day or a week, or whenever the damned judge feels like signing it.  Words cannot describe how angry I feel right now...suffice it to say, it is a VERY GOOD THING that I a non-violent person or I would seriously consider wreaking some havoc on some lazy, shiftless, lying, heartless, bitches without compassion right about now.

He is WAITING for me to come get him, out of money on the phones, out of paper, out of stamps, expecting to be coming home and I can't even go TELL him because we can't visit until TOMORROW.

Oh, it's only a couple of days?  The judge has had the order for a week.  The other order is months old and they've only just found out about it.  A few days my fat ass!  I'd really love to put every one of these people in that jail under the same conditions and see how they feel about "...only a few days..." when they get out.

Don't ever let anyone tell you it's not about the money.  If I had two nickels to rub together, he'd have been out long ago, probably with charges dropped, but since we can't afford a lawyer and no one does pro-bono any more, we're grist for the mill.  It is totally about the money.  Justice is for those with deep pockets.

There is a sort of horrid upside to this.

As part of the new bond, the order restricting him from coming home was lifted.  As it turns out, that bit hasn't been signed, yet, so if I HAD gotten him out last week, they could have come and arrested him again, claiming bond violation, and we would never have known that the judge hadn't signed the new order yet until Someone was led away in handcuffs.

Also, I found all this out because I called the bond company to beg them to take a smaller down payment...and they agreed to take what I can pay right now for the down payment and the agreed upon monthly payment.

I have no faith that any of these judicial fucktards will decide to get off their asses and do something besides scratch what itches...I have no faith that he is ever coming home...but even so, I am not giving up.  If I have to tear down that fucking jail brick by brick, I will get him out of there and back home.

Not Really Going Anywhere At All

Oooh, dreaming.  To dream intimates to sleep, yes?  No?  Maybe...

Funny things happen when one doesn't sleep as much as one might like, as much as one ought, as much as one needs.

One night, perhaps two, make for tired days, perhaps a short temper.  Build on that foundation, though, and there are colors never tasted, visions of things not quite there, sounds that warp themselves to bend around walls and seep through vents until they sound like the whispers of the Sidhe just beyond ken.

Lose enough sleep, fall short enough of the need to process the days into dreaming, and thought becomes tangled, embroiled in a fractured process, sloughing through the dregs of intelligence that sleeplessness left behind when it stole the best away.

When I do sleep, such dreams I have!  Once or twice (or three or four times, maybe) in the very distant past, far beyond the statutes for such things, I may have ingested some LSD.  In that long-ago time, what I experienced was exactly nothing like the media portrayals of such ingestions.  No ravening beasties, no loss of control, no mania, no psychotic breaks, no sudden conviction that I could fly, nothing deleterious at all.  Mostly, I laughed a lot.  The dreams I have of late?  The things my own mind creates out of fragments of memory?  As chaotic a maelstrom as any "bad trip" ever imagined by the fevered minds of the collective and disapproving media!

I do not have nightmares.  It's true!  I have some intensely weird, unpleasant, bewildering dreams, but nothing like what I am told a nightmare is.  I always know I am dreaming.  I am never so lost in what my brain is producing that I feel fear.  Perhaps that's why all those horror movies based upon dreaming don't interest or bother me much.  I am too aware, when sleeping, that it isn't real.  Sometimes I can, figuratively speaking, sit back with some popcorn and watch the film unfold before me.

I am angry a lot, and lonely, and sometimes trying to find my way through some sort of tangle or maze that continually shifts around me.  I am sad.  I yearn for something just beyond my reach. Sky and ground are fluid, trading places.  No up, no down, monochromatic.

Last night, in the shifting landscape that occupied my mind for a scant few hours, there was a song.  Not unusual, that.  So much of my life is music.  Dream A Little Dream played on an endless loop, and I missed my Someone intensely while I sat in a grey room full of grey air that tasted of dust and shadows.

This morning, when I woke, the rain-darkened day seems inordinately bright,muted colors were vivid, and my daughter's laughter shattered the stillness, tinkling into the corners and bouncing back to the bed in waves as she bounced and giggled and told me it was time to get up, get up Mama!

Here in the waking world I am, to use a colloquialism, dog tired.  I'm getting used to it.  When the walls begin to breathe and colors begin to run, I'll begin to worry.  Until then, I shall muddle on as usual, and as usual I will use the extra time provided by insomnia to do something useful, like watch entire seasons of television on Netflix (House of Cards, anyone?).

Dream a little dream of me...

Who Ya Gonna Call?

There was a time when everyone who knew me knew they could call me at any time and I would be there for them.  If they needed a shoulder to cry on, groceries, to be rescued from the side of the road, I was the one they could count on.  I once packed my 18 month old son into the van and hauled him 2/3 of the way across the country to help a friend out.  It was a fantastic trip, I got to see part of the country I'd never visited before, and I made sure my friend got home.

When anyone needed money, groceries, a place to live, they always knew I would help them out.

I still try to be that friend - everybody eats, everybody has a place, call me any time day or night and I will be there.  You call, I come, simple as that.

It was a sad day when I realized that I don't have anyone like that in my life...someone who unconditionally reaches out and says "I'm here for you" whatever the circumstances, someone who would drop everything and come sit next to me and hold my hand while I cry, someone who isn't too busy or inconvenienced when I need them.  I think about who I can call...and this one is out of town, that one has to work, another one has troubles of their own and doesn't really want to deal with mine, and another doesn't answer when I call (too busy, I guess, or they know why I'm calling and just don't want to be bothered).

Most of the last twenty years I've looked to Mum when I needed help of one kind or another.  I feel a terrible guilt when I ask her for anything, because I feel like I have taxed her more than enough.  There are some things she just cannot do, or will not (with good reason), things I wish I could do for myself but can't.

I'm so tired of reaching out only to find nothing there.

Tonight I am deeply lonely.  I can't even manage to get Someone bonded out and home...since Tuesday he's had bond, since Tuesday I have wanted desperately to get him out, since Tuesday I have been unable to do even that one simple thing, and since Tuesday I have felt very alone and in need of the kind of comfort that comes only from having someone to lean on.

Tonight I get to tell Someone, once again, that the possibility of help, of a solution, an offer, has fallen through and I have been unable to get him out, that there's another night for him there, in a place that seems built to cause the dissolution of the soul.

While I'm On A Musical Kick...

Another of the songs from Meet the Robinsons that gets stuck in my head:


Yeah, yeah, I'm kind of a sap...

One More Chance? You Got it!

I like the movie Meet the Robinsons, and a few of the songs rattle around in my head on a regular basis.  I thought I'd share one of 'em:

Running Into Walls

What follows is a mind-dump, the result of days, hell, of months, trying to fight an uphill battle and feeling awfully alone and lonely while I'm doing it.  Now, nearing an end of sorts, I am bashing against high stone walls with no idea where to turn or what to do, battering myself to pieces inside a maze with no egress built to confuse, hurt, and eventually force one to give up entirely and turn to dust.

I do not give up easily, despite evidence to the contrary...but I am reaching my breaking point and feel entirely alone in this regard:  I care for and love deeply someone I think is better than the man he has shown the world, and I can count on one finger the people who see him as I do.
~~~~~
The law says they can hold him no more than 90 days without bond, indictment, or dropping charges.  They held him 115 days before finally holding a hearing to set bond, as no indictment has been handed down and they are reluctant to drop the charges - every prisoner held on drug charges is money from the federal government, dontcha know?

He is disintegrating in jail.

Bond was set - $15,000, which is an enormous amount when we have no money, no savings, no property, nothing of any value to sell, pawn, use for collateral.  It's the lowest bond they could set, though, and I'm grateful for that.  They also lifted the restriction that said he couldn't come home, and I am grateful for that, too. If...when...I can get him out, he can see his daughter again, we can touch again, we can try to repair the damage done to our family by his actions, drinking, and anger and by the system that seems more interested in sucking us dry than doing any real and lasting good.  Perhaps I am a little bitter about all of this.

The judge seems more compassionate than not.  The prosecutor was kind and spoke nicely to me despite clearly wondering about my sanity.

He has work waiting for him, if the people offering it haven't changed their minds, if the people offering it were in earnest.  I can only hope that they were not simply speaking empty words.

Now all I have to do is find $15,000 to give to the court to keep until his trial as a surety that he will BE at trial.  When he appears in court, the money will be returned.  I do no have that kind of money, let alone that kind of money to let sit in a figurative envelope for untold days, weeks, months, years, until trial releases is back to me.  I could use property for the surety, if it is worth the amount or more, if I had property, with the same conditions as above.  I could pay a bondsman to get him out, 20% of the bond for their fee and it is non-refundable, but even that is beyond my means right now.  I wonder if I can mortgage a kidney...

He has burned bridges with many people, and so I find myself feeling as though there is no one I can turn to in dealing with this.  It feels as though I am the only person in all the world that cares that he is in jail, wants him out, cries constantly at the futility of all the effort I've made to garner his release.  It feels as if there are quite a few people who think I should simply end our relationship and let him rot in there.  Feels?  Yes...and it is true, because the words have been said by more than one person.  Well meaning words, but no less painful, cutting to the quick, leaving me feeling more isolated, as if I must be silent about him and everything connected to this mess.  No one wants to hear it.  No one wants to know about my tears or our daughter's constant ache for her Papa.  So many people have rushed to tell me they cannot help, they won't help, without my even asking...I am taking down the fundraiser I started for him because I get it, no one wants to see it, hear it, share it, and I am so very tired of begging.  Pissing up a rope would likely get me more and better results.

Strangers have done more, offered more wisdom, more comfort, than the people who are connected to him by blood.  His family owes me nothing, but I ache for HIM, knowing that HE knows all but two of them have not answered my phone calls, my texts, my messages on Facebook, his letters, are content to write him off and get on with their lives as if he did not exist, this embarrassment of a brother, father, son, uncle, cousin, man.  So much easier to ignore him, to ignore us, to let us slide into the back corners of their minds and finally be forgotten, and I am too damned exhausted to try and keep them from doing it.

I don't blame my friends for wanting to be shed of this.  Like I said, he's burned bridges, and they're MY friends, not his.  They owe him nothing.

My family?  He alienated Mum, and the rest of my family is too distant or honestly couldn't care less about me or my drama as long as it doesn't involve them.  I am the family fuck-up, the negative example to be given to the next generations, "Don't do that or you'll end up like HER!" and "You don't want to wind up like she did, do you?".  Anyway, they don't owe him, or me, anything either.

Here, in this Blue Nowhere, at least I can put the words down, shout into the maelstrom and know that anyone reading this far has chosen to do so.  In the mundane world?  I am tired of seeing, of feeling, the impatience for me to just shut up, just get over it, just move on already.  Move on...as if I could shrug off our small history, our connection through our daughter, our love (flawed as we are, as it is, our love is no less powerful to us), ignore an integral part of my essential Self by abandoning him and walking away.

Oh, I suppose I should not be writing of this.  I suppose it is awkward.  I suppose it is unpleasant.  I suppose it could look like begging or blaming.  It isn't meant to be.  It's meant to be a sort of release, for me, a way to take it out of my head and perhaps let it go.

Tomorrow or the next day I will write something nice to read and let this shit get buried.

Meanwhile, I won't give up, but maybe I can set these spiky feeling somewhere they will grow dull with time and free me from this quagmire of feeling useless and burdensome, unwanted and unwelcome, and let me get him out of there before he is lost to me entirely.

Yes, Ma'am.

I have been off camping and vending at a couple of events in the last month, so I haven't been blogging much.
last night we were on our way home from our annual Ohio event and we stopped at a motel with a pool.  I had promised the kids that we would go swimming, a treat for them since we don't have a lot of access to pools or swimming holes and they both enjoy the water.  Public swimming is often unpleasant for me.  I don't like the stares, and I can practically hear the unhappy, uncharitable, even cruel thoughts people have about a fat woman in a bathing suit.

I've lost some weight and the suit I have is a little too big in a couple of places.  My ass sags, and the butt portion of the suit flaps emptily along the leg lines.  I never had any boobs to speak of...I think they wound up as arm flaps instead, so I'm blessed with a generous second-goodbye rather than any sort of cleavage or bazooms.  My thighs...well, let's just not discuss those, shall we?  My belly has a large apron of now-empty fat cells and skin that is unsightly and sometimes unpleasant to deal with and will only ever go away if I have an unfortunate industrial accident with a very large pair of scissors or manage to get some plastic surgeon to take pity on me...and while s/he is at it, deal with those fantastic (insert sarcasm here) arm flaps, butt sags, and cow-patty thighs.  The boobs are going to remain as-is, since I like being able to run without injury.  Quit laughing, I can too run...if chased...by lions...who want to eat my children.

Last evening, as we entered the pool area, I was sorry to see that there were several adults in the hot tub and a couple of kids in the pool, which meant  would have to endure showing myself in a bathing suit.  Sigh.  Then I had a momentary flash of anger and uttered an internal "You know what?  Fuck you if you have a problem with my body or my swimming with my kids.  Fuck this false beauty standard humans, especially women, are supposed to live up to.  Who are you to judge?"  I got into the pool and swam with the kids until it was time to go back upstairs.

Just now I saw this video.  Synchronicity of a sort.  Sing it, girl!

Do you like you?  Shine...