Pancake Batter

(Pre-Script: This post to be read as the song, "Lollipop," #20 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

So there I was, mixing raspberry chocolate chip pancake batter for all the children of the world. For all the children of the world who at one time or other resided inside my womb. And that feels like I'm making them for all the children of the entire world...

AHEM:

(Random Digression [or R.D.]: Pancakes are one of those things I used to eat, but no longer eat, because I do not have an off switch once I start eating them. It's better if I abstain all together. End Of Random Digression [or E.O.R.D.])

..and it occurred to me that I could make this a perfect food. I could add spinach I had just whipped up in my blender complete with a couple of fish oil pills which I had squirted the insides out of into the batter. I could add a little protein powder. I could then go into the backyard and tap my own maple syrup straight from the maple tree that grows there. But then I remember that I'm not nearly that organic. I'm not nearly that close to living in an upper New England town near a lake or pond which is a natural habitat of Canadian Geese, for example. I don't have a backyard which contains even one Maple tree. In fact, I don't even have a backyard. And besides, Trader Joe's already bottled the Maple syrup for me. Which is a lot less mess than me and a bucket, standing there in my frustration, trying to figure out how to get the golden nectar from the inside of the tree, where I KNEW it was freely oozing, to the outside of that tree. It is also a lot less time consuming.

Blink

(Random Digression [or R.D.]: Remember when I was a kid, and kids used to eat cookies and candy without worrying about their rising cholesterol levels? 'cause then we went outside and ran around shooting each other with our fingers because play shooting wasn't a criminal act, just a bunch of kids acting out good guy vs bad guy scenarios like in the westerns out parents would watch on tv in front of us without worrying that they were traumatizing us because the particular movie was "unrated?" And we also didn't eat chemicals and splenda and activia. But I am getting ahead of myself. End Of Random Digression [or E.O.R.D.])

Blink

Blink

In the end, I didn't put any of that healthy stuff into the pancake batter. But I did create delicious chocolate chip raspberry pancakes, which turned the normal children I'd birthed into the happy, delightfully energetic normal children I'd birthed.

So there goes the neighborhood, and so on and so forth.

-XOXO,

National Football League

(Pre-Script: This post should be read as the song, " Undone," #40 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

I have a lot in common with the NFL. Most specifically, we share a middle name, which is "Football."

Blink

Blink

This is not literally true. My middle name is literally Louise, but I looked up the meaning of Louise, and it means Female Warrior. And since I am a middle child, sandwiched between older and younger brothers, it was my destiny to live up to my middle name, which in my case meant nightly games of tackle football on the front lawn after dinner. So being roughly and loosely interpreted, my name which I lived up to actually means Michelle, the football female warrior.
I appreciate this now.

I did not appreciate it when I actually was a football wielding, grass stained multiple body bruised girl child running catch me if you can fast across the (football field) front lawn. In those days, I wanted a middle name that sounded like a middle name I liked the sound of. The acceptable middle names were Elizabeth, Marie, or even Lynne. But my mother had some crazy notion to bestow upon my bony identity the middle name she herself had been given, and which she herself had always hated. I will never understand the logic of this. All I can come up with is that she knew me better than I knew myself, then.
But now that I am a grown up, I know myself fairly well, most days. I like my middle name. And while it's true that I have never met anyone else who actually likes the name "Louise," I know now that I really am Louise, with all of it's character and, yes, even charm. Louise is quirky and different. Elizabeth (Consecrated to God)? Marie(Bitter Sea)? Lynne(Beautiful Waterfall)?

BO-ring!

And also, let me redirect your attention to the fact that Louise means Female Warrior. I don't care how you turn it, that's just straight up brass knuckles.

-XOXO,

...And then I'll make a vase...

Wash over the shards of this day
like salt water rolls sharply broken glass
around in it's waves
to deposit on a shore

somewhere I've never been,
somewhere I'd like to go.
Blow across the scar of this day-
the whisper
of a breeze not without a secret promise
that all of this tossing will land us,
finally.

Someday I will be walking along a shore,
the sea will be calm
and at my feet all around,

thick chucks of smoothed glass
that sparkle in the sun
and do not cut my fingers

when I pick them up,
that look like the long forgotten colorful gems

of all of my crystallized tears,
and I will remember,

(Oh how I will remember!)

yes I will remember
where I came from.
( I came from here.)
-XOXO,

Ocean Moon

(Pre-Script: This post best read as the song, "Bend and Break," #32 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

On the back of my heart

is a tattoo of the dark side of the moon

and the face there

is your face, rippling

like the surface of the sea,

so that's how I know

that there is water on the moon.

But dark, hidden,

a secret no one seems to recognize,

and you're changing; the wind,

blowing, changes the shape of you

but I know you.

I feel the pull

from deep inside my chest.

There's an ocean who's current

has never been surfed or sailed,

treasures hidden on shores

unexplored.

-XOXO,

Liquidation

(Pre-Script: This poem will melt you if you read it as the song, "Between the Lines," #28 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

What if I slipped through the cracks

in the floor
(the floor was made of tile and I had turned to liquid)
so there was no trace of where
I had once stood,
of if I had stood there at all,
a solid being on a solid surface?

What if I became liquid

from the inside out,
the blood poured out of my heart,
and congealed first inside my chest cavity,
became

what looked like a purple black bruise

from the outside,
and eventually saturated through bone,

vital organs,
any connecting tissues,
what muscle tone I had once earned and maintained,
and finally skin,
all bloodied now,
all only blood now,
from inside, from the inside
of this solid shape of me.

-XOXO,

Birthday

(Pre-Script: This poem smells fresh when read as the song, "Everybody's Changing," #14 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

I have stopped carrying you.

Actually, I never carried you,

but you have never stopped

wanting me to, expecting it,

which is something like expecting

a banana to jump out of the fruit bowl and dance

on the crumb strewn kitchen counter.

With my hand,

I will wipe the counter clean,

so clean that

no one could know just by looking

that anyone

had ever made toast.

I'll use my cucumber scented kitchen spray

so that no one

could know just by smelling.

-XOXO,

Deposits

(Pre-Script: This post will carry you out to sea when read as the song, "Uncharted," #44 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

When I was 4, the ocean knocked me over. Not in a gentle or graceful way, just flat out, cold salt water smacking into my back and pushing me face down into the sand while it rolled over me, then back out. This is the risk that any small person takes when stepping into the ocean, never mind if she is wearing her prettiest pink swimsuit or not. Never mind if parents or grandparents are standing nearby with a large towel and a red box of Cheez-It's.

I have never been knocked over since.

When I got a little bit older, I used to go out as deep as I felt brave, and body surf. It was always cold, so I would wait until one level of my body got numb before daring to go any deeper, and finally I would be up to my shoulders, and finally, dipping my head under. Eventually, the chill of the ocean would take over the numbness I had taken for granted. When I realized I was cold, I would get out of the water in pursuit of warm sand and my towel.

It's surprising how much sand a body can hide and then later that evening deposit in a bath drain. You thought you'd left the water, but so much of it had stayed with you, in crevices you thought you'd already rinsed clean.

-XOXO,