In Praise of Bits and Pieces

Intro to Blogging--
I'm not sure what I'm going to blog about today, so perhaps, this is a warning to read at your own risk or your own boredom. This blog is called "First Draft" for a reason, if you want the too-the-point poetry stuff, visit Book of Kells, which is poetry only. Not my life, not the details of my small town, "Just the facts." Or what I view as the facts.

Small town life--
We are buying a generator. Yes, though I feel it's not necessary, me husband wants a new toy. Actually, when we moved to this small town, we lost power about once a year, now, we lose power when someone sneezes. Yes, it's that frequent.

For our last power outage, which was 24 hours (nothing compared to what others in the NW has to endure--my mum was out for 4 days, other friends were out for a week), we purchased extra batteries, threw out a freeze full of food. I had to buy ice to keep my cat's insulin cold. We purchased food we could eat that wouldn't go bad, etc. etc. When the total price was in, my husband said, "That's 1/6 of what a generator costs." He was right. So, if we lose power six more times, I'll consider us even.


What I do when I worry--
Right now I'm trying to live my life without worrying about a little health concern that I can't do anything about that may be standing in the back of the room and waving at me, or it could just be a wall where I've turned the shadows into monsters. I won't know for awhile, so I'm just having to wait and see how this all plays out.

Because I've never been good at waiting, I keep myself occupied by...redecorating. No, not writing. Writing is what I force myself to do during worried times because then my anxiety can be put to good use-- creatively. Home improvement offers me the same feeling.

So, in the next two months I will installing a new light fixture in our dining room and moving our dining room's light to the hallway. I will be having hardwood floors installed in our bedroom and possibly painting the downstairs. If it were summer, I'd be out in the garden, but it's not, it's wet and cold, so I'll be indoors, remodeling, redecorating, and trying to keep my mind off the bad stuff and focused on the good and healthy. (Sort of like "Good & Plenty").

Because I'm a poet I feel I need to add something poetry related here---
I just finished Robert Hass's book Praise. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it, but have you ever read a book and thought, "If I were of the opposite sex, I'd like this more." I had that feeling when reading Hass's work. I kept thinking, "If I were a man, this would be da bomb." (Okay, that was me trying to talk like a man and it was way off, I know.)

How can I explain this. In this book, Hass keeps bringing up three topics--paintings, berries, and sex. As a friend said, "It's as if he wants to be touchy-feely man, but isn't." Though there were certain poems I found lovely, like 'Songs to Survive the Summer," there were others that made me feel as if the person I thought was my friend was a actually a stalker. There's a creepy factor in these poems and I think it's unintentionally and I think if you're a man you may not see it, but as a woman reading these poems, I felt uneasy at times.

Maybe it's a line like this, which is from one of my favorite poems, "There was a woman/I made love to and I remembered how, holding/her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,/I felt a violent wonder at her presence..." Though Hass is not saying he is feeling violence towards her, there is the feeling of dominance here--she is of small shoulders, he is making love to her instead of "who I made love with." He says "made love to" instead of "made love with," it's a small detail, but put together "small shoulders" and the word "violent," it creates a different tone for the poem.

And I'm not saying it shouldn't be there as I don't think poems should be all rainbows and daisies, but as a woman reader, reading similar feelings like this throughout his book, it affects me. It puts me in the place of "the one who is overcome," the dominated.

And yet, throughout the book, I can see Hass's tenderness.

But ultimately, I think this is a man's book to read. As much as there are poems in here that move me and make me want to return, there is also the feeling of the neighbor that lived across the street from me who would watch us through his window at night. Behind the window, two fingers bend the blinds, enough for eyes to peer out across the suburban night sky.

Snapshots of Christmas

Polly Pocket vs. T-Rex


What I like about my family--
We are all very clean.

The oldest person in this photo is 94 and the youngest is sleeping in the background at 3 months.