flashback: guess who is coming to dinner: round dos

so my brother didn't bring home another cougar but i revisited this piece and did some flip and flopping for a writers conference app and i thought i'd bring you a new version. this was a fav on a blog and in my class the first time around so let's hope you like the changes. i took into consideration questions such as how can the reader know what you look like kate in comparison? (unless you know me) or what did you parents think?- them being born agains made it all the more interesting. sorry i haven't been posting regularly the end of grad school and the end of the school year caught up with me. i am going to get back to my more regular posts! i promise! thanks as always for stopping by and your support.

What do you do when your brother tells you; he is dating someone closer to your age, someone closer to the age of your stepmother, and also your father? You have two choices after the surprise falls out of you again, to either: 1) throw judgment out the window or 2) judge, judge, and judge some more. Well I wish I could say I did one, but that just isn't part of my older sister makeup. I still want to protect my brother even if he doesn't think he needs it. So I opted for two, plus some lectures later, and to get through some herbal sedatives, lots of herbal sedatives. If I knew what I had in store, I would have gone to the doctor and begged for some prescription freedom. Lesson learned.

All I see is three to four inch heels, well manicured feet, jeans with sequins on the bottom and little on the rear just to make sure you are paying attention, they glisten in the light of the hotel bar against our overpriced champagne. Then the boobs, huge obtrusive boobs, cleavage that makes Pamela Anderson stalkers even swoon. No, it keeps going when I see her face. Her face is covered in makeup, makeup like you used to wear when you couldn’t be comfortable in your own skin. That was when I was 15. She is 42. Very tan skin, almost too tan, and hair, her hair is perfectly done, almost bleached but still shockingly pretty. Not one knot, not one hair out of place. The OC embodied in one woman is sitting next to me, next to me as my brother introduces her to me and me to her.

My younger brother, my brother is 20 years her junior. She tells me as she speaks with her half-British, half-Laguna Hills dialect about her surgeries, “I have had two boob jobs, my ears pinned back, a nose job.” Holy fuck, I just met you 5 minutes ago I think. If I had all that work done, I hope I would be hotter. More unique. Less Barbie, more exotic.

The older sister. Me. Melting in this fancy hotel couch. Mental music plays of why me and fuck my life on repeat. I want to take my brother under this wing to shelter him from this storm of his undoing. I helped raise him for God sakes don’t I get to partake in the all-important role of badgering him and providing unsolicited advice as all parents do. I was once upon a time a child raising a child – a mother role left to a motherless child, me then, and me now.

As we sit next to each other- we are the polar opposites of femininity, of womanhood. My skin is pale and pasty from the fog and mist of winter reality against her fake and bake orange. My body parts all real. My breasts still perky even over the age of thirty without a doctor’s help or assistance, but my lips are fine markers of lines. And no personal trainer to perfectly sculpt me. My dark hair dyed only to hide the gray of an early grayer and it is done up because I didn’t wash it and barely brush it.

It wasn't just our looks, which left us on opposite sides of the line drawn so regularly in womanhood. There was more. The more part never stopped pushing my limits of needing prescription freedom or needed to regress into the fetal. She worked up to the important things when we had known each other a little longer like 24 hours or something. “Have you had your boobs done? They are very nice.”

“Excuse me. No, they are real.”

“Well I’m thinking of getting mine done again,” she sings in a high pitch.

Shoot me. Please take me to my dead place. Whatever I did universe, God, Buddha, in my former life please, please forgive me. I will do whatever penance required, live more simply, be kinder to my neighbor, get rid of material possessions-just make this lady go away. I spew, “If you make them any bigger, you are going to fall the fuck over.” Aloud. Not in my head. She laughed her uncomfortable laugh. Can I vote her off the island of my genetics? This is a joke of the worst kind. She tells us how she renamed herself. Renamed herself? Because too many women in the salon, too many women in the salon had her name. Is anything about this woman real? Anything at all? What does my brother see in her but her boobs her huge boobs? I can barely avoid my eyes from glancing there. It’s hard to concentrate on anything else.

She liked to flash her goodies to all. Even to my family. She wore a nighty around my uncles and parent’s homes, homes against their own judgment they welcomed her in, and didn’t pause for one moment to evaluate the appropriateness of it all. Here is a tip- black lace and silk and seeing the top of your thighs or maybe your thong not so good for the family visits especially not the first one.

The cougar didn't just advertise she took it to the next level. With my brother as a willing participant of course. While we try to act “normal” around the wildlife dating my brother, she and my brother cuddle like teenagers so much my parents had to intervene. See my parents- my father and stepmother are born again Christians so they are not really down for making out or semi-dry humping on their couch. In their home, they require a prayer before meals and the four minute discussion/lecture entitled: Why don’t you go to Church as part of their list of duties as Christians. “I don’t want to be speeding up around in heaven and not see you,” preaches ever so subtly my father. My father has given himself a timeout in his bedroom listening to his peace of blaring Fox news and flying airplanes on his computer. As my brother and the cougar rest on each other’s bodies upon the coldness of the leather sharing a square reserved for one. My stepmom has to request backup from my father to deal with their inappropriateness; my father yells from down the hall, annoyance reverberated against the walls of our family home.

No one tells you how to deal with this, no one writes books about what happens when your brother or son brings home a cougar. Maybe I should write one. It would include the following topics in the series: How to deal with your brother when he brings home a cougar, or becomes part of the conservative movement and is on the O’Reilly Factor before he can drive or gets deported from Africa and you are notified by the Drudge Report and Huffington Post not your next of kin. The cliff notes on my brother are as follows: this isn’t the first stunt he has pulled- and it most defintiely won't be his last. I am in shock. In shock about myself. Why am I as surprised as much as I was at his first attempt at oppositional defiance disorder?

The surprise of me, his mini-mother, is fueling the fire of this rebellion. I want to protect him. I want him to be okay. I want to know my attempt at motherhood was not failed. Even if it was a result of circumstances beyond my control that I became his mother. And as this visit ends, something changes inside of me. I grew distaste of course for OC woman with fake tits who are orange, but also I need to let go and realize the shock will keep happening. If it isn’t a cougar, it will be something else and it will be soon.

So next year, next Thanksgiving, I’m going to my local coffee shop or nursing home or senior center or maybe I’ll just make a house visit to Hef’s mansion and really take it up a notch. I mean I might not be the girl next-door kind of girl material- me being a brunette and all and don’t forget with no silicone or saline to call my own. Hey it is worth a try. I hope to find my own boyfriend to borrow, to rent, to fall in love with and to take home. He might be 70 or 80, but it’s my turn to be the talk of my family.

alcoholic bones: inherited but still mine, without stopping i remember i ain't no winehouse

Without stopping. I hadn't had one of those without stopping nights in awhile. The one that the motion propels you through with the help of alcohol and banter and the next place until you wake up the next morning to your head feeling as if it might explode. You write a letter: dear head, please don't fall apart. Not now. Love, me.

See I used to have without stopping nights all the time. In my younger years- the debut of adulthood and experimentation- I wonder if I mix these three alcohols will I hug the toilet later. Oh most likely I will. A weak stomach. I do. Have. Later in my working years. When I had cash to burn. Burn and a job I didn't like. In a group of friends. Who all seemed to follow suit. Or when I was depressed about what I wanted. My only solace was the pouring down of the medicine ordered by me. It felt so comfortable. It felt like home. For it was.

Not everyone has a bones such as mine. These alcoholic bones originally believed to be from my descents- my grandfathers or great on both my irish sides. No closer in my body these bones made a tight fit around the joints. Closer to me. Around the veins and organs and the pulsing in and out. Not just my grandfathers, and maybe a few cousins, and maybe a few aunts or uncles but the closest you could get. My parents. Both. Of. Them. No one told me. To watch out because of my parents. No watch out because of those far away folks, they said. No one wants to say. Addiction you have inherited and dysfunction now not distant relative but your sibling. Living in your home. No one says it. For denial is the way you go on in the island of my family. So it has been. Until. One day you realize. These bones. These ways. Are part genetic. But part learned. And feel like home. It is scary to admit aloud in someones eyes but dysfunction is my friend and alcohol could be the only home you've known. Comforting things not so comforting.

But it changed for me. Not in meetings. Not in saying aloud my name is kate and I might be alcoholic. Hi, Kate did not reverberate against my ears. Not in my dad checking me into rehab and me saying no, no, no. No intervention. No I walked the line the best I could. Until I had to slow it down. I wasn't figuring myself out anymore. Binge drinking became less cool. And so did the throwing up. And wasted days. I was running away from who I was. What was too hard to feel. So now I don't drink like I once did. I go out regularly and might have a beer or two. It might be because I am happier. It might be because I thought about it. It might be I never wanted to be a drunk. Destroyed and broken.

But as I wake up in this brightest room in all of the mission. My head ripping apart and my fear of my stomach release. I can't help but think without stopping nights are still part of me. Even if they don't happen as they once did. Even though this hadn't happened in almost a year. I will always have these nights a piece of me that wants to keep going and not caring. Until the am. In the brightness of this new day. And I realize I can dabble in the without stopping nights. But I am not built for them as I once was. I turn over and will my head to stay in one piece and roll into an embrace. My head will stay in one piece. I got to keep my heart in one too.

happy holidays- time travel back to slamming doors

i found myself on a by accident hiatus based on fatigue from school from fatigue of a cold then flu but i am back. i hope you all had an amazingly great holiday and will be having an epic new years. thanks as always for stopping by.


I found myself acting out. Acting out in the middle of the mountains. In the middle of my parents. In the middle of my family. In the middle of not my adolescence but the beginning stages of a supposed maturity of the 30s. But somehow when I come back here. Here. I find myself teenage again. In my antics. In my ability to respond. By yelling. Pounding my legs down the hall. And slamming the door again. Again. See this is the way I behaved before. It was the norm of me. But never do I anymore. Until there is something about the bringing to together of the family. That makes my younger self re-submerge into me. I drop a few pounds, my hair lightens to a blond and lengthens, my jeans expand to boot cut, flannel tied around my waist, womanhood not budding enough and there she is. I am time traveled back to my old school abilities to cope. In dramatic ways. I am well behaved mostly. In my life. But sometimes even I need to act out.

Somehow in the equation of my father- trying to be caring as always, trying to be the strong one although diminished by disease and age and injury plus my brother-who worships money and power and spews it upon us in his tirades, we wipe our faces but it still stinks and a momentarily sweet pause plus my stepmom-trying to balance the job of peace maker knotting her belly into two, she is the keeper of my father plus me-the one who talks, talks too much, and has learned the boundaries I must draw to survive equals into the mess that we only can know as our own.

Time. I am late. Late I am not with her and haven’t been in years. But through a misunderstanding of time. Reconfirmed by a father unable to now keep time. He lives in the abyss of the fox, of the morphine, of the cloud of poker and airplanes on his computer. Are you going to be ready? Her face distorts and words are not needed for her to inflame my wound of a 15 year self. No I am not. But I will be in a few minutes. Dad told me. Now dad sitting in my face, Kate you should get moving. Shit. I am usually the well behaved and hounding they are me. But my brother and dad make everyone wait all the time. But no time out for them. No lecture. Just me. Done. Pounding and slamming. And father coming. And I am saying leave me alone. Just leave me alone. Leave me alone. I am not myself or am I. I walk down the hall of my own childhood to be like the teenagers I work with. Heart starts pounding against my chest the adrenaline of years past pump into my system.

Now my brother is coming in for round 3. Kate what’s your problem. I am sick of you. Leave me alone. I repeat. I do one thing and now it’s the apocalypse. I am sick of being well behaved and somehow she is here as I stare at her in the mirror. The girl I left behind. T you do whatever the hell you want and never make an apology so leave me alone and get out of here and close the door on him. Him.

I guess it doesn’t matter how old we get, or how we work on ourselves to play well with others out in the real world because when you return, return to your roots of home. You are once again. Again as you were. At first very adult, but each adultness layers chips off and fails to the fall, I watch it drift as leaves of the tree. Just as the pimples reappear and my confidence begins to sink. And I am again slamming the door. Door. Running away from them. Running away from myself. Running away from the fact, we can’t grow up when others remind of us of the piece forgotten.

Happy holidays-you say upon your signs and cards and in words or smiles unspoken. Me I cross my fingers and make sure to have prescriptions and see if this year I can make it sober. Sober without the help of numbness. No one wants a drunk teenager. But a slightly sedated one. Maybe. But there is a part of us one before the weathering of life and the tempering occurs. Our younger self. She likes to make appearances. Sometimes. Never with your family. Just with mine. Here in the mountains. But always when I least expect it. But now I walk down the hall. Slowly. I remember. I remember to say sorry. And try again. Next year.

playing with fire: look bitch take off my acid washed jean jacket

Playing with fire. I play with fire regularly. Not the typical webster definition of the wood and oxygen and flames and sticks and air and heat and those things. No I play with fire. The type that can burn you more than just on your skin. The first and second and third types so deep so below the surface of the abyss of you that when you play- you play with fire- the risk is great. But somehow worth doing. Worth the risk of the burn again. I like to live on the edge or so I say. Mostly I push buttons. Mostly I say things I shouldn’t. Mostly I say too much. Mostly I am too honest. Mostly I am just playing with fire even if I don’t know it. Sometimes. But sometimes I know it and still do it. Say something that will make my heart beat or stop the pulse-the pace-the flow of the room but I still do it.

I started to think about when this started. It’s hard to say. It’s hard to remember when I thought it was fun to play with fire. I didn’t understand the boundaries, of child, or girl, or white, or woman, or working class or pretty or smart or any of the other titles I have been bestowed upon by birth, by social constructs, by my genetics, by so much that is not choice and so much that is. See it is hard to remember when I started playing with fire because I was an adult child. I was the negotiator between my parents as long as I could remember. Dad on one side Mom on the other and me in between. Always. I had honest conversations about my life-about who I wanted to live with and where and when before I was done with the 3rd grade. No child can answer these questions. I looked into the judge’s face, the therapist face, my own private lawyers face at 8, my aunts, my doctors face all saying the same thing I want to live with both my parents. All the faces the same. All the words the same.

It is hard to know boundaries of age if no one instills them in you. It is hard to know boundaries of gender if no one tells you women shouldn’t act this way. Because as much we pretend we have changed, progressed- a woman and what it means to be one fits perfectly in a neat little box on top of that shelf. Still it does. If you only smile and looked pretty life would be so much easier for you. I have heard more than once.

I play with fire. But I remember the first time I played with fire not with my family but with my peers. See my parents- divorced or not- together or not- my dad with or without a new girlfriend weren’t rolling in the dough. My dad started his job 3 months before my mother gave birth to me. He climbed telephone poles and climbed his way up without a degree or an almost degree to manage systems and the such. But we were poor. Not poor like starving poor. More like we had a Volkswagen before they were cool- two of them- and I would force my father to park down the street from school to drop me off as to not have anyone see my car. I didn’t realize I was being a shit. Then of course I didn’t. I was embarrassed of that car. And the roar of it. Dad please just drop me off at the corner. I never admitted why. I didn’t want to see his face, his hard working face, look at me with despair.

So when my parents- more like my dad and his girlfriend allowed me to get my first acid washed jean jacket-I was side pony tailed and gummy bracelet and legging out full of joy and beyond belief. I probably sang a rendition of my own personal Madonna in celebration. I wore that jacket- my coolest item- the coolest item- the item that anyone who was anyone was wearing. I wore it with pride like I once wore my green izzy kid outfit or the badges for most cookies sold as a girl scout. The pride I had for being cool. My father reminded me to put my name in it. Just in case he said. Just in case you lose it. I probably rolled my eyes at him. My green glass eyes, my mothers. Every time he looks at me he must remember. Or does he? He never says. I would be rolling my 9-year-old eyes as he provided me with his black sharpie from his toolbox or art supplies. For my father had all the answers. At one time I thought he did. Even though I played fire with so many things he did tell me.

I wore that jacket as if it was my pride and joy my second skin of acceptance in the 80s-I might have even popped that collar before I knew that was reserved for the preppies. And so I wore it for a week until until I lost it. Of course I lost it. I left it out at recess while I was running my skinny ass around playing something I am sure tetherball or handball or something with a ball. And after recess I returned to where I had thrown it on the ground and to my dismay. Gone. Nothing. Tons of jackets. Piled but mine was missing. There was only the pavement, hot from the afternoon sun, painted partially from the wear of playing.

Shit, shit, shit. I decided it was time to act. I asked my friends and classmates my teachers and anyone who would listen. I went to the lost and found until they told me don’t call us we will call you. I made reward posters. I posted them in the hope that it would return to me. Return it did. But only because I played with fire. After I posted the posters everyone at hahn school knew kate b. had lost her jean jacket. Her cool.

So when I saw that girl, that girl in my jacket at recess. I had no other choice than to. To take my 65 pound-4 foot-something self over and tell her- take off that jacket. She was older than me but I didn’t care. If I could redo it I would say look bitch take off my acid washed jean jacket. Now. Instead she bought time. Playing with fire practiced so I didn’t give up. Take off the jacket-it’s mine. I knew without a doubt that was the flesh and blood of cool, my cool. Look take it off and if it doesn’t say my name- it’s yours. We did the 4th v. 6th grade stare down. And eventually she saw the fire in my eyes and realized she shouldn’t play with a girl’s first love of the jean. She took it off and there there in the black sharpie eye rolled upon it was the words- kate b.

1986 vintage- the greenish woes of third grade

check out my posting in creative caffeine- time travel back to the 3rd grade with me. enjoy!

http://creativecaffeine.blogspot.com/2010/07/anyone-else-but-you-kate-bueler.html

frozen food of the family dinner table

this was written from the prompt-frozen. you never know where it will take you- from frozen food to family dinners to raising siblings. enjoy and thanks for reading!

Frozen. Frozen food. Frozen tv dinners. It used to be a treat. A treat of my childhood to choose my Stouffer's meal of tuna casserole or lasagna that we baked in the oven. Before the luxury of the microwave. The luxury to make anything in under a few minutes. Frozen food was a treat. Tv dinners were a treat. Going out to eat was the exception to the rule of my family. We ate the homemade meals put in front of us each evening. No grimaces. No ask for anything else. You got what you got. And you crossed your fingers nothing would spill and no one might choke or get upset. But we still sat down together.

Together and eventually when I got old enough I had to always call and let them know the status- would I be coming home or not. Or not. Dinnertime was interesting. While I became a teenager- my hair puff in the front of my hair became deflated, my glasses turned into mini lenses that fit in my eyes and the my braces fell away. I was the focus of dinner. The dinner time once kind of a peaceful time until the toddler antics of my brother then the lull and my teenage years crashed into our dinner table. For some reason in the tension of the push and pull of a teenager wanting to be a adult- is where the conflicts of power, struggle, and independence came to a head. God damn it my father would yell after I had pushed his button so long that he couldn’t take it. I left the dinner table of my own choice and my own banishment more often than not. It was something that happened around the oak table with white legs me and my brother on one side-my dad and stepmom on the other. The adults v. the kids. That fueled the fire. I started it more often than not. We fought over privileges and politics and me not being grounded. The unfairness of my ability to creatively think and negotiate. This went on until I left, left for college.

But by the time I returned, the limelight was now my brother’s- he was in the one-man show of rebellion- he shot high. High in ways no one dreamt. My role had changed to the motherly older sister who was trying to help my parents. I should have sat on their side. But no longer I was the focus. My brother never listened. He went to the beat of his own drum. Pounding in a beat so irregular and loud and sporadic we all were holding our ears and rocking back and froth for it to stop. But it never really has. The tempo slows down sometimes, the beat you get used to it and then the roaring banging of pots and pans again. He wasn’t just rebelling against my dad, he was rebelling against me.

It is hard, hard to have not birthed a child but have to help raise one. Raise one at the ripe age of 9. A child raising a child the only way I knew how. I loved him. I mothered him. But did I do it wrong. Did I hold him too tight? Did I tell him how and what to believe? Did I made a mistake? How can a motherless child raise her sibling? I did. I did have mother figures after she went away, my grandmother, and aunts, and stepmother. But nothing is like the embrace of your mother. A love irreplaceable. My love wasn’t a mother’s but it was a sister’s love, love for my brother to be held and feel love. Love that I once felt from my mother. That I mothered him the best way I could. Could as a child.

my own version of rehab

hope you all have a great weekend! i am heading to float down a river and drink some beers.

here is my posting from creative caffeine, my teacher's quick write website, http://creativecaffeine.blogspot.com/2010/07/cleaning-up-kate-bueler.html written from the prompt cleaning up. enjoy and thanks so much for stopping by and sharing in my words.

the cocktail of normalcy

another ten minute quick write inspired by the word fake. thanks for reading!


Fake. Sometimes I wish I could be more fake. Fake in that way I could lie. In an easy way shedding the skin of the dishonesty easier. It shed off in flakes-I look it and walk away. But I am honest. I don’t edit. Sometimes I should. I should. I think I hold back. Back then eyes are popped up all around and next to me and I realize I have gone too far again. Again. But as I have became a big kid, a grown-up,an adult, I have tempered my jumping over curbs biking, riding without the helmet, and talking to myself too loud, but talking nonetheless.

Like the other day when a film crew came into the place I was shopping on 24th street, the 24th street of my grandmother’s childhood now of my adulthood. The film crew came in and to ask me if they could film me buying something. I just had. I said. They responded you could pretend. Okay. Are you sure I look all right? Of course. They smile. But they are film crew their fake and realness can be identical twins in doublewide strollers. I wish I would have showered today. I say. The woman reporter face flies back and scrunches slightly, you shouldn’t have told me I never would have known- you look great. Like the admittance of the non-shower thing might have been too much. But me pretending to buy something fine. Too real to admit aloud. To strangers. To reporters. No comment, maybe.

Fake. I tried to fake it once or maybe twice. But usually the look shows in my face. I hate pretending. Pretending to care about the importance of identity formed by your husband or boyfriend or your job or husband’s job or how rich you might be. I grow tired and fatigued in moments. What I would give for a cocktail of normalcy? What I would give for a taste of hard work or originality or humanity? Fake. I guess we live in a society that breeds it. We live in families and communities that re-enforce and support it. Keeping up with the Joneses in looks and prestige and education and relationships exists. But I hate being fake. I like to be considered pretty and smart and not living off a man. And to be honest not since I was a child have I. I like to be light and fun and not live in the confined box put before me. I hate being fake.

I hate being fake probably because I had to pretend for so long. Pretend I came from a normal family. Because I was scared, scared what would happen at school if they found out I had a crazy mother. Or I only lived with my dad. Or that my mom had once stolen me away. Or that I once was involved in a custody battle. Or that the cops came regularly to my house. No one knew because I had to pretend. The truth would have ruined me then. The denial of our family, the denying of our family, was the glue of the crazy. It had to be unstuck together. But the truth and saying it big or small is the only way for me to let go. Letting go I usually am holding on, hold on too tight but I am practicing, practicing the letting go. Let go. It takes practice.

the science behind the census of our flesh and blood

we are at three months of this journey of me sharing myself, my writing, and my blog. thanks so much for reading and sharing and please keep coming back and share with others! i am beyond humbled by the positive feedback and those who have become daily readers. . .

have an amazing weekend. and as always all my thanks!

another ten minute quick write- the prompt flesh and blood turned into the science behind the census of our flesh and blood. enjoy!

Flesh and blood. The flesh and blood is supposed to matter more. But it doesn’t. Not always. The family that you have inherited may not be the family you desire. Desire. But still you forgive more, more because they are flesh and blood. As they forgive you of course. Forgive you and welcome you without a moment’s notice and remember things about you that you have forgotten and would have forgotten without the reminder.

Remember when, remember when kate threw up pink. Pink at the ice cream shop because she choked on the bubble gum ice cream. Do they even make that anymore? Probably not, since too many kids choked on it in the 80’s. My aunt tells this story with humor in her eyes- it was funny after we realized you could breath of course, because you barfed pink and pink was your favorite color. It was my favorite color. But then I hated it. Hated it and then gradually I let in back into the repertoire like I allowed tomatoes and pears and yogurt once I decided that my childhood dislikes weren’t mine for a life time.

Flesh and blood. They tell you who you are, who they think you are, and that they love you. Remember when katie would say rubber eggs and rubber butter about her play kitchen, with this speech impediment boston like that speech therapy would mend and fix. Fix. Flesh and blood. Your flesh and blood is the pounding of your heart and head and your genetic makeup but the ability to love and drive you insane is so innate it’s a wonder it’s all a wonder. Because I have friends. Friends that are like flesh and blood. The friends have become my family. My family my flesh and blood of choice. Which when you make the choice sometimes you feel like you did better. Do better than the choices made for you. You.

Because I didn’t choose a crazy conservative 3,000 dollar suit wearing label whore look at me brother. But then he does the best thing and shows up in a way you need him to. And then you would choose him in a second. A second. But then you remember the shoe rules and the patio rules and the rules driven by the ocd and order and denial and you hate him again. I wouldn’t have choosen a mother who couldn’t be one. Be one. Be one entirely or for a lifetime. But I couldn’t choose anything different because who would I be without her. Without her being my mother.

I would haven’t chosen these people to call family but then they are my flesh and blood. They are part of me and when I choose my flesh and blood I find family that is present and there and shows up in ways that my genetic counterparts just can’t . They can’t. There is a beauty in the cards you are dealt in flesh and blood but the choice is in who you choose to be your flesh and blood of friendship because. Because the choice, the choice of family, the way your family, family is, is all yours to decide. To decide. I decided my flesh and blood. My own flesh and blood. My own for a lifetime.

dear, hallmark, your mother’s day cards suck. love, me

another 10 minute quick write. . .

Mothers. Mother’s Day hasn’t been a big holiday for me in recent years ever since my grandmother passed away. I have come to the conclusion that I should write a letter to hallmark to let me know my thoughts on the limits of their mother day’s cards.

It would go something like this:

dear hallmark, I think you need to revisit the creative department and add a specialist or a focus group to help out in the creation of your mother’s day cards. For instance, I need a more appropriate card for both my mother and stepmother. The you changed my life. The I am so thankful for you. Thanks for being there. Just doesn’t work for me. Me. I am sure I am not alone. How about something like Mom, thanks for being there. Okay cross out the there and just put being. Being. More appropriate for someone who hasn’t been much of a mother in years -since I was a child-but hard to count. Years. Or for my stepmother- instead of thanks for the inspiration, or making me who I am. More like thanks. Thanks for dealing with our family and taking care of dad. We live in a new world, Hallmark. The typical family no longer exists. So your cards need to reflect this. Reflect the evolution of the family, of motherhood, of parenting. I am more than willing to provide my services to assist in this update to your mother’s day cards. Please don’t make me walk down the aisle another year and feel depressed and opt for the blank card yet again. Again.

So that would be my letter. Because mother's day just reminds me I am different. That everyone has a mother who supposedly changed them for the better. That’s what the cards say, the cards say. But the voices, the looks, the stories, say something different of course. No one writes the truth in those cards. But the truth we do tell each other, sometimes. Sometimes we do. Cards don’t always tell us what we need to say. Say to those who should mean so much and do and mean so little.

So this mother’ day, I did what I could and sent my blank card to my stepmother with the vibrant red flower on it. For my mother, I did nothing. Because although she was found. Because what could I say. Say. Say that would be the truth and not like the hallmark card. Thanks for being. Would be a start. I want you to be happy. Better. I wish I could know you. Know you and not be scared of how you might destroy me. Destroy me again. Say. Saying. Saying the truth doesn’t fit in cards.

dirty laundry

this week is dedicated to the loss of my dinosaur computer, rest in peace dear friend and the fact i got into grad school- again! it is strange how you get where you are going. to date in my undergrad and grad school apps, my only two rejections have been harvard and sf state, pause for laughter, more on that later. . .

thanks so much for reading! and without further ado- dirty laundry- a ten minute quick write i did a few weeks back.

Dirty Laundry. Dirty laundry is my arch nemesis. It always has been. My dirty laundry has a tendency of finding it’s way onto my floor, onto my bed, and the to the chair, and back to the bed but not where it belongs. In the hamper. In the washing machine. Cleaned and put away. This has been a problem as long as I can remember. I hate cleaning my room. My father would yell at me about it all the time. I would promptly say dad other girls my age are doing drugs or getting pregnant using my teenage rhetoric. He always responded I don’t care about them, I care about you. Get up there and clean your room.

Laundry is boring to me. I never knew the luxury of having a washing machine in your house, in your apartment, in your home until it was taken away from me. Taken away from me. Since I left my home, my childhood home, twice I have had a washing machine in my house. Two whole times. I would probably give something up to have one now. Maybe my first born, no a wise woman in her 30's would never but maybe one of my "educated" eggs on ebay. Better.

So the dirty laundry. It gets bad when I am busy. It gets bad when things are going too good. That I am not home. It gets bad when things aren’t going well. It is an indication that I need to slow down. That I need to do some cleaning. I hate laundry so much that when I can I send it out to be washed. The trip to the laundry mat takes longer than you always would imagine. The back and forth, the hoping no one steals your underwear, or cool jeans. Sometimes you drop your wallet in the washing machine and think it is stolen. Sometimes strange people talk to you. So lately I send it out as not to deal with it. I cope through buying tons of underwear so that I don’t have do laundry except once a month. I look at my room most of the time and wonder how I can still have clothes hanging, hanging in my closet.

Dirty laundry. Dirty laundry it haunts me even when it is washed. It haunts me when I put it away. It haunts me now. It’s the things we say, we don’t say, we aren’t saying, we should say. Haunting me right now. I try to hide and forget the things too big to admit. But they reappear they always do. The dirty laundry of the past and present are mine. Mine. Mine. I want to share with you. I want to share the burden. I can’t carry all these on my own. The best news about the dirty laundry is I know how to hide in my closet. I know how to make it clean temporarily. I know how to look at and say you drive me crazy. Why can’t I just put the laundry, the dirty laundry, where it belongs? I don’t know. Belonging. Belongs. Finding out where it all belongs. Belongs. Or if it is mine in the first the place.

if i could go into now i'd tell you

i wrote this last week and it is part of the creative caffeine- my writing teacher class, Janis Cooke Newman, runs. please check it out- http://creativecaffeine.blogspot.com/

every week she sends us prompts- we write for 10 minutes and she chooses the one she liked best to post. now when i wrote this i wasn't sure i was ready to share it. but since it is out there. i thought i'd share it with you.

http://creativecaffeine.blogspot.com/2010/04/if-i-could-go-into-it-now-id-tell-you_08.html

getting rid of that damn dress

The last time I wore this dress, I threw up. The last time I wore this dress, I graduated from college. The last time I wore this dress, my grandfather died. The last time I wore this dress, was a first date. The last time I wore this dress, it ripped up the seam at work and I had to fix it with safety pins as not show everyone my ass. The last time I wore this dress, was when it was finally was fixed. It was out of style and I had to throw it away. But this dress had been with me through it all-through the barfing, celebrations, one of my most intense sadness of despair-simply put beginning and ends. So how did I give this dress up?

I actually didn’t for a while. I brought it with me from Boston, to New York, to DC and back to California. I couldn’t get rid of it. Rid of it until my friend looked at me and said come on Kate it’s time. You have a million other dresses. It’s time to let this one go. Letting go. I’m not too good at it at all. This dress was my best friend and companion and although ripped and unable to wear it- we had just been through too much, too much -to let it go. Letting go. I am a pack rat of the worst kind. I collect things that have memories, everything from dresses, to cards, to movie stubs from years ago, to old photographs, to anything that reminds me of someone, someone I once cared about. I have shoeboxes upon shoeboxes of memories. I keep things that are broken because a boyfriend gave them to me. Because this person I once loved gave me it. I can’t let go.

Letting go of the object, is letting go of them. Which makes me feel like a failure. It makes me sad in a terrible way. So I hoard things, I hoard people, I hoard the memories of them because although I might see the reality of how it all ended up, this idealist, this dreamer doesn’t want the regular material things, she wants things that mean something. Like this dress. This dress that got me through. This person that got me through.

When I did this I knew, it’s not about the dresses, or movie stubs, just like it’s not about those other people. It’s about me. It’s about me. It’s about me. Me being unable to deal with endings. Me not being able to deal with closure. Me not being able to deal with goodbye and meaning it. Meaning it. Meaning it in a way that I don’t hope you come back. Come back ever. There is always a piece of me that wants that person to walk, walk in the crosswalk right in front of me in between the asian woman, and blind man, and large dog walking towards me now.

Because the truth is I always look in front of me for the face of a familiar past shared. The anticipation of the possibility warms me. Warms me enough to remember, remember why. Why this is happening. Because once someone leaves, I can’t help but remember her. And wonder where she is. Where is she? And if she might, just might be walking towards me. Right now. Would she recognize her own daughter’s face- a face changed from a teenager to a grown woman? Her own eyes replicated in mine. I guess I am always looking around, waiting for her to come back, come back home.

the safety of the tree swing

Ask me if I care. Ask me if I care. When I have to listen to the self important bs about how the sky is crashing down over the simplest things. Simplest things. I say often in my head or aloud if you want real problems I can give you some of mine. It’s the people who talk too loud, loud enough for you to hear, how they are experiencing the biggest problem of their lives. But when you are finally prompted to listen, listen to the words, ready for something big, something worth hearing. Ears perked, my own inner dialogue on pause. Then with the wonderful climax, kind of nothing, like I don’t know how to deal with my roommate who eats my food or deal with my insurance for my dog or something kind of vanilla and not so exciting.

Once someone told me I didn’t understand, that this woman, this woman he had been involved with has ruined his life. Ruined his life. I guess what struck me then, as it strikes me now, is how can you let someone ruin your life. How melodramatic, how not grounded in reality. Ask me if I care. Because I have had people who I could sit and say have ruined my life. No, you don’t understand. But these people, these people didn’t ruin my life because I wouldn’t let them. Not my mother, not my brother, not my former loves or former friends. Because you decide what will kill you and the imperfection of these people and relationships have not led to my own feelings of a complete ending. The feeling someone is ruining your life.

I guess I decided a long time ago, that I would never let anyone ruin my life. Maybe when I was 5 or 6 and my parents amidst one of the legendary battles- I decided, I decided to not sit on the sidelines, but stand up, stand up, and get involved. Stand in the middle between the two halves of me, me standing in the middle of the two parts coming together into me. Their everlasting connection, their child, their kindergarten child begging from them to stop. Ask me if I care. I guess I decided that I could let them ruin their relationship. But they wouldn’t ruin me. I would stand there and not let us, let our family be ruined. Because be ruined, ruined would mean the end.

As I stood there, all those times, pleading for the hope and desire of us to stay as one. I watched as my dream fell away, as I found safety on my tree swing in my front yard, or looking out my picture window my dad had made me in my closet because I was scared, scared of witches late at night. As I watched the dream fall away, I knew it was okay, I wasn’t ruined. If I could survive the ruin of my family, I could survive anything. Anything at all. Ask me if I care. I do. I still do.

guess who is coming to dinner: cougar style

What do you do when your brother tells you, he is dating someone closer to your age, someone closer to the age of your stepmother, and also your father? You have two choices after the surprise falls out of you again, to either, 1) throw judgment out the window or 2) judge, judge, and judge some more. Well I wish I could say I did one, but that just isn’t part of my older sister makeup. I still want to protect my brother even if he doesn’t think he needs it. Like my parents still try to tell me things as I walk out the door, don’t forget your coat it’s raining. So I opted for two, plus some lectures later, and to get through some herbal sedatives, lots of herbal sedatives. If I knew what I had in store, I would have gone to the doctor and begged for some prescription freedom. Lesson learned.

All I see is 3 to 4 inch heels, well manicured feet, jeans with sequins on the bottom and little on the rear just to make sure you are paying attention, they glisten in the light of the hotel bar against our overpriced champagne. Then the boobs, huge obtrusive boobs, cleavage that makes Pamela Anderson stalkers even swoon. No it keeps going when I see her face. Her face is covered in makeup, makeup like you used to wear when you couldn’t be comfortable in your own skin. That was when I was 15. She is 42. Very tan skin, almost too tan, and hair her hair is perfectly done, almost bleached but still shockingly pretty. Not one knot, not one hair out of place. The OC embodied in one woman is sitting next to me, next to me as my brother introduces her to me and introduces me to her. My younger brother, my brother is 20 years her junior. She tells me as she speaks with her half-British half-Laguna Hills dialect about her surgeries, I have had two boob jobs, my ears pinned back, a nose job. Holy fuck, I just met you 5 minutes ago I think. If I had all that work done, I hope I would be hotter. More unique. Less Barbie, more exotic. Later she worked up to the important things when we had known each other a little longer like 24 hours or something. Have you had your boobs done? They are very nice. Excuse me. No they are real. Well I’m thinking of getting mine done again, she says. Shoot me. Please take me to my dead place. Whatever I did universe, God, in my former life please, please forgive me. I will do whatever penance required, live more simply, be kinder to my neighbor, get rid of material possessions-just make this lady go away. I say, if you make them any bigger, you are going to fall the fuck over. She laughed her uncomfortable laugh.

In the car when I was stuck with the two, the longest ride as of yet, they would googly eye each other in the rear view mirror. I love you, no I love you more. Then argue. Then talk about marriage. All the while my brother lecturing me about my love life. I either need to get a therapist for the ride next time or some serious medication. She wore a nighty around my uncles and parent’s homes, homes against their own judgment they welcomed her in, and she didn’t pause for one moment to evaluate the appropriateness of it all. This lady is making me seem conservative.At my parent’s home, she and my brother cuddle like teenagers so much my parents had to intervene. As she wears her juicy couture suit when our family goes on a hike, still showing too much, that zipper too low. It is her standard look. The cleavage. I am much younger than her telling her she should cover up to meet my parents, my family. This is a joke of the worst kind. She tells us how she renamed herself. Renamed herself? Because too many women in the salon, too many women in the salon had her name. Is anything about this woman real? Anything at all? What does my brother see in her but her boobs her huge boobs, maybe, I’m not sure. It’s hard to concentrate on anything else.

No one tells you how to deal with this, no one writes books about what happens when your brother or son brings home a cougar, or any of my brother's antics for that matter. Maybe I should write one. It would include the following topics in the series: How to deal with your brother when he brings home a cougar, or becomes part of the conservative movement and is on the O’Reilly Factor before he can drive or gets departed from Africa? So next year, next Thanksgiving, I’m going to my local coffee shop or nursing home or senior center and finding my own boyfriend to borrow, to rent, to fall in love with and to take home. He might be 70-but it’s my turn to be the talk of my family.