Archive for September, 2010

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Who Knows Where the Time Goes?

    Yesterday I started going through my cupboard, looking for a few more items to put in a box of donations to the local food pantry. And I kept pulling out things that were past their expiration date. Which got me to thinking, so I went down to the pantry and found more cans and boxes that had expired.
A lot of them
OK, most of them.

     I really don’t cook much any more, and when I do I guess I tend to use and replace the same few items upstairs. Also, what with changing diets and children who aren’t eating at home any more, I don’t use the same kinds of foods I used to: vegetable broth, purchased to try to alter some of my standard recipes for Katie when she became vegetarian, pastaroni, puddingmix… when was the last time I made pudding for the kids? Best not to look at that box and find out. Cans of cream of chicken soup from the days when I  used to make my chicken, rice and broccoli casserole,  jello, laid in the last time someone had the stomach flu and couldn't eat solid food.
    I found a can of cream of asparagus soup that expired in 2004. Wow. How could it be that long ago already? I actually  remember buying that thing, thinking “Oh yeah, I”ll eat asparagus soup some cold, blustery day. It’ll be great”. Fail. And now it has been 6 years!

    I dragged all the boxes and cans over to the sink and started opening them, dumping the box contents into the trash and the can contents into the disposer. At least that way I could recycle the containers and not have every bit be a total waste.
   Except the really really old cans, and the ones that had chunky, gooey contents. (That asparagus soup fit both categories) Those I just tossed in the trash bag.
    Sorry world! I regret the waste of resources, but there it is. Some remnants of the past are better left unopened, am I right?

Posted by Tracy on Sep 30th 2010 | Filed in General | Comments (0)

But It Was On Sale!

    I went to Kohls yesterday, because they were having a humongous sale, and I had a 30% off coupon. I was ready to rumble, folks. Felt like the world was my oyster.

I forgot that I hate oysters.

    I started browsing but ran into one of 3 problems at every turn. Either they didn't have my size in the color I wanted, they had the color but not my size (apparently I need a size 4 now, and this Kohls does not appear to stock women's clothes in a size 4) or they had it and I liked it but I just wasn't sure I wouldn't look silly in it. (Translation- am I  too old to wear that?)
    I couldn't even get the underpants I wanted, because they were "buy one, get one half-off" and I didn't need 2 packs of underwear, and I was not going to pay full price for one. I just wasn't. (And yes, I"m aware that it wouldn't be full price because I still had the 30% off coupon, but in spirit, it would be full-price, and I"m all about spirituality)

   So I wandered from department to department, getting more and more frustrated. When I went past the front I saw that it was getting very overcast, but I was determined to find something to use my coupon on, since it expired the next day. I decided to buy a few new bath towels because they were on sale and some of mine are getting pretty raggedy. Then I would at least have something to show for my efforts.
   There was a line to check out, and as I waited I looked out the front doors and say the weather go very quickly from threatening to nasty. We exchanged stories in the queue about where we were last week when the bad weather hit. As I was checking out a woman came in and said that her boyfriend called and told her there was a tornado warning.
    Oh good. And you came to Kohls!

    I asked the clerk for an extra bag for my head, but when I stepped out into the no-man's land between the inner and outer doors I saw that by now the rain was blowing completely horizontally, not so much "coming down" as "going by" and a stop sign at the end of the parking lot was flipping back and forth rapidly, the way signs do in those videos of hurricanes.  Ick.
     I got out my cell phone and tried to call home, in case Steve was wondering where his mother was in all this, but couldn't get a call to go through.
    So I contemplated my situation as a flash of lightning lit the desolate parking lot and decided that I would rather die at home than in a store that didn't carry my size. I took my sandals off and slipped them in my bag, zipped my purse and grabbed my keys with my finger on the "unlock" button. Then I pushed open the door and ran.

    I didn't exactly shout "Cowabunga"… I think I probably yelled "Oh shiiiiittt!" most of the way across the parking lot to the van, but in spirit, I was defying the elements. At the outset at least. By the time I wrenched the door open and thre my self and my bags inside I was screaming "I am insane!!"
    Cars were creeping along Karl Road as close to the center as they could go, since the outside lanes on both sides were significantly underwater. The wipers were going full-speed, as was the dripping from my hair down my face. I remembered that I had brand new bath towels in my bag- serendipity!- but I had tossed the bag into the back.  My dress was twisted akwardly around my wet legs and I could tell I was soaked through to my underpants. But I was on my way home to ride out the rest of the storm there.
   As it happened, I rode out the rest of the storm in my van, since even though it's only about a mile to my house, this storm was one of those cloudbursts that just scream past like a racecar and don't hang around. Another 5 miinutes at Kohls and I would have arrived home considerably drier. Oh well.
    After I stripped out of my wet things I tried to comb my hair. It was tangled into a million knots, even though  I had run a comb through it right before I went into the store. That wind must have been really something!
   I'm glad it did little more than water the grass and encourage the trees to give up some leaves a few days early.  I've had enough of bumpy weather. And shopping is just not worth it. Particularly when nothing is in your size.

Posted by Tracy on Sep 23rd 2010 | Filed in General | Comments (1)

Dead Baby Unicorns

With thanks to the Jon, Ed, Harold and Dave whose snarking helped me write this yesterday. In some states, that's called "aiding and abetting"
 
I head it said on the TeeVee box
that it is perfectly understandable
that Bible folks think President Obama 
is NOT Christian,
because he has never officially renounced Lucifer.
I am so glad this was brought to my attention
because I was unaware that anything a person has not publicly renounced,
it's fair to consider them in favor of.
 
So in the interests of clearing up any mis-conceptions out there,
I would like to go on record as renouncing Lucifer.
I also renounce Lex Luthor.
And to cover all my bases, I also renounce Satan… and  Santa,
(because if you re-arrange the letters, they're really the same guy.)
 
While I'm at it I'll also just say "No" to Voldemort, Sauron and Saruman,
syphilis, demons, black magic and mean people- because they suck.
I hearby forever abjure all hurricanes and earthquakes, Pat Robertson, Fred Phelps,
and anyone who preaches love with a brimstone smile,
holocaust deniers, truthers, birthers, death-panels, zombies, terrorists, and tourists in black socks and sandals.
 
I repudiate Sara Palin, sarin gas, FOX News, reality TV,
Lindsay Lohan and her plea bargains
and gossip, innuendo and tweets being passed off as news.
 
Let it be known that I disavow homelessness, heartlessness and donkey porn,
mosque-haters, mosquitoes, people who bitch but don't vote, people who talk but don't think, cat-stranglers, prison-breaks, air pollution, water pollution and water boarding.

I forever eschew homophobia, xenophobia, and arachnophobia
because without spiders, we'd all be covered in flies,
I am against misspelled signs, closed minds, closeted racists and any religion that calls itself science.

I forswear oppression, depression, false promises and false prophets, comb-overs,
breast implants on 16 year old girls, testicle implants for neutered dogs
eugenics, misogyny and deep-fried Oreos on a stick.

 

I denounce all land mines, land slides and land wars in Asia,
the false celebrity of sensationalism, corporate welfare when children are going hungry
and people who put clothes on their dog when it isn't Hallowe'en.

I am taking a stand against crusades, witch burnings,
book burnings, sunburn and spray tans,
alien abduction and asthma medications
that increase the chances of asthma-related death.

 

Be it known that I am totally against cancer, AIDS and identity theft,
child abuse, flat tires, rain delays and the infield fly rule,
people who think they own the definition of "love"
people who think they own the definition of God
and people who cut me off on the highway.

I renounce global warming, "your" instead of "you're"
those darn little ants that get in my kitchen sometimes
and dead baby unicorns.
 
This list should in no way be considered complete
but I would be remiss if I did not add that I officially and for all time
renounce people who pull s**t out of their ass
and call it the truth.
 
As for the president, while he has not yet mentioned Lucifer,
he has renounced Dick Cheney,
so really, he's got this one covered.

Posted by Tracy on Sep 23rd 2010 | Filed in Poetry,The Daily Rant | Comments (0)

Three point One-Nine Inches of Sky

3.19 inches is the size of their universe.
33 men wait thousands of feet beneath the earth in a 600 square foot cell of solid rock
but the number that matters most to them now is 3.19 inches.
That is the diameter of the tubes that connect them to the outside world,
that feed them air and nourishment, offer hope and news from home.
 
Take your vision and perspective of the world,
break it into a thousand pieces,
toss them into the air and as they fall to earth, like a tanagram,
let them form a completely new picture.
Light and dark, large and small, freedom and constraint
all take on new meaning as you consider
3.19 inches.
Smaller than the plastic cups in my cupboard, narrower than the sole of my sneakers,
smaller in diameter than a 40 ounce jar of super-chunky Jiff.
Spare batteries for your lights let you read now, and look each other in the eye,
but they cannot dispense the darkness created by tons of living rock crouching above you.
Electronic devices cannot drown out the sounds you hear
when clutched within the damp, beating heart of the earth,
with the entire world you know almost a mile over your head.
Oxygen forced down into the depths helps you to  breathe
but does little to prevent the suffocating pressure of months of captivity
in a stone tomb,
as above you, the rains fall and seasons turn,
your children grow, parents age.
 
3.19 inches.
All the things so cleverly disassembled, redesigned, re-thought by rescue teams above
to try to make it fit into a gift box of 3.19 inches
cannot give you the smell of rain, the curve of a baby’s cheek,
morning bird song, the color of twilight, a single glimpse of the sky.
Impossible riches, each of these.
 
 But by grace, the human spirit, though wide as the sky
is a thing that knows no barriers .
Like air, it finds it way across the miles,
like a river, it wends its way even out from under mountains.
Like a weed, faith rises, tenacious and seeking from the dark earth.
Love and beauty can stretch, and twist, and fit somehow down that hole of 3.19 inches with room to spare
and find those  33 men imprisoned in a thousand ton sarcphagous of granite and gold
and turn the key and allow them, if they close their eyes,
to feel the touch of the wind on their cheeks.

Posted by Tracy on Sep 16th 2010 | Filed in Poetry | Comments (0)

Communion

I went to worship today in the temple that God built.
I took my seat beneath the vaulted ceiling of branches
where the oak and beech stand undisturbed by the heresy
of the solitary pine in their midst.
I heard the hymns of the chickadee and wren.
In the meadow beyond, butterflies,
like priests in striped and dappled vestments
moved gracefully among the multitudes
offering sacrament to demure Queen Anne's lace
and the aster in her harlotry of purple.
I inhaled the incense of  absolution and rebirth,
accepted the blessing of wind on my face.

I find no grace in the confused and angry mutterings of prophets
in their cathedrals of glass and fear
who worship a god so small that he would require me to fight for him.
The language of the God who stretched the hills beneath the lapis sky
is not spoken by any mouth nor written in any book.
My Creator speaks in the droning of the bees and the hiss of summer rain,
His word is written in the drift of a solitary leaf to the still surface of a pond,
and the tracing of hawks wings against the clouds.
He does not love the thorn less than the rose.

My faith rests with the One who speaks in the roar of flood,
not the shouts of the self-righteous.
His terrible beauty is not  punishment  but  simply, motion-
a  lesson not in the wages of sin, but in the grace of giving way.
God teaches me strength with the up-thrust of  mountains,
persistence through the tiny flower that struggles toward the light
under the dark canopy of trees.
I understand sacrifice through the testimony of the fallen giant
whose body feeds the tiny seedlings of the forest.
I understand eternal love by the whisper of a mother’s breath  over newborn head.
Upon the altar where earth meets sky, there is no sin or damnation
only release and renewal.

No cathedral constructed of marble and gold
can equal the divinity of the sun-swept meadow that once lay beneath it.
The great and triumphant message of God is the small stubborn grass
that pushes through the cracks in my sidewalk
and whispers this unstoppable truth-
that the works of God will ever find a way to overcome
the conceit of man.

Posted by Tracy on Sep 8th 2010 | Filed in Poetry | Comments (3)