Stick with Her

A few months ago my mom dived into a new hobby, and I blogged about it here. 

When I visited this past Thursday for an overnight 'vacation,' mainly to give my cat some time to himself and to take a break from everything, I found myself not enmeshed in an oasis of quiet and calm but instead witnessing a kitchen-table-turned-drafting-area, with my mom at its helm, working against a deadline for an upcoming craft fair.

 

"You read. Would you pay $2 for a bookmark? " my mom asked.  

"I don't use bookmarks," I replied. 

"What do you do?" she wondered, as if she hasn't noticed me dog-earing book pages for the past 30 years. 

"Dog-earing, that's not good for the book. You need to use a bookmark," she decided, finding the turned over corner of the page of the book I was reading, and inserting a bright orange bookmark, adding, as afterthought, "You don't need your name written on it, like the one I made for Gabby, do you?" 

"Uh no, it's okay," I said. 

I also made out with a checkbook cover, and matching coin purse, both of which I'm excited to use. 

Stick with Me started when a consignment shop sold two of its checkbook covers, at $8 each, which was enough of a sign to forge ahead.  A cousin who makes jewelry offered to set aside some space in her craft fair booth for SWM, and yesterday The Pipeline e-newsletter agreed to make an exception for Stick with Me-- technically located outside of the neighborhood- and add it to the Angel Club listings. 

strangers on a parade float

i know a few people who get ballsy enough to be in stranger's faces. in general i prefer consent in all things photographic. 

parades, however, are fair game!

this photo, which i just found while deleting a bunch of old images, was from the Pride parade a few years back.  it's the CNA insurance company float. i can't think about CNA or look at its tall red building, so prominent against the city skyline, without thinking about the woman who was killed when a glass window blew off of one of the building's top floors. 

i just read that in the settlement the family received $18 million.  though there's been plenty of reports on what happens to lottery winners after the fact, i wonder what happens after families receive such large settlements. time is known to "heal all wounds" when it comes to losses of all kinds, but where does money fit into this equation.  is it like a salve? is there a lot of guilt tied to it? how is it spent? to a giant corporation like CNA, $18 million is a drop in the bucket, but to a single family who received the sum as a result of a tragic loss, what does it mean? 

a poem to you

a poem to you/who

i do not know,

on a day that should not/does 

affect me like it does,

the hearts, the rainbows, the pink 

i'm all about that, babe. 

i tried to do things/did

do things that i'd like to do/often 

like mop the floors, open the mail, 

i did it all for me,

'twas no one rooting me on

except a voice called pride.

at the end of the day 

a call came in from a friend. 

there was hope when i clicked 'play,'

he was wondering 

if i could help him

rewrite his resume.  

the cliche that is a weird cab ride

weird cab rides are very cliche, thus for you to write about a cab ride it must have been breathtakingly weird. 

forget the stale nachos, the horribly bad movie not deserving of a big theater screen or of the attention of the idiot that shelled out $11 to escape the world for two hours. pretend there wasn't a guy that somehow helped you end up in that place tonight, but then he was gone and you were  left thinking of what a bad actress kerri russell is and wondering if the other two people in the theater at 11 p.m. were homeless and if they'd stab you or not. 

bypass all that and head straight into a minivan cab that reeks of marijuana, and a driver who tells you it's okay, there's less cars at night. during the day, maybe not a good idea, but night is good he reassures you as you glide through the city streets. 

reflexes, you say. you are sure that it is affecting his reflexes.  your dad, you say. when someone dies behind the wheel it makes you think of anything on wheels being a perfectly good way to die. why does that always seem to get the message through? what is it about saying that death has touched you which touches others?

 dying might be the strongest wake-up call out there.  isn't it ironic?