Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

Preface: my mother died in 1987.

I was being held captive in a school bus by an old religious freak. I wasn’t supposed to use my computer, but decided to do it anyway. My phone was almost out of batteries, and my husband (who was 12 years old and not my husband in my dream) was keeping the charger in his backpack. I went to his seat on the bus to get his charger and noticed my captor standing there with his idol, some other religious freak. I then told him off, ending with, “You are just a sad and ugly little copy of who you want to be” (meaning the other guy). I heard them talking about how to punish me as I left, but I knew that all the things I’d said to him had struck him so deeply he wouldn’t do anything.

I didn’t know who to email, now that I had my computer. Finally I settled on my mom since I hadn’t talked to her in a while. I had no idea where to even find her email address. I looked in the phone book and she just happened to be listed there in a listing of Compuserve users. Her address was melangerie101@cs.compuserve.com. I mailed her, and tried to message her, but got no response. I found her street address and went over there to try to find her but it looked like she’d just left. The radio was still on and dishes were out. I left a home-made Christmas decoration (a lamp with “MOM” carved into the post) and went away.

Here’s a short book that some of you (namely family members) might find interesting.

Caroline woke up earlier, as she is wont to do every night. She comes to sleep on the crib mattress we have on the floor of our bedroom for just such a reason. She’s often disoriented when she wakes up. Tonight she was trying to tell me something, but I thought that she couldn’t possibly be saying, “I want you to stand under the button.” I kept trying to get her to repeat it, and she was getting more and more frustrated with me. True enough, she wanted me to stand under the button. Of some dress on the floor.

She takes after her daddy, the king of waking non-sequiturs.

Christmas time is tamale time. With a lot of patient phone advice from hub’s mother and grandmother, we decided to try it ourselves.

Check it out here.