The Bipolar Kat

Christmas in July

2006-07-03T15:13:00.000-06:00

I recently read a blog from a friend who told a story about when she was a child. Someone else responded to her story with a childhood memory of her own. So I posted one and decided to put it here as well. My story is about buying our Christmas trees. After the obligatory mumbling and grumbling, my father wouold take us all out to the old blue faded station wagon, and downtown we would go, radio spilling tinny sounding Christmas carols as my father, who tried so hard to be a humbug, would sing loudly and joyfully while my brother and I giggled and sang along. The corner Christmas tree lot was in lower downtown Denver, and we purchased our tree from the same lot every year. (Oddly enough, the smell of pine mixed with the carbon mondoxide and diesel fumes was really quite pleasant.) My mother would agonize over the shape of nearly every tree in the lot - would it fit in the living room - was it green enough - were there any bare spots? Ultimately, my father would pick one, say this is perfect (whether or not it was) throw it and its two by four base on the roof of the Ford, tie it down, and home we would go, where the tree would have to be cut at the base (usually with a great deal of cursing and at least one bloody finger) so it would fit in the old red and green tree holder. Into the house it was hauled, thumped unceramoniously into the living room corner while it my mother shoved old cigarette packs, folded into little squares, under the legs of the holder to balance it upright. It was only after the old white sheet that served as a tree skirt was folded around the bottom of the tree that we could begin the traditional untangling of the Christmas lights. But that, my dear friends, is another adventure.

My Son's rant

2006-05-03T17:17:00.000-06:00

So what's up with the letters q, c, x, "ph" "igh" and other usesless letters? Who decided to put punctuation at the end of the sentence? Even the word "cue" knows that the letter ""q" is useless. ck is pointless. Vowels should never cover for each other.

I love to hear his rants. I have raised and increidbly intelligent son. And somehow I agree with this rant. Even though I am an English teacher.

A Poem to My Husband

2006-04-28T22:19:00.000-06:00

My Heart’s Ballet

My dearest love, my dearest friend
I love you tonight, and without end
And when I gaze upon your face
My heart is quickened, set apace.

My hopeful heart, with wings it flies
To dance in sunlight of your eyes
It races, runs and leaps unbound
And knows that in your heart its found

Its dearest love, its dearest friend,
Without whom its beat should end
The meter of its sunlit rhyme
Would skip and tumble out of time.

And out of time, my heart and I
Would cease to be, the dance would die.

The Tyranny of the Urgent

2006-04-25T20:38:00.000-06:00

Once again, the small, bothermsome details of everyday life
Rules tyrannical over the real meaning of existance.
It becomes more important to wash the teacup than to study the tea leaves -
To vacuum the carpet rather than kneel and contemplate.

We pay our gold to the credit card companies
Instead of seeing the gold in a sunset.
We run, willy nilly, hither and dither, from here to there -
And yet we never go anywhere.

I want to slow down - to bask in the golden light of the sunset.
I long to kneel on a carpet of fallen fir needles and ponder the wonder of God.
To sip my tea and savor the pungent flavor on my tongue and
Admire the intricacies of the painted roses on the antique cup.

Instead, I run to Starbucks, dash hurriedly through the house, push the hoover,
Pay pay pay the bills with dulled silver earned with a
Dulled mind from tarnished with the
Tyranny of the Urgent.

On the Subjects of: On April 15, 2006

2006-04-15T02:13:00.000-06:00

Love from God: This is truly one of those things that we have been given that is a gift. Like all gifts, it isn't always everything we expected, but more than any gift, it is more than we deserve.

Love from Friends: Some gifts are fleeting,but rich. . . the golden friendship ring from a high school friend. So much love was there when it was given, and although it still shines gold, it lives in the light of our memories.
Some gifts are fleeting, but help to lighten the times. The co-worker who gives you a birthday card, or your Secret Santa. These too should be appreciated.

to be contintued

2006-04-06T09:23:00.000-06:00

Thursday, April 6. Do you realize that night before last we experienced a once in a millinium happening? At 1:00 it was 0102040506? What a deal! Shame we slept through it...not.

Another Day

2006-03-25T23:39:00.000-07:00

Another day goes by
We still sing songs that make use cry
Whisper tune that give us hope
Murmur sighs with every note

(work in progress)

2006-03-25T06:09:00.000-07:00

Do I love and admire God?
(A Year with CS Lewis)

At first glance, when answering this question, my response is, "Well of course I do. He is my benevolent father, my savior, my omnipotent gaurdian." But then I examine it all a bit more closely and I find that, perhaps, love and admiration are not the things I feel at all.

Do I love God? Yes - but I am frightened of Him as well. At this point in life I keep Him "caged" of sorts, like a well-loved Tiger that one can admire, but is well aware of how that Tiger may scratch and claw and bite the very life from one.

Of course I am cognizant of the fact that I cannot cage God. But in my heart, I think that is what I do. I am afraid to let him out of the cage that I have built. So many times I have been mauled by this wild animal called life that I am leary of letting this mighty, powerful, omnipotent and beautiful being out of the cage I have put him in. He, too, can maul - only to change us, and only for the better, but that is a hard thing still.

I have no desire to be mauled again.

2006-03-24T19:47:00.000-07:00

And silver rain
Fell from a purple sky
Bruised with pain
But lit with love

It shone from within
This bruised sky
And the silver rain
Flowed translucent.

Seeing all and hearing all
The sun then shone
And knew the pain
Watched silent, still, and knowing

But never sharing -
Never sharing.

From whence did the light come?
What blows made bruises bloom?
The sun shone through
And lit the silver raindrops on the ground.

I felt it all -
The silver rain, the bruised clouds.
I heard the thunder roar against the sky
And the light warm my skin.

The wind whipped my hair
And silver raindrops ravaged the air
The purple clouds struck ragged blows
And still the light shone through.

But never sharing.
Never sharing.

Was it never caring?
From whence did it come?
Why did it answer not?
What purpose did it serve?

It is only the light, painful, yet kind
That glimmers on the silver rain
And keeps watch upon the purple clouds
That keeps the sky afloat.

The Problem with Pain (Not by CS Lewis)

2006-03-01T09:35:00.000-07:00

So, I try not to complain, but I suffer from failed back syndrome because some dumb ass doctor screwed up a spinal fusion he did on me about five years ago. I ended up having to have 2 surgeries because he left a piece of bone that migrated to a nerve, yada yada yada. The problem is, as time passes, the pain gets worse. So, the drs. increase the pain meds. This normally wouldn't be a problem. But by the time it gets combined with the other meds, it starts having noticable affects.

Not that I'm a genius, and by the spelling in this blog you would wonder that I've ever taken an English class, but I've always been really with it - bright - able to keep it together - make an impression (good or bad). In short, my intelligence has always been the thing I've been able to fall back on when the emotional stuff went haywire.

It seems that's becoming more and more difficult to do - that is fall back on the intellect.

2006-02-26T14:32:00.000-07:00

Sweet music whispered in the cacophony of pain is loudest in its beauty. kh

Last night I watched "Million Dollar Baby." In it Frankie was reading some poetry to Maggie - from "The Lake Isle of Innesfree." I remembered how I loved the music of those words when I first heard them in my very first English Lit class in college. It was like stepping out of that dry, windblown, northern Nebraska college town into the sweet moist air of that mystical, misty forest where all things real and magical could coexist. And last night, twenty odd years later, in a movie about boxing, it took me there again. Indeed, music whispers in odd places.

se ⌘-B and ⌘-I to make text bold and
italic.

The Bipolar Kat

2006-02-26T14:25:00.000-07:00

The Bipolar Kat

The Highs, Lows, and Inbetween Ramblings of a Bipolar Wife, Mother, Teacher, Friend, and Allaround Nice Person

2006-02-24T19:54:00.000-07:00