Really, Philip Seymour Hoffman?

Oh, good God, here we go again: another celebrity drug-induced death.
Why?
Why?
Why?
Is it because they're so rich and famous that snorting coke or heroin or shooting up, or whatever the drug lingo is (I don't know; I've never even smoked weed), that being high is the only
way to go higher in life?
I gotta tell you: I am effing pissed off at Philip Seymour Hoffman. Utterly disappointed.
Forty-six too old for him? Had he had enough living?
Look, PSH: You had a pretty damned good life, by all accounts, by how we Americans measure success. An Oscar, a respected acting career (you were the actor's actor, man), money in the bank (bet it's been a long while since you had to pay an overdraft bank fee ~), a freaking glorious apartment in New York City.

Top of the game, Philip, and you decided to roll up your shirtsleeves on Groundhog Day and pump poison into your veins. You selfish, stupid idiot.

Were you not aware that there are other human beings, right now, this very minute (the kind who live month-to-month financially and are anonymous in the world) who are battling cancer and kidney failure and COPD and sickle cell anemia and name Some Other Horrible Disease and they, THEY, are wanting nothing other on this second day of February than to live to see the next second day of February.

I don't get it, I don't get it, I don't get it: the unfairness, the inequity. How some people love life and want only to live and have lives that are cut short through no fault of their own, and then how there are some people who molest children and/or are drug dealers/or steal money from the elderly and/or plant bombs in big cities during marathons and those people live to be freaking 92 years old .

Where is the justice?

Bucket List - Evolving/Emerging

Came across a forgotten notebook today. Inside, in addition to a day's accounting of what I'd eaten, from Nov. 2, 2013 through Nov. 8 ~I'd enjoyed a pumpkin spice latte at 7:30 a.m. on Monday, Nov. 4 ~ I also discovered a hastily scrawled title several pages later: "My Bucket List," dated March 25, 2013. My mother had died one year prior. Is that why I'd chosen that particular date? Did I need yet one more reminder to actually live my life instead of Dr. Phil-ing my way through each day?
Here's the list, with what I have accomplished since then asterisked:
- Ride in a racecar
- Shoot a gun
- Fly in  a small plane (ideally over the Plaza at Christmas)
- Take a motorcycle ride
- Snow ski
- Ride a horse
- Drive to CMSU at five in the morning (CMSU, now called UCM, was the college where I'd met my husband; located in Warrensburg, Missouri, it is a 90-minute drive ~)
- Ride in a police car (not as a criminal)
- Tour the White House
- Milk a cow *
- Do Open Mic night at a comedy club
- Go to NYC at Christmas
- Learn to speak Spanish
-  Go to England
- Learn to swim
- Learn to play piano
- Own a piano
- Go tanning (I've never been to a tanning salon)
- Vacation in Colorado
- Return to MacDowell
- Publish a book
- Try on an evening dress
- By an evening dress
- Attend a night at the opera

Hmm. Milk a cow. The only Bucket List goal I've met ... involved squeezing (surprisingly) rough, dry teats and getting milk to spray forth. I had taken two of the children I nanny to a local dairy farm. Each of us milked a cow that was the size of a compact car. While the 8-year-old girl screamed her way through the experience, I showed a weird and unexpected expertise. If I remember correctly, it was a proud sort of small victory.

All the Feelings

Just saw Saving Mr. Banks with the husband. Neither of us could leave the theater until we composed ourselves. Especially me. Not knowing the film was going to incite tears, I had no Kleenex with me. So ill-prepared was I. Instead, like a child with a runny nose, I resorted to drying my eyes on the voluminous cowl neck of my sweater.
Too many connections, I had/have with this movie. Like the author, P.L. Travers, of Mary Poppins, on which this movie is based, I had an alcoholic father whom I adored. I watched my father spit up blood; I saw his eyes, fixed and dilated, as he lay on his deathbed. I was forty-two when I watched my dad die. It was traumatic. Travers, whose real name was Helen Lyndon Goff, was only seven when her beloved father passed. And her mother, like mine, was emotionally troubled. I frequently daydreamed of having a different mother, one that was more loving and tender and stable, and I would probably have taken to a nanny who possessed those qualities. My mom didn't work outside of the home, really, save for a few temporary jobs, and we certainly weren't the wealthy sort who employed nannies or any kind of household help.
In life, I had a dad like Travers's, the Mr. Banks in the children's book. My dad, Duncan McDowell, was a delight, the sort who sang and danced and changed lyrics to popular songs with nonsensical lines ("They, asked me if I knew, raccoon poop was blue ... " ~ a dining room tribute to the Platters' song, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.") My father was my very dear friend. I felt like my arm had been cut off when he died. I wrote nothing for a full year, read very little, slept fitfully. Nothing, really, mattered to me, my grief was so broad. Clearly, I identify with the quite functional dysfunctional father-daughter relationship portrayed in Hollywood's dramatized movie, Saving Mr. Banks. I lived it, from the years 1965 until 1977, the summer I turned twelve, the summer Elvis died and my father quit drinking. Many times, I'd been a little girl praying that my daddy would lay off the sauce, as he called it; or, at the very least, he would only get a little buzzed, instead of pass-out drunk. Dad was still nice when he drank a six-pack. It was when the orange vodka came out that our carpet turned to eggshells.
Currently, I am a nanny, so there is that link. I sing and dance with the children in my care; I nurture them daily; I prepare their meals; I discipline tenderly; I love the children and they love me in return. The recognition that I am Mary Poppins to four children overwhelms me with happiness and gratitude. I know that I am making a difference in their lives. That is no small awareness. It is an enormous truth that carries immense responsibility.
Travers infused Mary Poppins with love because it was autobiography disguised as fiction. The pain of her love for her father, Travers Goff, is transparent on every page. She wanted the Mr. Banks of her book, an idealized version of her father, to impress and enthrall all. She wanted redemption and restoration of his character. She wanted an erasure of the alcoholism and his untimely death. (He was in his early 40s when he died from influenza, a truth that is not divulged in the cinematic version.)
It is why, the very same reason, that I am writing Bologna With the Red String: A Culinary Tribute to a Blue-Collar Upbringing in a Barbecue Town. The food memoir is a love story ~ a tribute ~ to my parents, much more than it is a cookbook. It does not exist to make fun of my blue-collar background, even though there is humor employed in the telling. We might have been poor at times, but we were never stupid; our income insufficiencies weren't from lack of responsibility. There was a recession and people quit buying cars. My auto-worker dad rolled newspapers to keep food on the family table when the General Motors plant shut down.
My story seeks only to honor my mom and dad, both of whom did the best they could, and then some.

Trying again

Well, hello, 2014. I've been waiting for you.
I do have some resolutions, the kind that I will probably break, but I'm one of those eternal optimists and so I trudge forward, feeling only kind of certain that what I'm about to write might actually happen.
1) Lose twenty-five pounds. (Duh.)
2) Quit cursing (emphasis on burying the F-word).
3) Get organized.
      a) Clean out the linen closet
      b) Clean out the top middle drawer of my dresser
      c) Scrapbook photos as soon as I get them
      d) Keep the Taurus clean so HAS doesn't freak out when he drives it
      e) Donate all clothing that I haven't worn in a year
4) Pay bills on time.
5) ^Earn more money.
6) Follow that weekly savings plan I saw on Pinterest. (Week 1: deposit $1; Week 2, deposit $2 ...)
7) Plan a trip to Greenwich, Connecticut, to see the house where The Family Stone was filmed.
    (Book a bed and breakfast there in town!)
8) Go to church 52 times.
    *Try different denominations, in and around the Kansas City area
9) Blog about my church-journey?
10) Blog at least fifteen times every month.
11) FINISH BOLOGNA WITH THE RED STRING AND GET IT PUBLISHED.
12) Get at least three short stories published this year.

Shedding Skin

I hung wallpaper for a short time, around 1985. I sucked at measuring and cutting. My boss complained that I was weak and needed too much direction. (He was not wrong.)

Next: I entered tax forms for the Internal Revenue Service. Was a whiz at the 10-key, but pregnancy nausea put the kabosh on that desk job. Keystrokes were counted; I spent a vast amount of time hovering over a toilet in a dimly lit government-issued bathroom stall. (I wasn't fired. I quit.)

Twenty-two years later, after three children, a Bachelor of Arts degree to teach secondary English (I preferred high school then), a community newspaper gig (I was assigned the education beat) , and a newly elected seat on the local school board (I wanted to serve my community), I scooped ice cream at a mom and pop business as a stop gap between reporting and returning to the classroom. Turns out that a person cannot write education news and serve on the school board at the same time. Something about a conflict of interest. (Also, and this is important, because I am proud: I created a chicken salad concoction that became a kind of legend on the Square in downtown Liberty while working at the quaint, brick-walled ice cream shop.)

Reporting and teaching: the bulk of my career. Two decadess. During those years, I was also raising kids, laundering thousands of socks, grocery shopping twice weekly and preparing meals twice daily. My husband traveled six months out of the year. He ate meals out and slept in nice hotel beds. I was left at home, trying to get myself and three children under the age of six up and out the door by 6:45 a.m. Needless to say, I was tired and bitch-cranky. My PMS was severe; at one point I (seriously) thought about running away from home (and work responsibilities), maybe head to New England. Chop off my hair and peroxide-dye it. Pierce my navel ~ hell, FIND my navel. Get into shape. Get a tattoo. Create a new identity that had nothing to do with motherhood or teaching or asking complete strangers prying questions.

For two decades, I was passionate and pissy about those two jobs. (There were some good days.) Now, I tell myself those feelings were valid, and not emotional fabrications to ease the psychic pain of withdrawal from the newsroom and the classroom. It's what I did. Was good at. Defined by. Paid for.

Look. At heart, I am an introvert, and as such, I am a person who not only adores solitude and quiet but needs it. As you can imagine, it was tough for me to go out into the world (read: my community) with a smile and a notebook and interview superintendents and lottery winners and city councilmen. I always felt artificially poised and posed, there in my pumps and business suit, as I asked questions and wrote furiously to record answers. Showtime! (Jazz hands.)

Teaching high school was one big show, too, only six chaotic times a day ~ in profoundly noisy fifty-five minute increments. The hooligans needed fun assignments or else they were bored, apathetic, and problematic. With the energy I expended day-in-day-out, I might've trained to swim from Cuba to Florida. (Bet Diana Nyad never taught high school English.)
Later, I found middle school and it fit me like a comfortable shoe. At heart, I am fourteen years old. I laugh at fart jokes; I like, truly like, the music of Justin Beiber and Selena Gomez; I purchase for myself fuzzy-fabric covered journals and when the Book Fair rolls around, I always buy bobble-head pens and erasers that look like chunks of cheese. Mostly, I think early teens are pretty dang funny; in fact, I feel most tender toward awkward adolescents. Why? I remember being thirteen, fourteen. I remember feeling out of control and painfully shy and oh-so-ready to grow up, even though it meant leaving the security of my childhood.
And then my mom died and I lost my mind. I left the classroom to devote my life to beating myself up with guilt and trying to work shit out in/through/around/ my writing. I got accepted to the MacDowell Colony and got to write, undisturbed, ten hours a day in a gingerbread-like stone cottage nestled among towering trees in southern New Hampshire. I was productive and loved every single minute of my twenty-four days.  I came home energized. I would finish my novel and send it off; I would enter contests and win; I would be published in bona fide literary journals, like Ploughshares and Glimmer Train.
None of the above happened. What happened was home and all the responsibilities that come with it. Furthermore, a lack of discipline and my damned ADD took over and I reverted to pre-MacDowell ways, which meant spending too much time on facebook, too much time watching Modern Family and Dr. Phil, and eating out with friends three times a week. Bad for the waistline; bad for publishing.

And now, here I am. Forty-eight years old. I am not reporting. I am not teaching. Without my income, vacations are a luxury of the past; I do my own nails now. Pedicures? What are those? I do, however, have money in my purse for a Starbucks latte anytime I want one. I am one lucky lady, thanks to a wonderful and supportive husband who goes to work each day loving what he does. He is the major bread-bringer-homer. Me? I freelance and pick up some money here and there. I am a (paid) morning and after-school childcare provider. (Love my pseudo-grandchildren!). And ~ and this is BIG ~ I am owner of a kick-ass writing room. 
Sometimes, I even go in there and I write.

A Prairie Thanksgiving

Tomorrow, there will be fifty of us, seated around rickety card tables and long plastic tables, borrowed from the Altar Society at St. Ann's. As always, the dinner will held in the unfinished basement in the house on Church Road, the one that wasn't there on a Wednesday but was on a Thursday. (The home had been moved fifty-plus miles, to the acreage settled in 1956 by the Stander boys, newly arrived from Germany.)
If it is cold, which it will most likely be, as winter in Nebraska comes early,  there will be two enormous kerosene heaters placed on each end of the vast concrete basement. I hate the smell, and I will complain four or five times to my husband, who grew up on this very land, and he will tell me to cut it out, that family is more important.
Of course he is right and I will head upstairs to retrieve a couple Tylenol (the smell of the kerosene gives me a headache) after I've stood out on the deck to get new air. Although I am Missouri-born and proud of my Kansas City heritage, I admit that the air in Nebraska out on the farm is unsullied and pure, cleaner. The wind that seems never to cease annoys me, but the air that comes with it is crisp and delicious, like a refrigerated Granny Smith apple.
There will be traditional Thanksgiving fare, only five kinds of stuffing instead of one, and one deep-fried turkey, one baked. Also, a spiral-cut ham and a huge pork loin. Feeding fifty people means lots of meat.

****
To be continued ~

Oh, Johnny ... Oh, Lindsey ...

It was one of those dreams where you wake up, pissed. Pissed because someone or something has awakened you before the dream reached its conclusion; or, in my case, before the dream reached its climax. It was one of those dreams that stays with you – through breakfast, through dinner, into the next day, throughout the week. It was one of those dreams that you must find time to write down, so it is guaranteed a proper shelf life.

Toast. That was what I'd eaten before I lay down on the couch in the hearth room last Sunday morning. I'd gotten up around five at my cocker spaniel's insistence ("Let me out now, or I'm going to pee on you"); I made coffee; I watched CNN; I thumbed through some catalogs; I made toast: two slices of gluten-free bread, slathered with deliciously fattening butter. Savored the simple breakfast, got tired shortly after eating ~ by this time it was probably ten ~ and since it was cold outside and the fireplace was warming the house and I had nowhere to go, I decided to take a nappy on the couch.

What happened next, as I snored softly on the sofa, is bawdy and titillating, and although there is no cursing, the dream is definitely worthy of an R Motion Picture rating. Just so you know.

THE. DREAM

Setting: Near dusk, an open highway, somewhere in Nebraska, maybe Iowa ... October of 2013

I am seated in the back seat of a sedan, nothing fancy, near the rear passenger door. I am wearing a black chiffon dress, Stevie-Nicks style. I am not wearing underwear, which is unusual for me, unless it's summer, bedtime, and I'm airing out my privates.

I am seated next to Johnny Cash ~ yes, THAT Johnny Cash ~ and he is of course wearing black: black-collared dress shirt, unbuttoned mid-chest; black slacks; black belt. I presume he is wearing black shoes but I do not notice this in the dream. Next to Johnny Cash in the backseat of this unremarkable sedan, is Lindsey Buckingham ~ yes, THAT Lindsey Buckingham, he of Fleetwood Mac fame ~ and he is wearing a blousy white shirt, somewhat pirate-y, cut to mid-chest; he is wearing dark denim jeans, some sort of belt. He is beautiful and looks how he looked on the cover of The Dance album (1997). I am placing him, therefore, at around age forty-eight (he was born October 3, 1949). He and I then, sitting in the dream car, are magically the same age: forty-eight. Cash, in the middle, looks very mid-fifties ~ age, not decade. (My husband is fifty-four, and I am highly attracted to him, so it is neither bizarre nor disgusting that I would find a mid-fifties Johnny Cash sexy and desirable.)
It is important to note that I dream realistically when concerning Self: I am overweight in my dream; I have cheese-grater hairy legs (Day Five of no shaving); I am cognizant of my ever-burgeoning upper abdominal fat roll. My bikini line is a laughable thought: I have not worn a bikini since I was ten; I have made no attempt at pubic grooming since July 4 of this year. In this dream, I am very much Who I Am right now, this very day, and although some would think I might have low self-esteem and hate my body and am embarrassed by its saggy boobs and stretch marks, the opposite is true. In my dream, I am sexy as hell. Cash knows it; Buckingham knows it. They both want me.
Most important, I know they want me, and so when I launch into reporter mode and begin asking Cash 95,000 questions, I am well aware of his attraction to me. I am well aware of Buckingham's faux interest in the leather notebook he is holding: I know he is listening to every word coming from my Revlon Champagne Ice frosted lips. I feel beautiful. I feel powerful.
My questions to Cash come quickly: “When did you know you had talent? What is your song-writing process? Any regrets in this life? Did you ever feel worthy in your father's eyes? Did the money and fame mean much? Was June Carter the musical love of your life, or the all-time love of your life? Why? What was it about June that got you all twitterpated and divorced from your first wife?”
Suddenly, there's a new voice: Reese Witherspoon pipes in. Reese, who's been sitting, silent, in the front passenger seat, turns her blonde head around, styled like she wore it in Walk the Line, and she shushes me. “Ssssshhhhh, Kathleen,” she admonishes. “Do not ask Johnny about his June. Girl, what is wrong with you?” Instantly, I stop my interview and pivot in my seat, where I stare forlornly out the window. (Have you ever been hushed by Reese Witherspoon?) Cornfields newly harvested stare back at me. I am annoyed; I turn my attention next to the driver, who on this day, featured in this dream, is James Taylor ~ yes, THAT James Taylor ~ and I notice the bald spot on the back of his head and wonder if the balding started while he was still married to Carly Simon. Taylor is driving at a snail's pace, and I am ready to ask him to please speed up when all of a sudden I feel Cash's big man hand reach up my skirt, where it settles softly into the warmth of my parted legs (my without-underwear parted legs). As I am processing what is happening to me (Ohmygod Johnny Cash is engaging in sexual activity with me!), Cash then takes my left hand and places it onto his crotch, the parts of which are now exposed, the rim of whitey-tighties apparent in the pinkish sun-setting light of the sedan. Apparently, while I was sulking in my corner, he had unbuckled his belt, untucked his shirt, unzipped his slacks, and ousted his junk. Without conversation, I turn in my seat for better positioning (his and mine), place both hands on his swollen and ENORMOUS appendage, and proceed to give him a rousing hand job, while Buckingham watches and squirms sensually in his seat. While Buckingham watches and squirms sensually in his seat: OMG. Best. Dream. Ever.
As I hold Cash in my hands, my palms are burning, as though there are a hundred fire ants consuming the flesh. (I am fairly certain that Ring of Fire is not about friction.) I am just about to freak out when Cash lets loose. What spouts forth is bubbly and frothy and the temperature of near-boiling water. I retract my hands – in amazement, not fear – and as I watch Buckingham unloose himself from the tangle of denim and boxers (navy blue; an unidentifiable print), I sense a tug on my shoulder. Johnny, no! I scream-think in my dream mind: You've had your turn, but the tugging turns to squeezing, and then annoying and rude prodding, and before I can switch positions with Johnny Cash in the now remarkable sedan, I am … awake. There stands my husband, dressed in his Kansas City Chiefs jersey and paint-splattered jeans. “Get up, Kathleen. The game's about to start.”

I could have killed him. I had come this close to engaging in sexual activity with my longtime celebrity crush, my all-time favorite guitarist and contemporary male vocalist, Lindsey Buckingham, who, if I were to meet today, I would fall at his feet, pledge undying love, and kiss his calves. Also, I might try to undress him, but apparently that's another dream.

Immediately, I felt compelled to tell someone about this delicious dream. I don't know about you, but when something this exciting happens to me (real or imagined), my first inclination is to go forth and share. My husband, nearest in proximity, was first to hear. I told him exactly what happened, only I used real words, like penis and ejaculate. I might as well have recited my grocery list: My spouse didn't care that I committed an act of adultery with a dead country legend. He was not at all intrigued. What he did care about on this Sunday afternoon was the fact that the Chiefs were 7-0 and the kickoff was forthcoming. Next, I phoned my sister, but she didn't answer her cell. My adult daughter was home, but she certainly did not want to hear about her mother giving anyone a hand job, particularly a deceased person who sang country music, which she does not consider music at all. I have lots of friends, but none close enough to divulge every single detail. Thus, I was left with Facebook, but I had to be G-rated. Also, terse:

“Up too early, then fell asleep on the couch. Dreamed I was in the backseat of a car with Lindsey Buckingham and Johnny Cash (yes, I know he has passed on, but this was a dream). James Taylor was driving, and Reese Witherspoon was in the front passenger seat. I was annoying the hell out of Johnny asking him 95,000 questions, when all of a sudden he got a little randy. As FB is a family-friendly site, I will stop with the rest of the dream. Cash, however, did not stop. (Happy-face emoticon)”

What happened next was pleasantly surprising. A FB friend, one Jo Jacobs Self, of Boone, Iowa, is, wouldn't you know, in addition to being a life coach, a skilled dream analyst. She and I went to high school together in Kansas City thirty years ago. She was trustworthy, intelligent, beautiful, creative, and popular when I knew her then. Also, she had THE BEST feathered hair in the Class of '83. She must know what she's talking about now, right?

“I'm an amateur dream interpreter,” she wrote in the comment section of my FB post. “If you're interested it might be fun to see what your subconscious has to say to you in this one. (Happy-face emoticon).”

Was I interested? Yes.

“Jo: Yes, do tell!” I wrote back. “I will have to message you some of the (lurid) details!”

And so I did, and then we exchanged cell numbers and emails and before I fell asleep Sunday night, I had extraordinary knowledge as to why I gave Johnny Cash an explosive orgasm.

Disclaimer: At this point, I find it necessary to apologize profusely to any member of Cash's family who might stumble upon this blog post and feel unsettled, or angry, or litigious. I mean no harm; I am not making fun of Cash; there is no libel, really, as this is a dream, and is identified as a dream; I have never met Cash or anyone in his family; I have no ulterior motives; to the contrary, I have huge respect and admiration for the Man in Black's musical legacy. Which is, after all, why it is so cool to dream about him.

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