It starts with a phone call, voice mail, "give me a call as soon as you can"  The message is delivered in a quivering voice.  The undertone, pleading.

My mother has suffered from mental illness for a while now and her messages are sometimes pleading and difficult.  I admit I sometime ignore them, let them go and answer when its convenient.  Not this time.  I called back as soon as I got the message. 

"Mom, its Rick, you called, what's up?" 
"Rick, the doctor called, I have Colon Cancer."
....
I've been sitting here for ten minutes trying to think of how to describe my reaction to those words.  I vacillated between "oh no!" and "it wasn't unexpected, but I didn't think it would happen to mom." 

Mom had been a smoker for so long she destroyed her lungs to the extent she's on Oxygen; COPD
...
Now we are at the free fall point.  The tests have been done, the MRIs taken and the surgeon scheduled.  And we wait.  Falling into forever.  Trying to keep her grounded and here; not off the edge.

Mom's lungs have been ravaged; the critical part will be the lung specialist that clears her for the anesthesia.
...
And that Specter sits in the corner,
I can't see his smile hidden under
folds of hood.  I'm sure he
is my Uncle Milton.

His fingers are not bony, leather mitts
rough from years of assembling.
the dental equipment we sit
and suffer in.

Nice guy, this Specter is
a real pal.  Kind in his way but
harsh in his delivery - not a man
tolerant of children.

I sleep without dreams,
eyes tight against my skull,
afraid the Specter will offer me a
hand to get out of bed.

I noticed something (alert the media!); there's a direct relationship between my mood and the level of trash in my garbage can.

Prior to the week long brutal insertion of knowledge into my brain I was in a little funk.  Deadlines, documents and personality conflicts left me a little less than enthused about the daily grind.

I was having just one of those down periods, no big whoop; At the end of the day you would find it brimming with Starbucks cups, refuse from the cafeteria and soda bottles.  Not good. 

Today, however, I was humming, moving along at a clip, zooming and booming.  Felt good.  At the end of the day a single piece of paper in the garbage can. 

Emotional barometer ... I think so!!!

Today we said good bye to a coworker that is moving on, a true compadre.  He kept us honest by daily beating us with his Russian sensibility.  (We called him Vlad The Impaler)  He will be missed.

Our walk along the river ...

A week long, seven hour a day lecturing, 'labbing' (writing software not playing fetch with man's best friend) and very much eating the standard course fare; caffeine, cholesterol and cafeteria food comes to an end.  My head is happy by my body aches from inactivity and stagnation.  LOL - and yes, I signed up for this!

And now a brief interlude

Now, don't we all feel better?

What fonts and size to your prefer to read?  I'm experimenting with the standard set and I can't seem to find anything I like.  You?

There's a great campy movie from the early eighties; Raising Arizona.  As I recall it was the first time I saw Nicolas Gage.  Throughout the movie, which involves the kidnapping of the baby Arizona, each kidnapper asks where the "manual" is?  What is the manual you ask?  Dr. Spock's book  Can't raise Arizona without it.

This leads, in the warped and twisted paths of my brain, to the manual I am working with; The Poetry Home Repair Manual, by Ted Kooser.  So now that I have the "manual" you can be assured that what will eventually pour fourth will be of a quality worthy of a Poet Lauriet of the United States, which Kooser was.  While you are all waiting for such prolific content to pour out from my pores I'll leave you with some quotes from that very funny movie:

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_Arizona

• H.I.: I'll be taking these Huggies and whatever cash ya got.
• H.I.: The doctor explained that her insides were a rocky place, where my seed could find no perches.
• H.I.: Now I don't know where you come down on the incarceration
  question, whether it is for rehabilition or revenge. But I was
  beginning to think, revenge is the only argument that makes any sense.
• H.I.: Now Prison life is very structured, more than most people
  care for. But there is a certain cameraderie that exits between the
  men, like you find only in combat maybe. Or on a pro ball club in the
  heat of the pennant drive.
• Dot: You take that diaper off your head; you put it back on to your sister.
• Smalls: Name's Smalls. Leonard Smalls. My friends call me Lenny... only I ain't got no friends.
• Smalls: You wanna find an outlaw, you call an outlaw; you wanna find a Dunkin' Donuts, call a cop.
• Evelle: Mighty good cereal flakes, Mrs. McDonough.
• Gale: So many social engagements, so little time.
• Evelle: Work's what's kept us happy.
• Evelle: What's he need, his diptet?
• Gale: Ma'am, we sure never meant to influence anybody. Evelle: And if we did, we're sorry.
• Evelle: You're young and you got your health. What do you want with a job?
• From H.I.'s dream: And it seemed real. It seemed like us. And it
  seemed like, well... our home... If not Arizona, then a land, not too
  far away, where all parents are strong and wise and capable, and all
  children are happy and beloved... I dunno, maybe it was Utah.
• Hayseed in the pickup: Son, you got a panty on your head.
• Ed: You mean you busted out of jail! Gale: Waaaal... Evelle: We released ourselves on our own recognizance. Gale: What Evelle means to say is, we felt the institution no longer had anything to offer us.
• Ed: Gimme that baby, you warthog from hell!
• Ed: We finally go out with some decent people and you break his nose. That ain't too funny, Hi. H.I.: His kids seemed to think it was funny. Ed: Well, they're just kids, you're a grown man with responsibilities.
• H.I.: Over there's the TV. Two hours a day maximum, either
  educational or football so's you don't ruin your appreciation of the
  finer things.
• Glen: "Mind ya don't cut yeseff, Mordacai.
• Moses: An' when they was no meat we ate fowl. An' when they was
  no fowl we ate crawdad. An' when they was no crawdad to be foun', we
  ate sand.
• H.I.: I tried to stand up and fly straight, but it wasn't easy
  with that sumbitch Reagan in the White House...I dunno, they say he's a
  decent man, so... maybe his advisers are confused.
• H.I.: Now y'all who're without sin can cast the first stone...

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Raising Arizona

[edit] Trivia

Like a tune you can't get out of your head, delivered on a daily basis: Daily Meditation

I'm in class all week.  A Software Architecture class on distributed applications.  Sounds fun, huh?

No matter how good the class, and I do find this topic interesting (can you say GEEK?), I end up in a mental stupor by the end of the week.

So by the end of the week, my friends, please hand me a syringe of adrelaline.

First Fig

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends —
It gives a lovely light!

Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1) - Cite This Source

...

Today in New England the pall, weather, and gloom was so dense

you couldn't scrub it off with the surface of the Sun.

It presses down, compressing, compressing. 

You wonder, as you sit in your car eye ball to tail light,

thankful that the brakes you just slammed on held,

if the gravitational pull to the Hoda Civic Honda

in front of you has increased just a bit.

You wonder if the grey, now turned pitch black night

has something to do with the mood you're in.

The darkness is a black tar of liquid vinyl

we slide along from ankle to thigh slowely

expecting home if we can just get there.

Lost On The Way To Vote

Yes, I got lost on the way to the polling station.  While I vote regularly
(and often it is the first time voting in this town. After some angst
and a brief search of the Town of Chelmsford
web site I should be able to make my way
to vote today. Thank God there is no reconnoitering test to be able to cast
a ballot.

This is what the arrangement of a polling place should be like according to
Massachusetts law.

And who should we vote for in ... 1908:

Humbly Opined

I believe the nation would be better served if politicians of either stripe
were excluded from the next national election.

For some reason the Fall makes me think of Summer.  Yes I know, bizarre behavior, inconsistent thought with the world I observe around me.  While the wind picks up and carries a bite along with the leaves it chews from the trees I day dream of gentle breezes and a summer sun.  In that spirit I give you a shot from 2005 trip to Switzerland.  We are actually in Germany here on the Rein.

Can't tell we're in Germany can you?  I'm the one in the red shorts; Carol with here feet up against the pole.  Memories are sweet, especially when the frosting of connection is layered over a picture!