Cooler than You: Stupid Things I Say and Do

I'm late in posting, as well . . . I've got a handful of things to blather about.  Like the ending of summer, which turned (as usual) into an Indian Summer, the settling of fall, my beignot skirt that I've only worn once on account of that Indian Summer, another pencil, the new jeans I made, and other items.  Yet, work and life played games with me this past week, and then yesterday there was a passing.  Uncle Harry, technically a cousin, passed expectantly.  Yet, a passing is still a passing.  Grief and loss still creep up and embrace you like an unwanted in a snow storm who drinks your last beer and hogs the fire warmth.  In a day or so I'll release the post I had ready.  Right now . . . it just doesn't seem fitting.   So instead of talking about how layers of fabric hide the curves of my ass that shouldn't be there, I'm wrapped in a series of emotions.  Many of those emotions I am not entirely comfortable with them lurking around.  ...

Along The Dover Road, between New York City and Virginia Beach, we tumble through Salisbury...the last place my brother called home. As we pass through, I notice–– as I did in August, the first time I'd been through in nearly nine years–– the growth of the little roadside stop. Well, the academic in me wants to call it sprawl, but most folks draw lines with progress and clutter...the expanded Wal Mart, the chain restaurants, and the new chain gas stations all replacing the single owned ones known along the area for subs and fried chicken.  Somewhere along the way my mind remembers golf balls and rides in his partner's blue pick up truck. Those...those are memories for me to hold onto for another day.  Perhaps like the skybirds (Skybirds http://coolerthanyoustupidthings.blogspot.com/2009/08/skybirds.html) of my youth.  I still wonder what those are, then again I doubt that I really need to unearth that. This past February made ten years since my ...

These days I'm contemplating the image of the solider verses the veteran.  Fun stuff, for the nerd in me.  Particularly, I'm looking at The American Legion Magazine , and mixed within these pages of patriotic valor and dutiful honor advertisements abound.  That is no surprise. Yet, a continual theme has arisen.  Advertisements for girdles, corrective footwear, and dentures abound.  The dentures  . . . a simple black and white photo of false teeth seems to jump off the page to startle and haunt me.  Gah. I think I was four or five when my Mom's Dad came to visit us in Washington State.  Visits with grandparents are just that: filled with presents, sweets, and good stuff.  Yet, Grandpa left his dentures in a glass on the back of the toilet (or maybe the bathroom sink).  I did not know he had dentures.  See where this one is going? I came running from the toilet with my curls flying screaming about monster teeth.  Good times....