Tuesday, February 9, 2010
~♥ So F*cking Fabulous I Piss Glitter ♥~ Lacquer Thinner & Super Glue
My dad had to universal solvents in his life; lacquer thinner and super glue.
All things could be put back together in some semblance of a combination of these substances. Cuts cleaned and healed, stitches smitches. Stains cleansed, hangnails cured. Throw in the ever elusive duct tape and the man was a modern day MacGyver with a quick fix and all was right with the world.
It wasn't just his knack for building things with great skill, and boy was he a craftsman. I could repeat his creed of "Measure twice and cut once" in my sleep without hesitation. He was an artist. He could look at wood and know in an instant what it was, what tree it came from with the love of someone who had studied the works of the Louvre.
But more than fixing broken down houses and remodeling kitchens with ease, he was the cornerstone of my life. He fixed everything for me.
I know at 30 I shouldn't brag about this as an adult and should rave and go own about my independence and being able to fend for myself. Being able to stand on my own two feet and every other single mother cliché there is out there. But I can't. I stand on a ground that is crumbling beneath me and I long for my father to be here to fix it. To prop it up with his duct tape and super glue and make it all ok.
Akin to Miracle Max in the Princess Bride he was unorthodox in his methods sure. But he was lovable. In 2 days he would have been 59. 59. It's still hard to say that he was only 55 when he died. His life not even close to half over, half lived.
I can see him now, had he lived. Calling his brother in Maryland, just outside D.C. to taunt him of "Snowmageddon". The same brother who every storm we got here in New England would call us laughing from Florida or where he is now asking us about the snow, rubbing in the balmy weather he was enjoying. I can picture his belly laughing as he saw the show on the other foot this time, even with a pending storm coming here again tomorrow.
I can see him with Dylan. "Dylan-ma-nylan" he would say, making silly rhymes out of everything in his sing-songy dyslexic Dr. Seuss ways. Wanting to take Dylan to his wood shop and teach him all there is to know about tools and sawdust. Sitting back in his computer chair, leaning so far back you'd hear the chair creak from strain, and watching his eyes smile as he watched Dylan play and say "Papa look".
I can hear him bellow into the phone as it rang incessantly at my parents house. Off the hook some days it seems. "Is this you?" he would always say in jest, like he'd forgotten who he was talking to, or if the caller ID had steered him wrong. Listen as his Nextel chirped away, bright yellow and stained from a hard day’s work as more people just needed to talk to him.
I can smell him. That combination of sawdust and sweat. Various food stains on the belly of his t-shirt, tucked into his belted tan work pants, complete with suspenders. His hair combed over mostly by hair, its silvery black wave littered with flecks of sawdust from being surrounded all day with hard work. Chubby fingers calloused and sore.
I can hear his laugh. See his white teeth thanks to dentures as he smiled broadly across his wide face. His steely mustache, his "whiskers" as he called them tickling Dylan's face as he kissed him as a toddler. His giant arms squeezing you as he hugged you in instigation, more to annoy you than to cuddle you. His rising tone because he had zero volume control and the constant arguing over nothing with me and my brother, because well that's what we did.
And I want it all back. I want to go back to the chastising for making bad decisions with my life, as I clearly continue to do. I want to go back to hearing that Nextel chirping, even if it's the worst cell phone plan on the planet. I want to go back to weekends of roaming aimlessly around flea markets with him and my mother. To camping in Maine and to Griswoldesque vacations. I want those World War III family arguments. I want the smell of sawdust and sweat that used to sicken me when he'd try to hug me when he got back from the shop. I want to see him blowing out a candle on his 59th birthday cake in 2 days.
And I know I am screwed up. I know I make wrong choices, and I can't let go of things. I hold on to things I can't have, I long for things I want and then walk away when they come close to happening. I have a skewed sense of reality and a false sense of relationships. I have been bruised and battered and beaten and I hate that the only person I feel that can bring me out of any of it is 6 feet underground in a box made of wood I am sure he would criticize.
If only for a moment, and if only in a dream, I wish I could have him with me. To fix things, to guide me. I know his birthday wish would be for his kids to be ok, and I don't know that I am. I need your lacquer thinner and super glue.
February 11....Happy 59th birthday Daddy.
Wish you were here.
2 Comments:
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By
Kendra, at February 9, 2010 6:02 PM
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Happy Birthday to your wonderful father. 55 wow. That is so unfair. I wish you the best Apryl. Big hugs and love your way.
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Monday, February 8, 2010
~♥ So F*cking Fabulous I Piss Glitter ♥~ Inconeivably Misconceived
Is it inconceivable to be misconceived? Understandable to be misunderstood? An illusion to be disillusioned?
Thwarted in between what you know and what you think. What you expect and what you want to believe. Your own mindless purgatory.
Torn asunder in the misery you find now so comforting, like a soft blanket that surrounds you, keeping you warm and protected from the cold harshness of the outside, yet knowing that the softness you crave isn't there at all. You're not shrouded in it, you're hiding from it.
You know no other way really, not anymore. That once naive girl so lost in romance and happy-ever-after a stranger to you now. You try to remember her, in thoughts and memories, you reach deep into yourself and try to resurrect her, to no avail.
Resuscitation failing time and time again.
You love, you feel love, but can't succumb to it. You start to fall and catch yourself. You feel the hurt quickly from the vulnerability of it and you pull yourself back into yourself, as a turtle into its shell, hard and calluses, hiding the tenderness known inside, but outside, its hard, closed off.
For this you're faulted. Flaws known yet thrown back at you like boiling water splashed in your face. Burned by your own being.
You keep things not secret. You're candidly open about your closed offedness. An irony in and of itself. And yet punishably afflicted. Those flaws which were once so drawing, are now like a magnet in opposition pushing away.
The circumstantial decrepitcy that is your life, that follows you like a rabid animal, repeatedly taunting and biting, foaming at the mouth, beyond your control that consumes you, is not just your demon. Not just the poltergeist that takes over every ounce that you are and turns all around you negative and sour. Your life, your mood.
And you're expected to just smile through it all, pretend you're not affected. That yes it can be worse, but golly-gee I am grateful. I am not built that way. Perhaps once I had that mechanism to be blank and bland and unfeeling of all things real, but then I had things happen, time and time again. I tried to be grateful. To be optimistic, to wishfully think that things would be ok, and over and over again I was proved wrong. Shown that things don't work out, that if you expect things you will be disappointed, that if you love you will be hurt and if you work hard, it won't pay off.
So I stopped smiling. I stopped pretending that it would all come out in the wash, that things would eventually be ok. I stopped expecting anything from anyone. And I was realistic. I was ok with that. I was self reliant. Self-preserved.
And sure, I get those silly estrogen notions that someday my prince will come, and I will live happily ever after, but then I wake up. I remember its all bullshit and lies. All driven by hormones not necessity. By media and not by need. It's all fiction and greeting cards and not reality.
Even when presented with what you think is real, the looking glass shatters and you stumble like Alice, down down down into an alternate reality. Things you thought were real, not. You reach out to touch them on your way down to realize it was all an illusion. Falling into a dark abyss surrounded by oddities until you land hard, in a cold, bleak underground place. Alone, and inevitably hurting.
And yet...you are torn.
Inconceivable.
1 Comments:
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Beautifully written. That last paragraph on its own accurately depicts exactly how I feel today.
By
Robin, at February 8, 2010 2:02 PM
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Friday, February 5, 2010
~♥ So F*cking Fabulous I Piss Glitter ♥~ Short Days to Longer Sanity
Short days, short month, short tempers. I have come to loathe February.
The pomp and circumstance surrounding a rodent with ridiculous expectations to fail to bring the warmth and new life of Spring ever closer. The abundance of pinks and reds and hearts and all things love related in a Hallmark calculated holiday creating pressure to live up to relationship perfections, or remind those who are alone just how alone they are. And the reminder that another year goes by where on my father's birthday he doesn't get to age another year. Doesn't get to grow old gracefully, but decay farther in the box he resides in the ground.
I start every year resolute that the next will be better, hopeful wishful thinker closeted behind cynical eyes. Yet every year, come this second month I am assured that in no way is it possible for this to be so. At least not for me. I should be accustomed to it. Should change my middle name forever to "Disappointment" much like Austin Powers his to "Danger".
It's always different yet the same. The ins and outs of people, faces changing but the situations always remain the same. Never for the better. If ever I glimpse that elusive silver lining, it's quickly stripped away and replaced again with that looming black cloud, hovering over me. Following as Winnie the Pooh over his Bee's nest in disguise after his honey, though honey is not the prize, my dissatisfaction is.
I think and think and wrack my brain of things I could have done. Wrongs I may have committed for the bottom of my life to continuously drop out time and time again. For surely Karma has it out for me, if only I can find it's reason.
So finally when dust seems to settle, I start to let down a wall, slowly, surely...and for what? To have it invaded. Vulnerability stabbed again through the heart like a sword, a reminder of why it had been built in the first place. A place you vowed to yourself you wouldn't go back to.
But it all comes tumbling down in February. You lose your job, you lose your stability, you lose your mind. You think every day, day to night of how disappointed your father would be with you. How if he was here he would fix things, only he could fix things. That was what he did. You need him, only him and he isn't here.
3 years gone and you still can't breathe. The ground above him frozen and him inside, and you want to dig, dig deep not only into the ground but into yourself and pull him out and you can't find him. He's slipping away and you're afraid. What if he's lost? What if you lose him forever? Shut out everything else. Nothing else matters.
And all that happens, all that revolves around you this month, your head is spiraling, spinning. It's crashing down too fast and you can't control it. You think back and back as far back as you can. What did you do then? How did you go wrong?
And suddenly ghosts from the past come out of the woodwork, and you're already in a tailspin. And suddenly everything you feel is a fault. It's a complication to someone else's life. But it's not about them. You can’t get out of your own way and no one can see it. You're a mime trapped in an invisible box and you're screaming. Screaming so loud that no one can hear you. So loud that your throat is aching and your eyes are tired and soon enough you just give up.
Crawl back inside yourself. Where it's safe, it's quiet. Back into your quiet calloused solitude. Behind your bitchiness and sarcasm where no one can hurt you, where nothing can get to you. Where you can hide in plain sight.
Counting the days, those ominous increments of 24 hours when it will all be over. When the clock ticks away this month and you can maybe start again. Try again. Be again.
And hope for longer days, and longer bouts of sanity.
2 Comments:
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i heart you back. i want you to know that Feb and Sept are always my worst months.
I want you to know that you make me not feel so alone as i sit here in the dark typing this.
XBy
c@th, at February 5, 2010 3:48 PM
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**hugs** I have yet to know personal loss like you have...but I couldn't imagine living without the ability to call my dad and cry...to just have him there to remind me that we're all human...
Life is so hard as it is...but why do the good people have to constantly get kicked when they're down!? Someone had better find that answer or I'm opening a can of whoop-ass!By
Kendra, at February 5, 2010 4:36 PM
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Thursday, February 4, 2010
~♥ So F*cking Fabulous I Piss Glitter ♥~ Exclamtion Points and Mix Tapes
"What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?"
Probably the greatest line to ever start a movie.
The poignancy of music, of feeling. The art of the mix tape, gone but not forgotten. Those raw emotions that flow when you hear a certain melody, even in the first bars of a song you know are about to send you reeling into fits of rage or passion or sadness or longing. You listen with every fiber in your being. You drive to them, singing at the top of your lungs. You cry to them, softly weeping or deeply wailing hardly able to catch your breath. They remind of mostly of people, good, bad, ugly or indifferent.
It's the little things in life they say. Those momentous little things that in retrospect turn monumental in memory. A mix tape. A CD. Carefully plotted and extricated. Designed for you and you alone. The last I got one, maybe late 90's. Burned distinctly to CD at the beginning of the technology. But it was for me. A mix of songs calculated by someone specific to capture my essence to them. Like a decadent perfume created for one wearer alone, it was mine.
Those songs weren't written by artists with me in mind, no. They had never met me. I hadn't broken their hearts or inspired them, but their words, their muse had given the intender muse enough to floetically put together a thought. Something I still listen to now. Though scratched and skipping slightly, I still listen.
It's not hand holding or sleeping together than constitutes a relationship. It's not the hope that something is happening or the eventual and natural evolution of things. Sure that is all part of the grander scheme of things, but it's moments and to each those things are something different. Monumental? Maybe. Grandiose? Hardly.
There's no need at 30 for a whole lot of pomp and circumstance. No need to shout things from rooftops like a giddy child. When you've had strings of failure, you tend to not want to put carts before horses until you know things for sure yourself.
It's not a battle to see who hurts who more. Or when things don't go how you want to walk away in an instant before they even begin. To be a coward. It's a chance, a crapshoot, a dance. And a dance is between two people. Sometimes hurried and quickstepped sure, sometimes sensual and sometimes soft and slow, drawing each other closer with each and every movement. But it’s all set to music.
It's old fashioned reminders of femininity. Of flowers and compliments. Of poetry and mix tapes. Of other's words if you can't find your own. It's not text messages and phone calls. It's tangible. It's letters and cards and things you can hold onto forever. Things you can store not only in memory, but in carefully laden boxes to pull out and mull over when times are tough. It's looking back at happiness in your hand, as well as your heart. It's listening to something personal and knowing it was for you, even once upon a time.
Exclamation points and mix tapes. It's really not that hard.
3 Comments:
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Excellent post. I have the "I'm so fabulous I piss glitter" gif I'd have sent you for this if I'd known!!!
By
Julie, at February 4, 2010 11:37 AM
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I love this.
So well said.
And I agree. I have a tape my ex-husband made me when we were dating. I don't play it, I just have it. And keep it with memories of better days.
Thanks for the post!
:-)By
f8hasit, at February 4, 2010 3:44 PM
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I sometimes laugh at my boyfriend for the things he keeps in a box from me...but I do understand that those things will always mean something...notes I've left him when he was working, cards I've given him, etc.
Sadly, I lack much of a sentimental bone in me...so I'll save certain things but most I just disregard after the moment is past...By
Kendra, at February 4, 2010 5:05 PM
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Wednesday, February 3, 2010
~♥ So F*cking Fabulous I Piss Glitter ♥~ Loves Me, Loves Me Not
Haunted by a memory
A person, place or thing
Recounting thoughts
Reliving moments
The uncertainty it brings
Keep moving forward
Step by step
So you believe
A brief reprieve
Yet pieces still are left
Inopportune you find me
To wonder yet again
Relive the past
Old memories hashed
Of how they once began
Your touch seems now so distant
Your breathe more like the wind
Your kiss is faint
Your face a disdained
Too many years infringed
Yet ghosts perhaps in haunting
Remind you of your life
How far you've come
And what you've done
The triumphs more the strife
Naiveté consumes you
If you could just go back
To simpler times
The clock though chimes
But many things would lack
Gone would be independence
The backbone that you built
Your motherhood
The ground you stood
The overwhelming guilt
But time is an illusion
And what was great was not
So now your ghost
Who touched you most
Loves me, loves me not
4 Comments:
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Brilliant!
By
Robin, at February 3, 2010 4:23 PM
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beautiful!
By
Robin, at February 3, 2010 4:24 PM
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Why the heck won't this post where I actually want it to? Frig. Both those comments were for your post from yesterday...but this one today is both of those too. :)
By
Robin, at February 3, 2010 4:26 PM
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*sigh*
By
Kendra, at February 3, 2010 5:49 PM
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Tuesday, February 2, 2010
~♥ So F*cking Fabulous I Piss Glitter ♥~ Rapunzel Has No Hair
There's a saying that inside every cynic is a disappointed idealist. A once upon a time romantic who more often than not had her dreams shattered like shards of glass at her fingertips, leaving her scared and staring into her distorted mirrored image projected in front of her.
You live with longing. For so long, wanting, waiting, hoping. Wanting the next time to be real, be better than the last. For the scars to make you stronger and the pain to be forgotten, but it happens again. You get a glimpse really of what that memory felt like, that shattered dream, and before you can reach your hand out to touch it, you drop it and run away.
Cast blame hither and yon at others, build walls around you like you're Rapunzel in a tower, only you have no lovely locks to let down. No guard to relinquish. You become so accustomed to your tower, your own isle of solitude, your cynicism and bitterness are comforting now, old friends. They don't hurt you, they hurt others, but you alas are safe. No one can touch you where you are.
You become the ungettable get. Close enough but still far enough away. And you know it isn't right, you can feel it. You talk yourself into things you know aren't real for the sake of it, because it seems like it should be so, and then sabotage them all again because you know its again time to run.
So you closet yourself in your secrets, in your actual need for what you long for. Calloused exterior hiding your inner romantic. It’s safer that way. You try to remain untouchable. But...
You're finding yourself nearing the glass again. Ever fearful, you try to pull away, but the force is like the tide, uncontrollable and strong, yet calming and serene. A paradox.
And so you're secret's out, your humbled self, old fashioned and feminine, lurking under the hardnosed surface of independence. Wanting, waiting, wishing to be swept off her feet. Waiting for those locks to grow. Be saved from that tower built up brick by brick.
And maybe brick by brick it will come down, or maybe with leaps and bounds it will be scaled. With magic or with memories. With careless effort of calculated precision. Or maybe it won't.
But I'll be in it, waiting.
4 Comments:
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I can soooo relate to this right now !! Another fine piece Miss Apryl :)
By
, at February 2, 2010 12:32 PM
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So it's not ok for them to build their own house to accommodate everyone?
It's not ok for them to be debt free? They built that house before their show got picked up.
Wouldn't you want your kids to live comfortably?
Maybe you should try watching the show before judging how you think they are. If they can afford that many kids w/out help from welfare, I say go for it. Granted they are getting money for their show, but you don't know what they're using it for. And as for the kids being exploited....I don't see it from them.
Now as for Octomom, yeah she shouldn't have had those 8 kids when she already had 6 and no way to pay for them.
PS the Duggar's used to bug me too. Then I watched the show and understood how they can have that many kids and still function and be happy.By
, at February 3, 2010 12:55 AM
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Beautiful words Apryl. Just beautiful.XO
By
Brenda, at February 3, 2010 5:01 AM
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Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!
By
walter, at February 3, 2010 11:48 AM
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Monday, February 1, 2010
~♥ So F*cking Fabulous I Piss Glitter ♥~ A Nightmare More A Dream
Open your eyes in morning
Choices there to make
Roads that seem the simplest
Not simplest are to take
The tides are ever changing
Strong currents to light streams
Life proves to be tumultuous
A nightmare more a dream
You sit in ever wonder
How you got to where you are
Seems a million miles away
Though really not so far
Changes though were drastic
Sliced you like a sword
Some subtle though, subdued
Whispered softly, said like words
Callously you pondered
Calculated every act
The Fates were out to get you
Convinced that this was fact
You're falling off the wagon
Always waiting for the shoe
Though you feel the sole intact
You don't know what to do
The bottom falls day to day
Chaos follows suit
You turn and pull inside yourself
The point it seems is moot
Think no one understands you
Alone you shed the tears
Bitterness, frustration
Built up throughout the years
Like onions there are layers
A turtle there's a shell
And only those who care to
Seem to see beneath it well
0 Comments:
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Even without looking at the photograph of him, you describe him perfectly. With such love and respect...*sigh*
Happy Birthday sir!