Now that I have your attention!
Dinah's leaving for college Thursday night around 3 am when the horse trailer shows up at Bell Canyon to take Tia and the goats to college. Dinah will follow in her new blue FIT. She doesn't want me to come with her. Perhaps she's the Cobra Woman?
I feel an elemental sadness, was crying in the shower. I'm sure I've done that before, but the only other time I could remember crying in the shower was the week after Dinah was born, when Jon and his mother went out to buy baby things and have lunch, and there was no lunch in the house for me. (poor me: post partem d.p.)
Anyway, on a whole other note, thinking about early internet pals. Do you remember the first internet pal you had, whether or not you wanted him/her? I remember mine. It was around 1997, (or maybe earlier?) and I participated actively in a chicken forum, because we'd just gotten started keeping chickens and there was much to learn. One guy was especially helpful. It wasn't until later I realized he raised the kind of chickens used in fighting. ick. He worked as a janitor at U.N.C. in Chapel Hill.
Without my asking for it, he sent me a picture of him with his huntin' dogs, and the file size was so huge I had to scroll all over to look at it, and I didn't want to know what he looked like anyway. He was wearing a good old boy cap.
Then he started implying he liked to travel in his trailer, and might be planning a California vacation. oh god!
For about six months I worried this guy was going to show up on our little street with his bird dogs and chickens in the trailer, and just park out front. I decided I knew enough about chickens and left the forum.
7 comments:
This post is a heavy to bursting one.
This kind of change (Dinah's leaving) must be very hard. I don't have kids, but I know this sadness IS an elemental sadness.
Your internet pal story is scary (funny, too)! As for my internet pal--but this is my latest internet pal--I saw her art when I was in college and it gave me a feeling that was the very opposite of an elemental sadness. Expansive, joyful, silly. I googled her over the years and finally, 31 years later, FOUND HER AND HER ART.
I "commented" and she "commented," then I "commented" and she "commented."
I was ecstatic when she suggested we all move up the coast together and live on champagne out of cans and cinnamon buns. But Tom informed me that her suggestion was only hyperbole. I looked up "hyperbole" and was sorry to find that it meant: exaggerated statements or claims not meant to be taken literally; exaggeration, overstatement, magnification, embroidery, embellishment, excess, overkill, rhetoric; informal purple prose, puffery.
But I liked the part about "purple prose and puffery." It made me think of Snozzi.
Actually, I was going to say I think you and Luci were actually my first Internet pals, met through Linda!
The only empty nest I've had is the loss of my caregiving role for my father, a huge loss. I was amazed how much of my time and energy I put into that role and have spent this year trying to learn how I want to spend my time now. The role was inherently meaningful. I let so many other things go for so long. On that other note, I had a cyber stalker, and it was unpleasant.
I agree with Linda- I don't have kids either but it has to be difficult when they leave home.
The internet/cockfight/trailer/chicken man sounds like a piece of work. I've met some pests before, but nobody's talked of driving their trailer out my way. Geez, that's creepy.
I ran into a few weirdos in Second Life. They'd follow me everywhere, talk on and on, ask personal questions etc.. I got rid of them by changing my avitar into a tall, very masculine Winkie (the green guards with the fur hats in the Wizard of Oz). Nobody likes to flirt with a Winkie.
Thanks for all your sympathy and insight. Not the best of times, not the worst either though.
Linda! It wasn't hyperbole.
Actually we're thinking about driving up the coast this winter looking for a place to live part time. I looked at real estate listings for Sea Ranches . I think champagne in the can would not be a good thing for me to experience, as I LOVE champagne and almost never get to drink it.
Maybe Friday I'll search out my first can, right after Tia, Dinah and the goats head up route 5. It will also be Molly's birthday #3.
I've never seen Cobra Woman, but now that I've read about it I see I've missed something big.
A marvelous description of a theater viewing here, under Scene.
http://www.silverlakeblvd.com/Cobra.html
Hey Katy, Bosley Crowther, wow. I remember reading his movie reviews all through my childhood on Sundays. Jon says he has a print of this in 16 mm. Must see!
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