Saturday, May 23, 2020

Tales from Pandemia

When last I wrote, I knew something that most of my friends did not yet realize...

The world (all of it, everywhere) was about to change.  Violently, terrifyingly, and chaotically.

I could not have predicted how terrible our response in America would be.  But here we are.



My feelings right now are centered on my family.

Keeping them safe.

Keeping me safe for them.

Missing them because they are not here (we had a visit planned for everyone to come to Grammie's).

This is my blog post four months out from my awkward step back from society I took in late January/early February.  Sigh.  I truly wish I'd been wrong and crazy.  TRULY.

Anyway, here we are.

Yesterday I drove around having a minor nutty because I just couldn't take it anymore.  I think I'd have been willing to get out of the car and wander around IF THERE HAD BEEN ANYWHERE TO DO THAT.  Parking lots closed, businesses closed, streets full of people walking in circles with their dogs because what the hell else is there to DO??????

So, I'm safe.
My kids are safe.
But, man, am I tired of the same four walls and talking heads on Zoom.


If you want masks, I make masks out of my limited resources.  The octopus fabric is all gone.  So is the chemistry fabric.  But... new fabric can be had.  They have interfacing, so they are filtering some stuff.  Mostly. they are comfortable and I am pretty good at the pattern matching.  Hit me up if you want something made.  Mail me fabric if you want something specific made.








Saturday, February 1, 2020

The Driftwood, It Burns...


February 1, 2020

In world news...

...investment shares in fiddles have risen sharply as all the would-be Nero's of the modern era play the cheery but inevitable songs of chaos...

So, assimilating to life in Seattle has not gone as quickly or smoothly as I'd hoped.  A synopsis of the struggle, and a wry laugh at my own inefficient coping skills:

1.   Rural person faces giant urban tangle of social weeds and slippery slopes---

2.   Rural person very very slowly begins to branch out from barricaded apartment life---

3.   Rural Person becomes fledgling urbanite, beginning to explore a little, ride buses, make a few solid acquaintances, volunteer at Church, search for friends---

4.   Then, |random-people-at-large| become possible plague vectors and there is little reliable data (not enough time so far to really assess safety for people who are at risk) to confidently prove to me that all available humans in any given environment are not current potential plague vectors, and so...

5.   Rural person with chronic underlying conditions of DOOM decides it is perhaps best to wait and see what the science will reveal while I sanitize everything I have delivered, and every piece of clothing as it comes in the door.  Hand-washing is great, and masks may in fact be a thing at some point, but for now, for this rabbit, Imma be upstairs if you need me, waiting on more comprehensive science-based information, specifically- science that is not caught up in the clear rush to protect world markets.  

Call or text if you want/need me, and if I don't shake your hand, it's not personal.  YOU are probably a lovely person, but the hijacking pathogens all around us are dangerous for me, personally, so we can catch up on the hand shakes later.

Here are the places I get information, currently, and they are excellent:

Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security Email Updates
The CDC #2019nCoV Site
Univ of Minn CIDRAP
World Health Organization

So...  I guess we'll all just wash our hands and hope we're not the unlucky lottery winners of DOOM.

In the meantime, here are my cats, lounging around and being themselves...

Spot, in his "Cartoon Villain" persona
Odo, pretending he ISN'T eating ornaments


I'm Sexy and I KNOW it


Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Echoes and Whispers Among the Ruins of an Ancient and Haunted City


Change is inevitable.

Change is hard.




Like a glacier, changes rolled through my life, grinding up the very ground I stood on, and leaving me with a bizarre combination of emptiness, hope, despair, excitement, and fear.  Nothing could have prepared me for how it feels to really have to leave behind what you thought your life would be.

Da Firstborn and da Creature are living together now, and I am thousands of miles away from my family and all I've ever known.  Am I an explorer?  An escapee?  A refugee?  I don't know yet.  My reference points and landmarks lie in ruins just past all the bridges I burned to get here.

Am I okay?  Sure.  I'm always okay.

Am I good?  Not yet.  Maybe someday.

Where am I now?  Why am I here?  What is my purpose now, without da Firstborn and her lil bro?

How do you absorb so many losses at once---?

divorce
children moving on
home of 16 years sold
2/3 of all I've ever owned sold or donated or thrown out
moving across the country

You become brittle and shatter.  Fortunately, for me, that is my default state.  I like the notion of surface area---that God touches our broken pieces, precious and proud---that He touches as much as we allow Him, getting God sticky fingers on every part of our lives, until we wall him out again.  We wall Him out, as though our very lives depend on this persistent, fragile need to be in control, and we leave Him no choice but to tear it all down and break everything apart again... in the wreckage, our false self floats aimlessly in the debris and He can finally touch all the small, brittle, shattered pieces the fortresses of our false self had tried so vainly and valiantly to protect.

That is where I am.

Saturday, October 20, 2018

Life's a Funny Old Thing, revisited

Rambling around a bit, trying to get to a point, because, well, you see---I'm not even sure where I am these days.

Changes keep rolling through, storms on every horizon, monsters rising from the deep, a tiny ship, just a few hands on deck, and me, the captain of this vessel, playing PoGo from the poop deck, hoping that if I just hang on a little longer, it will all make some jagged sense...

I wish I were at liberty to share all the things in my heart, but this is the fucking internet, so this isn't THAT sort of blog post.  This is more of a "WTF????" and "BLAAARG" and "wait, is that solid ground I'm standing on?  FUCK!" kind of post.

It's funny to wake up one day and really really really realize you're probably not going to die in the next five years like you were supposed to.  Somehow that works on the mind, and there is a period of time where you think everything is new, but it's not.  You're only just begun to discover the consequences of living your "next-gen carpe diem ---FOR MY CHILDREN!!!" lifestyle for so many years. Consequence #1: you were a terrible squirrel, so winter is proving to be a hard lesson in poor planning.  Consequence #2: you are no longer willing to cruise along in abusive dysfunctional relationships waiting out your own death because "why rock the boat?"  Consequence #3:  being in my 50's is an essay on pain and life amongst the ruins of my body because eating and being sedentary were part and parcel of waiting to die, they were comfort.

My son started singing "Where do We Go From Here" from Evita while we were moving furniture one day.   I really wish he hadn't summed up all my feelings in one of the most depressing songs I've ever heard.  It was actually perfect, a perfect moment expressed by an autistic mind who just couldn't keep his thoughts inside his damn head.  So, now it's the unsupressible soundtrack to all the changes.

All in all, there is daylight, but it is weak, and behind a bank of fog and clouds and rainy drizzle.  My life is a soft quiet Seattle morning, and that's okay.  Because eventually, the fog will lift, the clouds will part, and I will be able to see mountains and ocean and life again.

Here is a bright spot I stumbled on--- WHY ARE WE NOT ALL EATING CHIK-FIL-A SALADS????? This is a picture of a Cobb Salad from Chik-Fil-A and if you haven't had one, I'd suggest you stop what you are doing and at your FIRST convenience go buy one.  BEST FOOD I have found in a very very long time!!  The avocado lime ranch dressing is the best possible thing to put on them.  Seriously.  GO.  TRY. SPREAD THE WORD.


In the meantime, the empty house is driving me bananas.  Someone please buy my house so I can quit cleaning it every day.  KTHNKSBYE. Here's the link to the listing----

https://www.facebook.com/tyedensfordrealtor/photos/pcb.1124737554350226/1124736421017006/?type=3&theater

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Again... "Oh yeah, I have a BLOG"

Good morning 2017.

I'm a little late to this party, obviously, but you've been a bit of a bitch to me 2017, and I really don't appreciate it at all.

So.... here's the nutshell version:


  • I turned 52
  • da Creature turned 13
  • da Firstborn got married
  • da Firstborn is currently carrying the recursion equation wherein she will have a firstborn...
  • (A GIRL!!!!)
  • The school district oscillates between being a good thing and a giant, kraken-calling WTF
  • Life moves on
  • Pokemon Go is a world-wide skinner box of DOOM
  • The NSA is data mining your children, but everytime I point that out online, no one sees it, so...  this is how I'm going to make sure no ones sees THIS post either...  :P  I like to write the words though, in case there is a brief moment in which someone goes...  "wait, what?"
  • Houston did a lovely version of Gondoliers, the opera we've been waiting FOUR YEARS to see
  • Conventioning was exhausting, but worth it
  • I have a LOT of pictures that I've just sort of accumulated, and some are on the facebook page for Aspie Spice Cosplays
  • Comcast is incompetent, not evil
I'll try to make an effort to catch my blog up, but don't bet on it until Pensacon, which is gonna be a FANTASTIC experience.

In the meantime.... here is this picture that totally describes my prayer life, and the resulting life life that goes with it these days...  




Tuesday, March 15, 2016

The Monkey Chased the Weasel

My blog.  My rules.  Just Sayin'.

I have been in a right bizarre circle this past six months.

For me, the hard road is the one that yields the best fruit and I find that as I circle this same damn fruitloop of an intersection over and over again, eventually my own momentum spits me out.  Then, there is that hard landing on your ass part that is unpleasant at best, and downright painful at its worst.  Here I sit, again, ass sore and raw from a thousand botched landings, wondering if THIS TIME I might just be able to get this right.

It is an unfortunate truth of life with PTSD that you experience your story as a series of repetitive events---events which do not resolve until the emotions that were originally associated with them are experienced and put to rest

So, you live life on this circular spiraling path.

Lately, mostly I circle drains.

In the spirit of changing that dynamic...  here's something I'd like to share from the vault of things that sprang into being as a result of the difficulties I have lived.  It is an excerpt from a larger work, but it strikes at the core of what I want to amend right now, right here:

From Tenure of a Mystic, Mvt. 5 "Communion" (link to the whole poem:  https://www.scribd.com/doc/304893477/Tenure-of-a-Mystic-A-Symphony-in-Five-Movements):

The dark is not
because of us.
We did not make it
on our own.
We borrowed it when needed
to hide our pain
to cloak our rage
to mask our sin.

No one knows this better
than those who’ve
suffered from the dark
that others used
to mask their sin
to cloak their rage
to hide their pain.
BUT—victims who seek
justice
often fail to look
past judgment
and He clearly told us
we could not know the hearts of men
but what is pain to do
but seek redemption, rescue, and release?

It’s hard to see what’s real, what’s true
when all around you is deception
blame and muffled screams
of victims and of perpetrators lost to God
by sin and power.

Power chooses, steals His children
and in isolation
re-enacts a chain of pain
so ancient no one to this hour
can remember
there was a source.
There is a cure.

My mother tried to school in me the ancient curse:
She taught me that if I would listen I could KNOW, and then believe my eyes:

the difference between Good and Evil.

The fruit of the tree
a nightmare—
so like unto God but never God—
able to see but not redeem

Was that the agony, my Lord?

Could you see us as we were and know
we never really meant it
and know you could not stop us
know we could only be saved if we chose

You.

Yet, choice demands belief
in what we cannot see
or else we choose
the visible
accessible
the tangible
which we can grasp
without the tourniquet of faith,
and choosing all too often
what regards us best
we fail
and cry to God
What NOW?!?!

The answer is preceded by a question—
“Do you believe that I can do this?”

The simplicity of which is only
truly comprehensible for those who have escaped
the strangle hold of reason and entitlement.

For me,
it is hard:
this seeing in the dark.

It draws me ever closer to this God,
this God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
but fear is omnipresent:
my hourly battle of barricaded will
          what will I see
          what will I choose
          what will I act upon
          what will become of me
if I surrender
to His power, love and grace
and disappear
among the ruins of the desert
to serve in silence
in the dark
alone with Him I cannot see
but never am without,
surrounded by people
still harassed and harried
people with the power
each and every one
to harm, to heal, to kill, to serve
and using it
aware or not
that using it
is garden, desert, garden, death,
is resurrection, promised or implied,
is mechanism of damnation or redemption
action of imperfect elements
is body, blood transformed
in us to hoard and share
as we do deign to try
to BE the instruments of God.

The wisdom of the cave is you can see in the dark,
but only when you realize that you yourself are blind.

The wisdom of the desert is that those
who seek surrender, silence, weakness
always find Him, finding ALL.

The wisdom of the kingdom is that the children
of the Most High God
cannot be contained simply because
our need for power
consistently demands an ordered world.

The wisdom of communion
is that I could not once by force of mind
or force of heart redeem myself
but yet I am redeemed:
the mystery of the living God.

The songs of children I have loved and served—
become as flower petals on the path.
My fading earthly light
reveals revision of belief,
transfigured by His brightness
brought within
cassandra 33
brought along
each step upon the path—
a ransom and redemption.

Grace forgives our broken choices
while our human hands and hearts and voices
can yet salvage the imperfect soul within
because He gifted us with silence that resounds
He gifted us with sight to gaze upon the dark
and even those who see
the impossibility of Faith sometimes remain,
and choose belief
and choose to face each other
as we eat and drink of Him
becoming us
and reach together toward the eastward rising Son.
SoĆ°lice

-cassandra
revised 2009


Monday, February 15, 2016

New and Important Milestones on My Journey

The photo to the left is of Mass at Musica Sacra's Colloquium from a few years back.  It stands in my mind as the pinnacle moment in my search for authenticity in worship.

The colloquium Masses stand out in my mind as some of the longest two hour Masses of my LIFE, because, in Salt Lake City that week, inside St. Madeleine's, the temperature was often about 90 degrees, and my autistic son was having NONE of it.  I would be in a pew, near the sides, and he would be okay for the first hour or so, but as the temperatures climbed and the Mass continued, his patience would blow out like a cheap tire on hot asphalt going 100 in the desert.

There were moments, during those beautiful Masses, that I sincerely wanted to throat punch my then 8 year old child.  He was a beast.  But I endured it, and continued trying to redirect him as patiently and lovingly as I could.

My inner editor just yelled, over a bowl of popcorn: 

"HEY---maybe you could get to the point a little sooner, this IS, after all, the INTERNET, and people don't generally truck with all that talking and no point..."

Fine.

As readers of this blog know, Mass was a nightmare.

Autism and echoey spaces that require that you be still, quiet and do what everybody else is doing are NOT AUTISM FRIENDLY.  Trust me on this.  All the good intentions sail down the toilet the minute an autistic child is actually sitting behind you beating his head on the pew because the music is painful (don't mind his professional choir directing musician mother who would also like to be beating her head on a pew, but settles instead for a gruff constipated-looking judgment single eyebrow raise flashed in the direction of the "musicians" du jour up there with their microphones and terrible liturgical ideas....)

Inner editor is at it again:  "SO WHAT IS YOUR POINT PLEASE?"

Slow down, I need to write this in order, so people will understand...

"THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO READ YOUR BLOG ALREADY GET IT..."

Fine.

Go back for the back story if you're new around here... it's in the post "Things I did Wrong with My Autistic Son".  I'd link to it, but frankly, I have no idea how to find that stuff either, so good luck with that.

"WHAT IS THE POINT AGAIN?"

After three years of hiding from Mother Church, on impulse Sunday, I dug my son's Missal out of the bottom of the desk drawer, threw on a dress, a snood, and a jacket, and we raced to the car and drove like I was on a NASCAR track to the bowels of Pearl, Mississippi, and we went to Mass.

No, we did not take communion, in case you're wondering.  I have not been to confession, and I don't believe in the "let's all take a walk so we can get attention from the priest" form of "getting a blessing" at communion thing... It's up there with NO, I'm NOT shaking your hand during the Peace, you disease-ridden child.... Eric was very concerned about why we did not take communion, I told him I'd tell him when we got to the car.  So, I was nicer to you, dear reader, than I was to him in the moment...

"HOW DID IT GO?  THAT'S THE ONLY THING THEY ARE STICKING AROUND FOR AT THIS POINT..."

Eric was super enthusiastic.  He said, as he was going through his Missal on the way to Mass...  "This is a GAME GUIDE for MASS."  Yes, my dear and darling boy, the Missal is a game guide for Mass---it tells you where the secret rooms are, gives you the scripts to say to open the doors, and tells you at every turn how to properly "DO" Mass...  Thank you for the metaphor, I'll never get that out of my head now... but he was so happy.

At Mass, he fidgeted mercilessly, but tolerated the redirections:

Put your arms down.
Use you upper octave voice, that man voice isn't quite there yet, but soon... (WAAAAAAH, he is losing his soprano voice, and the mommy part of me is in agony... )
Put your ARMS DOWN.
Do what everyone else is doing.
NO, you can't put your ass on the pew when you're kneeling..
YES, you CAN kneel for five minutes without needing emergency medical intervention.
PUT YOUR ARMS DOWN!
When you turn pages in your Missal during the sermon because you got bored 10 minutes in... please don't do it in the NOISIEST MANNER POSSIBLE...

But, he tolerated it all so very very well.
Then, we got in the car, and for that nasty interrupting internal editor's edification, here is the "money quote of the day"

"Mama, we need to go to Mass from now on."

Okay, I'll start making a list for confession, and take a deep breath, and stop being a whiny, prideful, brat of God and get my ass back in the game.  We have a guide, and everything.

Toodles