Since I got my braces, I have to go to the orthodontist every 4-6 weeks to have them checked. I got them in April and I had them checked in May. Everything was fine on my first appointment. Two days ago on Wednesday was my second appointment. I thought I would just waltz in, have them take a look and be on my merry way. But Mary Jane, the orthodontist’s assistant said with glee “Oh goodie! You get new wires today!”.
“New wires?” I thought. My old wires were doing just fine. They are semi transparent and seem to be doing the job effectively. But Madam Mary Jane said “Those first wires were to make some spaces between your teeth. This new wire is stiffer and will close up all those gaps”. OK, that sounds reasonable. The main reason I got the braces in the first place is because I had developed a gap on the right side next to my canine tooth.
So Mary Jane opened the little hinges on the front of my braces, which are called gates (so I was informed). She fitted me with a U-shaped wire (I felt certain she was putting a horseshoe in my mouth) and clipped the ends to fit my mouth. After that she closed all the gates and Aunt Kimmy was ready to go.
“BUT WAIT” said Mary Jane. “We aren’t done yet”. What more could be done, pray tell? Mary Jane said “That new wire doesn’t work alone. I’m going to install a Power Chain over it”. A what? Power Chain? What in the dickens is a Power Chain? That didn’t sound good to me and it turns out, it didn’t feel good either! Madame MJ body slammed me back into the chair and proceeded to link each of my braces with a strip of braided plastic that had holes at close intervals. She had to use pliers to ’stretch’ it a bit to the next tooth. It didn’t hurt but it was tighter than that G string on Alix’s guitar. By the time she had strung together each tooth, my teeth felt so tight I thought I could bite through a steel pipe.
Later that day, my teeth were very sore. I tried to eat a green salad but it hurt to chew the lettuce. I was thinking that I should have stolen some of Tyler’s food for this occasion. But the strange thing is that in one day, the gap next to my canine tooth closed at least 1/3 of the way. This morning is my second day with the Power Chain and it closed even MORE! At this rate, I should have no gap at all in just 5 days. Absolutely amazing! And it isn’t sore any more. Hooray for the Power Chain!

Last week, I went to the firing range to practice with a few hand guns. It had been at least 6 years since I last fired a gun. I enjoy it and I’m somewhat of a good shot but I am always reminded of how deadly a gun can be and the responsibility of handling one. I don’t see how anyone could casually point a gun at another human being. Each time I see how the bullets pierce the paper target, I imagine how that would feel on a body. I think that people have the right to bear arms but they also need to be educated.

This past summer I went to the Los Angeles area for a few days. Venice Beach is my favorite beach; I visit it every time I’m out that way. This time, I was with my favorite guy in the entire world and we were walking around laughing and people watching. You feel so free when you are at Venice…free to do whatever you dream of doing. That’s just what Angela Peel was doing. She is a young woman who got two minutes of fame on American Idol but was determined to have a music career. She recorded some original music, burned some CD’s, set up a stool and an amp and began singing for the crowds. She was good…sort of new age rock-neo soul type of music. Most of all I liked that she was doing her dream…at least doing something towards her dream. I bought her CD and listen to it all the time. Check out the video below of her. This was the song that I heard her play on the beach. I came home and practiced the chords on my guitar until I can play it somewhat the way she does which is a huge accomplishment for me. Thanks, Angela! I wish you the best!

     I didn’t grow up in a home where people said “I love you”.  It wasn’t that no one loved each other, we just never said it in words.  My mom didn’t express it that way and I never learned to have a need to hear those words.  Even now, I have to make a conscious effort to say those words to my sweetie.  And I am not overly touched to hear those words.  They are just words.  I know what love looks like, what it feels like.  I am in love with my sweetie in a deep place in my soul, where words don’t even have a place.  I love him like I love myself.  He is me.  I can’t bear to think of the world without him in it.  I have felt his love radiate across the planet, letting me know he is still out there loving me.  He is unable to hurt me because he could not bear the world without me either.  He can laugh at me, knowing that he laughs also at himself because I am his.  Our souls are bound in a way that was not our own doing.  It was like that since first we met.  Is he my soulmate?  Another word that will limit our relationship.  He is the one who keeps me endlessly laughing.  His smile lights up my soul.  I cry for him when he is in pain.  He would give his life to protect me only to have me die without him.  I know this is more than love.  It’s how I feel, it’s what I do.  He is a priceless treasure from God, irreplacable and pure.   

Friday afternoon, I went to settlement to sell my house.  Everything went smoothly.  The new buyers, a young couple, were so excited to get the keys to, no doubt, their first house.  I had chosen to sell my house and was lucky to find a buyer in this market.  Still, hours before settlement, I walked from room to room saying my goodbyes to each room.  I’ll never see those rooms again, and they will never belong to me again.  I felt a bit of sadness as I usually do with a big change.

I had moved into that house with my new husband.  I had dreams that it would be a happy home but that never came to fruition.  When my husband lived there, it had been a pressure cooker.  After he left, I was able to relax and enjoy the peace and freedom that comes from taking care of yourself and living within your means. 

I wish nothing but happiness to the buyers of my house.  Our neighborhood had one family that terrorized the entire neighborhood but I hope they are able to start fresh with them.  I am now staying with a friend until the next part of my life plan begins (more on that later). 

I was only able to bring a small percentage of my clothes and belongings.  I must say, it is very refreshing to live so simply.  I have all that I need:  food, some good books, a cycle magazine, warm clothes, some clothes to hit the gym, my guitar, my computer and my MP3 player.  This is a happy and peaceful time for me.

I believe in you

I’ll give up everything just to find you

(Evanescence)

Today is Sunday and I sent my sweetie a text when I got home from church.  We are doing the long distance thing for the moment but that will be changing soon but I’ll get into that another day.  As it turns out, he was at work, apparently in a staff meeting with a customer.  He likes to text while he is in meetings; I think it keeps him awake.  He sent a text “Luv me today?”.  Of course I said of course, then asked him the same.  He texted “Yep, since the day I first laid eyes on you”.  That put a grin on my face because I know what that means.

When he first laid eyes on me, it was twenty years ago, in Angeles City, Republic of the Philippines.  I was stationed there and he was visiting from Korea.  I met him at the military recreation club and if we didn’t fall in love at first sight, it was with first sentence.  I was very comfortable traveling the country and would fearlessly go to visit all sorts of places that I heard about.  Most of the men who were stationed in the Philippines were more interested in meeting the Filipinas who worked the bars outside the base gates so I was not interested in any of the guys from my base.

I wanted to show my sweetie all the places that I loved and he let me.  And what an adventure it was.  We swam at fancy hotels downtown, shopped at open air markets and explored the malls of Manila.  Once, when returning from Manila, we were the only Americans on a Rabbit bus (the local bus line).  It was pitch dark and the bus was speeding through the country side and the rice patties.  It was scary but romantic…until the bus broke down.  Within an hour, the driver and some helpers repaired the bus using the light of flash lights and we were on our way.  We both always remember the sense of danger and sleeping in each others arms in a roasting hot Rabbit Bus.  We fell in love during those days.

Things happened and we lost twenty years of being together but my sweetie and I have found each other again.  So when he says “since the day I first laid eyes on you”, I know what he means and I know that he means it.  He loves me, no doubt. 

I love historical movies.  I love that feeling of being swept away to another time, a more romantic era than my own.  This past weekend, I watched Elizabeth The Golden Age.  Elizabeth, which is part 1 of this series, came out several years ago but I just saw it on DVD in November of 2007.  Because of my busy lifestyle, commuting back and forth to the city, rushing everywhere I go, I have no time to create a romance of my own.

I loved both movies, Elizabeth and the Golden Age.  Absolutely loved it.  Cate Blanchett gave a wonderful performance as Queen Elizabeth.  I loved seeing the transition from timid princess who relies on advisers to an unflinching queen who led England into prosperity.  She kept her humanity, kindness and love of her country throughout her reign.  When she blasted the Spanish embassador with the “I too can command the winds” tyraid, it gave me chills.  Thumbs up to Elizabeth!

In junior high school, we studied Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, The Wreck of the Hesperus. If you are not familiar with the poem, it is about a stubborn sea skipper who refuses to heed the advice of his experienced crew and loses his life and the life of his daughter who is sailing with him. My teacher, Mrs. Sporacio, took several weeks took several weeks with the class to study this poem until each student unerstood the meaning of each line. I grew to love the simple rhythm and the descriptive adjectives. I memorized the poem and have never forgotten it.

In the poem, the ship wreck takes place on the reef of Norman’s Woe. In my imagination, I imagined that Norman’s Woe would be located on some rocky coast of England but it is actually located in Gloucester, Mass. This summer, I’m going to take a trip there to see Hammond Castle and Norman’s Woe. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate a nearly life long love of The Wreck of the Hesperus.

www.blupete.com/Literature/Poetry/Wreck.htm

www.hammondcastle.org/index.htm

I was laughing with my older sister today on the telephone. She is five years older than me which isn’t much but when you are a little kid, those years are a world apart. I am the second oldest so I spent alot of my childhood following my big sister and listening to her ideas and day dreams. Even without my sister’s input, I was always trying to figure things out in life. I had some wacky ideas about things and my older sister only added to my concocted conclusions about things.

For instance, I can remember thinking that white bread turned to wheat bread when it came out of the toaster. When I asked for candy at the super market, my mom would scream “I ain’t got no candy money”! I thought to myself that I wished her job gave her equal amounts of candy money, meat money and vegetable money. It looked to me like all they EVER gave her was meat and vegetable money. I thought that the color of a white person’s hair could be determined by the letters in their names. Teachers whose names ended in vowels had black hair but consonants had blond hair. This formula worked every time. Mrs. Blakeman, Mrs O’Reilly and Mr. Rosenburg all had light hair while Mrs. Fiorelli, Mr. Rizzo, Mr. Mastrogiavonni, and Mrs. Rocchetti had black hair (I grew up in NJ…hey, whaddaya gonna do?).

When I was seven, my older sister told me that boys had three testicles which I believed until I was 16 years old! This same sister who was full of wisdom told me that babies were born from a woman’s anus because why else would they strain the way they do during childbirth. My older sister wanted to share everything with me so when she started reading the pimp and whore stories of Donald Goines, I got to read those too. One day, after seeing a drug bust on the news, I informed my mom that that could not possibly have been heroin in the photos because heroin melts at room temperature and has to be stored in ziplock bags. That began my mom screening my books.

I really don’t have a point to make with this little confession except to say thanks to my older sister for sharing the wisdom.