p.s.
MANDY WROTE ME!!! MANDY WROTE ME!!! MY SISTER WROTE ME BACK! wahoonie! yeah! WOO-HOO!
oh, btw. i am REALLY REALLY happy about this. can you tell? :D

i have always (well, since i was nine or so) thought of myself as a "milkweed girl"... or maybe a dandelion puff (blow me). just sitting there in the sun, in the middle of a wild field, waiting for the wind to pick me up and carry me away to the next place...
i'm just wondering. what is it about men that they can't just walk by that bloom? look at it? enjoy the color, the softness, the pregnancy of it's waiting for the wind, maybe even help by giving it a blown breath (did i already say 'blow me'?)? nope. they have to HAVE that thing. pick it, press it, carry it somewhere and stick it in a jar. and then that fluffy ball of seeds dries up and all the little threads fall to the floor and die there. not one seed to blow and grow an some other field.*

oh, sure. it might be nice to be a rose (for a day, maybe). but i am no rose. none of those plants that require cultivation, that need some careful gardeners hand to prune and propagate so they can grow in their neat little beds, year after year after year... in fact, that would kill me. why can't they see that? why must we all be made into roses?
there is a faint ridiculous hope in me that some man - even men, plural - might see this. that the best they can do is maybe walk through the field every few days and watch the uninhibited growth of this weed, watch it bloom and mature and then one day *pop*, open, and the silk sways in the breeze and then gone... and if they were really smart they might pay attention to the direction of the wind and follow and then one day see another bloom, farther down the way and say "hey, that's that same milkweed."

faint ridiculous hope. if they haven't figured it out in the last twenty thousand years, they probably aren't going to get it any time soon.
there's a line from a screaming trees** song called 'look at you': "...one by one they fall it always breaks me down..."
they'll never learn. and milkweed girls will never be truly happy... unless the wind is blowing in a good direction.
blow, wind, blow.

*man i love metaphors. the more extended, the better. they don't have to be clever, or even good. just ACCURATE.
"metaphors be with you." that's the motto for Poetry Alive http://www.poetryalive.com/

**the band tedd quoted in the last day off. 'dust' is my favorite album so far...

ok, i realize that i have probably p*$$@& and moaned about the weather enough - at least openly. i will just say that my opinion still holds, and that i am (heh heh) on thin ice.
am also debating doing something that might either be VERY stupid, or FAIRLY smart, but most likely BOTH. either way, it's a BIG decision... more on that wheni come closer to deciding. d-day is sometime this weekend, maybe tomorrow night/sunday... expect to hear big news (or not. *sigh*. i am such a freak sometimes) by next week.

something i've noticed in the last few years (but more frequently of late) has been nibbling at me. when someone is "normal" (appearing to be sane, blending, keeping a low profile), people really notice when they go off the deep end. but what about those of us who are already a bit... "eccentric"? how do people know when we are having a truly hard time with reality and all that?
one of my friends said that if i ever DID finally snap and climb the proverbial bell tower, that for once, no one would say "well, she was really quiet... we never suspected..." great.
maybe if i started wearing nice little suits and skirts and pantyhose and paying my bills on time?
i don't think anyone would call me a girl who cries 'wolf'... but maybe there are drawbacks to being/seeming TOO capable? i mean, sure, i have OFFICIALLY been in one side of looniness and out the other. VERY officially. so I know the signs. but it has become quite obvious to me that other people just think "oh, sam (or fill in name of other random weirdo of your acquaintance) is just being strange/weird/funny again..."
hm.
not that this is a SERIOUS concern right now or anything... and that's another problem. when it IS a serious concern, i am not really ... "collected" enough to express this sort of thing.
any suggestions?

what else is on sam's cold and furry little mind today?
well, one friend announced last night that he is possibly (probly) moving to spain for a year - 6 months. then today another friend announced that he and his gal are moving to china in 3 weeks. he says that they are eager for english teachers there and they pay well... hm. hmmm.... hmmmmmmmmm.....
man, is this pushing ALL of my wanderlust buttons!
on top of that, things get hairier here everday. they are positively HIRSUTE.
those of you who know me know that bravery is my #1 most important trait in myself and significant others. i keep wondering if fear is the thing that is holding me back. fear of letting go of a good thing, fear of disappointing my family, friends, coworkers, patrons, fear of screwing up worse than ever before... but my fear of living life in a rut (hole, cave, blahblahblah) is MUCH worse.
i am not only straddling a fence, i am paralyzed there at the top.
spain. china.
life.

well, i have an interesting p.s. to add to this morning's entry:
putting my feelings out there in black and white kind of galvanized me to try something i've thought about for a while, so, i hunted down my baby sisters' e-mail address (i think its her. i'm pretty darned sure, in fact) and i wrote to her. it's a start, at least.
now, i guess i just wait and hope she hasn't completely given up on me yet.
cross your fingers for me.

I’ve been thinking about my ex husband a lot lately. Steve, his name is. I’ve been thinking about a lot of things lately, things that I consider often, but don’t normally dwell on; Steve is one of the more prevalent ones.
I see him everywhere, too. Not as he looks now (I see recent pics on the web – he’s still a star) but as he did when we first met. That could be due to the fact that there are a lot of nice-looking, squinkly-faced Irish-Hillbilly types with black curly mullets and freckles and flannel shirts around here (his family names, Tanner/Butler come from these very Mountains), but I think it’s also because of my projected thoughts.
I miss him terribly. Not the “husband” him – I still (and always will, I suspect) believe that I am not the “marrying kind”. I miss the “him” him. He is one of the most wonderful, smart, funny, talented people I’ve ever known. His most amazing and attractive feature is that he is truly good, good to the bone. His small sins, when brought to the light, seem almost funny to a devoted hedonistic blackguard such as myself. I miss him most of all when I’ve gone to see a movie that I know he’d love. I’d give just about anything – short of Luna – to be able to get his opinion on “Spiderman”, “The Brotherhood of the Wolf”, all my Jet Li faves, “Scorpion King”, and of course, “Lord of the Rings”. I want to talk to him about new comics that are out, and about my own work. And more than all of this, I want to see and hear him talk about his child.
It’s so strange to me that, despite the fact that we still feel very kindly toward one another (I do think that there are some past issues that we’d both like to talk about), we are separated by a wall that is bigger than the Great Wall of China. In fact, I think it is possible that we may never speak again. This leaves an empty ache in me that cannot be erased or filled by any other person or thing.
This leads me to consider the others in my life that I am so strangely separated from. My mother, my sister, all three of my brothers – the few people in the world that I should be closest to. There are distances in some of these relationships that I am responsible for, and there are some that I have no control over. I remember that strange print that hung in my grammas house, a pretty arched wooden door, surrounded by flowers, with a glowing, golden Christ knocking there. Sometimes I feel that my heart has a door, and that someone is knocking, but it’s NOT Jesus, and there is no one at home. Not only is the “house” empty, it has been shut up for years, all the furniture is covered in sheets and dust lies thick on every cold surface. Other times I feel that the knocking is nothing more than the door banging open and shut on the abandoned place. Was it me that left? Or them? Or was there ever anybody there at all?
I don’t think I have abandonment issues. I think I have issues of never being picked up in the first place. My guilt for not being closer to my siblings (and friends) is ugly and painful, but that pain is less than the pain of simply not knowing HOW to be closer. I want to heal these places – move into that empty house and clean it up and light a fire and cook some food, welcome those people into my newly hospitable heart, but as time goes by, so very quickly, it seems more impossible every day. How could my sister NOT hate me? How could my brothers – and Steve - respect me at all?
I have other problems in my life. Some that most people would consider far more serious and important than these. But this is the one that dogs my every step. That chases me into – and out of every relationship I attempt, no matter how simple. I need these people, but I can’t give them enough of myself to barter for my own need, it seems.
At the root of it all, stands one small person. One who, as I grow older, I resemble more every day. And she will never face me, she will never help me clean out this place and close the door against the elements.
And I just have to face the facts – and get my ass to work. Day in, day out. Pull up my socks, suck it up (as Karly says) and move on. As always, just deal with it as best I can.
And I have something new to think about, to add to my pondering: the sudden realization that those of you who read this will know more about my true state of heart and mind than any of the people I have mentioned in this entry. Life is a funny thing. The funniest thing of all.

today, i want to say "THANK YOU!!!!" to my friends for the "free mini-vacation" and four-star treatment this weekend... (the squeaky wheel DOES get the grease sometimes, y'all! ;)
I have been patiently chauffered; i got to drink and chat and play with steel and ferret at "Jen's C'mon Inn*"; I met LOTS of new people and played merrily with them**;
I had good food and cider with a bunch of LOVELY freaks; i was thoroughly hugged and "totted" at bruffy's***; and i got my little spot of disneyland riding home and having sing-a-long with wendi (we ROCKED "'round here"). oh, and did i mention DOOOUUUGGGHHHHNUUUTTTSSSSSS! mmmmmm!
thank you SO much, guys. i REALLY needed this.
goddess bless the lot of you.
-sam

*ooh, that's a GOOD one! you need a SIGN, jen! :)
**i am VERY happy with the faire plot and characters - and with my happy role!!!
***i love you all**** so veryvery much. it is heavenly to feel part of a real family. :)
****the whole hee haw gang.*****
*****FIVE footnotes! that's a record! :D

hi everybody! well, things are better. yesterday i went to auditions which were FUNNY, LONG, GOOFY (at one point they were a little boring)*. They were also really productive and helped to pull it all together - YAY, US! afterwords, good meetings at barley's (mmm, pizzzzzzzaaa - and cider!). then went to hang out with jen and d. again. jen "treated"** me to yet another bad 80's musical. "streets of fire" last week, "the last dragon" last night. (jen MUST know that i really really love her.)
this morning i roused jen and d. for - YAY! - KRISPY KREME!!!! and then buffy came and got me and i came to her house to visit with brett and her AWESOME*** kids, and have one of those fantastic real-mom lunches. veggie pasta soup, salad, and mmmmmmm pimiento cheeeeeeeeese sammiches! man, makes me wanna MOVE in. that kinda lunch is better than therapy. (buffy just cruelly - i am leaving before dinner, i think - informed me that they are haveing SLOPPY JOES and TATER TOTS for DINNER! man!)
girls had a nap, brett went to the computer and left buffy and a couple of hours for MUCH needed trash-talkin'! ahhhhh... :) so, for at least a day or two, my mind was MOSTLY off of the !@#$ !@#$%#!@#!@@!@$$!!@@~@!@$# weather.
wendi will take me home (am being chauferred as esme is either frozen and/or traumatized by the recent events) and who knows what next. will have an extra day off tomorrow, i think i will *gasp* clean the house.
pray for me. :)

*all these observations came from Skye(5) and Ari(7) - Bruffy's kids
**SUBJECTED, more like it
***yet another adjective supplied by ari! ;)

Oh, mercy.
I went to this nature conservancy place in Asheville a few months ago. It’s one of those places where folks bring injured animals found in the wild for rehab. There were a strange small pack of wolves, a mountain lion, a bear, some deer, otters, two eagles, one with a crushed wing, one blind in one eye, a completely blind owl, and quite a few others. They were all well cared for, and in surprisingly nice, quite large wooded enclosures… Better than you might expect or hope for…
But there was one sad creature there that has haunted me since that day. I followed the path to the big cats’ enclosure and came to a place where there was a low gap in the hedge that surrounded the fence where the bobcats where kept. One bobcat was asleep there, against the fence, but the other was facing the fence and performing this VERY strange hypnotic ‘dance’. He would swing his head – which was very close to the fence, nose almost touching - to and fro, and his chest would follow, and he would step wide to the left with one paw, then to the right with the other, repetitively, without stop. It seemed to be a VERY tight kind of “pacing”, confined to less than two feet of space. He didn’t even turn his body around, just side-to-side, paw-to-paw. He definitely seemed entranced. In fact, my kneeling there did not disturb him, and when others saw me and came to see what I was looking at, he still did not falter. People began to hiss at him, or to other wise distract him, but to no avail. It seemed that nothing could break his pattern.
The fenced area was quite large, larger than my own house, and with trees and rocks and caves. But here this cat stood and swayed and paced, miserable, insane. I was mesmerized, too. A combination of sadness, pity, anger, deep curiosity and empathy held me there. As I sat and watched him, waiting, wishing – praying for some change, a couple passed with a baby in a pram. When the small family had gone a 15 or 20 feet past us, something caused the baby to cry out, to squeal in pain or anger (it was not a happy sound) and at that moment, the cat stopped and looked toward the sound.
He only looked away for a second, and then he turned back, his eyes seemed to re-focus on the fence, he looked – I don’t know, confused? – and then he resumed his strange dance. For as long as I was there, he never stopped. As I walked around, I kept looking back, and even when I walked up the hill and looked down over the wolf-woods, there he was, endlessly pacing.
Even if that cat were let go today, would he be able to survive? It seems that madness like that would never go away… Maybe it would be easier to deal with such madness loose, in the wild, but how far could that poor cat go before he came upon more “civilization? A chicken house, or a bad dog? Maybe the kind thing would be to put it down, to end that pacing and longing forever.
I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t stop pacing and longing. My own world shrank again yesterday, drastically, noticeably. The four walls – home, work, society, sanity – are shrinking and closing, so much that I feel physically dizzy and slightly disoriented. I have honestly felt that reality has shifted just a few degrees in some direction… everything around me seems slightly out of place, strange and different. Not enough for me to freak out and hie me to Broughton or anything… just enough to make me feel crazy enough to worry.
I feel bad that my friends see me as unhappy and seeming to complain so much, but what seems like complaint is not. Complaint is generally useless – though sometimes the squeaky wheel DOES get the grease… I’m afraid that there’s no grease for this wheel.
It’s not complaint, it’s warning.

HATE is no longer too strong a word for my feelings about this terrain combined with ACTUAL winter.
Driving home last night was truly a bizarre nightmare. I am traumatized for life – again*.
Hatred. Really. I cried for want of a stretch of straight, level road, highway 49, I-10, 98, long, flat roads, with pine trees that actually start growing level with the road and reach ABOVE it – how novel. At the worst, you might have to drive through rain, or some water, maybe skirt an alligator. No biggie. No snow, ice, FALLING !@#$ ROCKS.
I cried for that, stuck there, almost out of gas, idling along that steep slope, packed in with miles of other sad, scared, tired, angry drivers, for that and a few other things (probably some dumb song on the radio, too**…) but only for a few seconds, as it was screwing up my visibility.
45 minutes to go NINE miles.
THEN I got to 108. Little Nissan pimp-mobiles sliding sidewinder, slow and those GIANT yellow Brazil-mobiles with the blades on front and the blinking lights. So surreal. It took 20 minutes to cover that six miles… and then, at the end of it all, the hill from hell.
I can’t begin to describe the hill to my house. Those of you who know are WELCOME to write in with horror-testimonies. It is BAD. VERY steep, VERY curved. Esme (my truck) convinced me that she could make it. (no, she doesn’t talk. But she is very expressive, nonetheless…). We got over the bridge and as we tried to make the push, she slid, and back we went, luckily, I was able to control her enough to get her safely into a ditch. I went to ask the neighbor if it was ok to leave her there until the thaw (in March?) and he insisted that he was “The King of the Hill” (yes, he really said that) and that he could park the truck.
He was so delighted with Esme, that he decided to BACK her down the hill, over the bridge and all the way to grandmother’s house (a good half-block) just so he could “play”. It was about then that I realized he was drunk. As he began to accelerate, he said (mullet a-flutter) that “Whatcha hafta do is get up some speed!” and he did, and then careened up the hill. “I THINK WE CAN MAKE IT! WOO! THIS TRUCK HAS GOT SOME PAIR!”
Amazingly, we did make it. There was much sliding and praying and hollering, the curve at the top of the hill was terrifying, it was like a nightmare fun-park ride. But sure enough, he swung Esme crazily into the driveway, hooting like a wild Indian. It was INSANE. I told him that he had earned the title of King of the Hill. Redneck pride is an awesome thing, y’all.
I was exhausted. Crashed hard, and woke up to the new nightmare of trying to get to work. I ended up having to walk DOWN the hill (yes, I did fall, once, on the thick ice) and my boss kindly met me on the road near the factory. So no Snow Day Off.
And how in the hell am I supposed to do this all again TOMORROW?
!@#$. !@#$-!@#$%^. !@#$a buncha WINTER!!!

* I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said “Great. Another learning experience.”
**wouldn’t you HATE to die in a wreck crying and singing along with Whitney or Barry Manilow?!

Well, considering the time of year, it’s pretty easy for me to decide what to rant about. My friends have all heard it, but obviously I haven’t told ENOUGH people, because I am still ticked. :)
Between the cabin fever, the fact that (to me) it is colder than a well-digger’s euphemism in Idiom-ville, my innate restlessness (wanderlust is not EVEN the word for it*.), the fact that I am terribly “homesick” (I am REALLY missing my aunts, siblings and cousins…), and the feeling that the mountains are closing in on me while I sleep, well, I don’t know… it seems like it’s only a matter of time before I snap. I only hope that my friends manage to kill me before I get all those bags of lime unloaded from the bed of my truck.
Does one HAVE to witness a crime to be accepted into the Witness Protection Program?
Oh bloody heck. It is threatening to snow now… >:[
“Aaalways look on the bright side of life…”

I did something really good for myself (as well as my poor beleaguered contingency of local friends) last weekend. I went to Asheville and spent my days off just playing. Hallelujah! Girls and wine and pubbing, good movies, good talk… and new faces, new streets, new shops, new conversation, new buildings, new places to eat, new activities (the Improv Workshop was a BLAST!)… and best of all, Wendi has a SHOWER! For those of you who have never crouched down in the bottom of the shower and let hot water beat on your back until you feel better – ahhhh, this is good therapy! I don’t have a shower, just my big happy tub, which I do love, but nothing beats a good squall in the bottom of the shower.
I have similar plans this weekend, too. Auditions Sunday, and then I hope to hang out with Jen and D. again (Jen and I went to Goodwill and wandered downtown on Monday**. She’s a great shopping/lunch kinda’ buddy. This room mate thing might actually work!), and I think Buffy and I have some plans to play on this Monday.
Life is beautiful…
If only these MOUNTAINS would quit closing in…


*I’m actually wondering if the whole PLANET isn’t too small for me…
**She also introduced me to another freaky sexy librarian! Hey, Lisa! ;)

testing, 1, 2, 3... IS THIS THING .. oh, sorry. is this thing on?

mooowahahaha! finally! a place that i can gripe and b***h and rant and prattle - WHATEVER, WHENEVER I WANT!!!!! MOOWOWHAHAHAHAHHA!!!!