the most beautiful spam

A long time ago I got some spam. I've lost the original message -- so easy to accidentally delete. But I've never forgotten it.

Fill her life with splendor.

The contrast between what they were going for and what it ends up sounding like to me is my favorite part, and what makes it so lyrical to me. The divine out of the mundane/smutty.

I've always thought of it as kind of a male/female romantic thought also, as in, isn't that what every woman wants a man to want to do for her. And then just today, years later, I was thinking about being more artistic and what would I want to paint and when would I know it would good and that would be when I found it beautiful, and then I realized, I'm supposed to fill my life with splendor.

Fill her life with splendor.

I talked to Aunt Mary today. I was hesitant to call her at first. I didn't want to make her sad by reminding her of her mother's death, but I also wanted to make sure that she had family that remembered her on this day. Your first mother's day without a mother has got to be hard, no matter when it happens.

I had also been wondering what she would be up to these days and hoping that she was doing something fulfilling. Lo and behold, she is taking a trip to Costa Rica in July. For five weeks. She's taking an intensive Spanish course so that she will be better able to teach Mexican immigrants English. I am so thrilled that she is going on such an adventure. Sometimes the unexpected turns in life are the best.

An Inauspicious Beginning; or Things I Don't Want to Forget

Well, not really inauspicious, I guess. But it sounds right. Really it's just that this can't be perfect and I've got to get to the essentials of the point of this thing and leave my desires for auspiciousness behind.

Yesterday AC had heart surgery. Up through the femoral artery, burn a hole closed, simulate a heart attack to see if it worked, rinse, repeat. The Sarge and I went to the hospital with the family and some friends. Scary. Not in the moment; in the moment you are bored, or anxious, or laughing at a photo, but cumulatively scary when I would feel my eyes well up or my shallow, shallow breathing. Frequent trips to the cafeteria. 

It was interesting that the food there is more healthy now than my last time at a hospital years ago, but there are still those familiar cafeteria favorites -- tuna salad, chicken fingers, donuts in a plastic sleeve, macaroni salad. It was the macaroni salad that was comforting to me. Not too mayonnaise-y, but still exactly what my inner second grader wanted, replete with that strange, ever-so-slightly-metallic aftertaste.

No wrap up here, no understanding of the meaning of it all. Driving home from the Palm Springs Farmers Market today, I couldn't get my husband on the phone for a minute. Of course, he was at a funeral, but I didn't let that deter my worry. Gruesome, vivid, terrible fantasies reduced me to the edge of tears. When he called, we spat for a tiny second (not usual) then the relief came like a warm blanket. He called again minutes later and said gently, with amusement, "You've got to get your mind out of the worry gutter, baby."

So a bath, some dozing viewing of Eddie Murphy and a heavily-eyebrowed Halle Berry in the horrendous eighties snapshot Boomerang and a chicken pot pie later, and my mind is getting calmer, smoother, more relaxed. Back on the straight and narrow.

starting out a new year

Here we go. My husband has a list of goals for the new year, and I want one too.

1) Painter. Cookbook writer. Mom.

2) Take a vacation somewhere I've never been before.

3) Complete the Mud Run at Camp Pendleton in June. Walking counts.

4) Be good to my husband. Listen to him. Know him and support him.

5) Be kind and feel loved.

6) Cherish and cultivate things and people that make me laugh.