The little girl in red

More Chloe dance pictures

Another dance routine, to song Boy Meets Girl. The kids did a great job. This is Chloe in her favorite costume from that routine.

Hodgepodge

Each time we say goodbye my heart droops and weeps,
Though I know it's not forever
To my aching soul it's an eternity.
Love for me shines in your eyes
You need, want, seek, desire me.
How sweet it is to be yours.
How meaningless life is without your energy.

Where are you tonight my love?
What is it that you do?
It's true my heart is torn apart when I'm not with you
What enchanted thoughts swim through your head?
Are any of them of me?
When, my dear, you go to sleep, is it my face you see?

My beautiful little girl was the very first act of the competition. I was so proud of her. She dances with such grace and athletic ability.

Chloe's solo to the song "Little Angel of Mine". She performed this in Cincinnati, she danced beautifully.

Flop, flop

This is me. This is my brain on drugs....

Cave Formation, a poem

Poem by Davis McComas

extracted from Ultima Thule, p. 21
Yale University Press, 2000


Safe from the withering glare of daylight,
a stone arbor, stone clusters of grapes.
I have heard more than one traveler
proclaim these encrustations coral-like.
Was once this place the bottom of a sea?
I think it must be so. How else explain
the salts that grow from joints in the rock:
Epsom, Glauber. Or what of the eyeless fish?
Stranded, perhaps, when the ocean vanished,
never again to join their kindred tribe
in that great salt realm. Who better to conjecture
on these matters than I? Theories I have learned
to keep from other, educated men,
lest they, like bats, fly shrieking at the torch-bearer.

A Friday Update

Extremely simplified update

• Ran into a pole while driving my Aztek, yellow paint on cladding.
• Kids spending weekend with their father.
• I'm spending weekend regenerating with my soul's sought source.
• Coffee tastes good today but needs milk.
• My exercise efforts are fumbling.
• Cleaned car out yesterday.
• This morning, my 3 year old reenacted the final comical scene from The Jerk. "Mommy, all I want to take to preschool, other than my lunch box, my coat, this blanket and these pencils is this brush, this hair band, this change (1 quarter, 3 pennies, 2 nickles and a dime), this pacifier, this tupperware container, this empty and cracked CD jewel case, the ballet slipper from Chloe's teddy bear, and this photograph of two people whom I don't know.
• I am wearing my green leather Worth pants today -what a bargain!
• My muscles feel squishy.
• I will enjoy some good wine this weekend.
• My older daughter nailed all her spelling words this morning. She is such an intelligent child. Both my children are intelligent. The older one is rigidly worried about schedules, timing, right and wrong. The younger one is compelled to entertain.
• My daughter Camille has George Burn's reincarnated soul.
• I crave...
• I am on a quest to understand Alltel's roaming charges.
• In the words of hero/criminal Rodney King - "can't we all just get along"?

My Heart, another poem by Drewe Rain

This red muscle
Big as a baseball
Pulsing, shaking
Pushing my blood

Blood returns
Yet leaks through a hole

I bleed when you are gone
My heart is missing
Part of its wall

The wall a defense
Against illness, sorrow, pain.
Intact my heart is strong
Its beat is audible
Its strength apparent.

You remove a brick when you go
The wall now porous, vulnerable.
Yet, as you return
The bleeding stops
The wall strong again
I no longer ache.

Alltel

My Audiovox cell phone has failed me now three times. The first time it failed because it was in my pocket and I was rained upon. The second time it failed just to make my life difficult. This recent time it quit working just to drive me crazy.

Alltel sold me this phone and I paid full price for it. I've had it just over a year. Alltel has given me loaners but the loaners don't come with car chargers. I need a car charger for my lifestyle so I was forced to go out and buy a car charger for the temporary phone.

Moreover, it took 7 weeks to get my phone back last time. I couldn't pick it up for 10 days. When I went to get it, Alltel told me that it took me so long to pick it up, they had charged me for the loaner and had mailed my phone to me. They told me that it would surely be either waiting for me when I got home or would come in a day or two. The phone never came.

After about 10 days I called Alltel again, told them that I had been waiting and waiting. They said my repaired phone was actually still there and I could come and get it. I did but I was angry. They had give me misinformation when I went to pick it up, either intentionally or negligently. Moreover, they hadn't the intelligence to call me and tell me that my phone was, in fact, still there.

I had my phone back for only about 7 weeks before it quit working once again. Arrrgh. Now I have another phone and no car charger!! Doesn't Alltel care about customer service?