G
carsonshepherd
comeback kid
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2004
- Posts
- 14,643
03 June 2005 @ 08:41 pm
It's too early to go to bed. Nevertheless I am going.
Thanks to the Boomerang network I've realized just how much the cartoons of my childhood really sucked. Fantastic Four, the SuperFriends (except AquaMan, he rocked), Josie and the Pussycats... all poorly animated and voiced. Even the LooneyToons aren't that cool unless I'm watching with my two nephews.
SpongeBob on the other hand, I'm convinced is sheer genius.
It's too early to go to bed. Nevertheless I am going.
Thanks to the Boomerang network I've realized just how much the cartoons of my childhood really sucked. Fantastic Four, the SuperFriends (except AquaMan, he rocked), Josie and the Pussycats... all poorly animated and voiced. Even the LooneyToons aren't that cool unless I'm watching with my two nephews.
SpongeBob on the other hand, I'm convinced is sheer genius.
cantdog
Waybac machine
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2004
- Posts
- 10,791
This is entirely comprehensible. Daughters are more important than you imagine.
The following is a random e-mail from the year of the hurricane (Georges) which had hit the island pretty hard, at the expense mostly of roofs and standing crops.
The R. D. is the east half of the same island with Haiti, of course. Although we moved about in it, we were there to aid a church group of Haitians whose main concern is for Haitians in the country. Haitians are darker and speak a different language, a French-based creole, and are discriminated against.
Mostly the group serves the impressed Haitian cane workers in their little compounds scattered through the sugar lands. Those compounds, reminiscent of the worst of the ones in our country for migrant agricultural workers, are called bateys. The main church in La Romana, a major sugarmill town on the southeast corner of the island, has some thirty sub-churches, mostly one-room things in various bateys. We travel around in ancient school buses to our tasks and have been helping to construct a hospital in La Romana as well as carry medical care to the bateys.
This year, the island had been hit by a serious hurricane, so we did a lot of re-building and cleaning up. All this is just to while away your time, really. I wrote this up to update my friends about what I did for the week, and all I have to do is paste it into this to tell you about it. So it's nothing special. Here goes:
--------------------------------------------------------------
We filled and poured the floors for a school-slash-church in a batey (pronounced baht-AY) called Las Cejas. The challenge was to keep the children from getting hurt without just shooing them off in a nasty manner. The kids in the batey thought we were the most fun thing to come along in some time, and were under foot a lot, wanting to rubberneck and also to help. A small group of us split off from the concrete pouring to construct benches, or pews if you like, for the structure. And a chair or two besides.
If you build a school, the Dominican government sends a teacher, now, so all the newer batey churches have a second room hooked on the back which is a schoolroom. Build it, and they will come.
Yes, Las Cejas does mean "the eyebrows", but no one knows why. Some bateys, I guess most of them, are numbered. I've been in Batey 205 and Karen's team visited Batey 18 this past week. A good proportion are named, and it seems to me usually frivolously. I've been to Alta Gracia, Mujin, Higuey, Lechuga, 30, 28, Como Quiero. Como Quiero signifies "whatever you like" and Lechuga means "lettuce". No sabe.
The kids and even some moms got involved in the nail straightening team-- waste not, want not-- and also pushed wheelbarrows or shoveled fill when no one was able to stop them. I involved a team of six year olds in my water-fetching. That was cool.
I was asked to keep the mixer supplied with water and "do what seems to be needed" otherwise, a congenial assignment. I did a lot of inside work, spreading fill evenly over the interior for example, because the outside work was more popular with our group of teenagers, who wanted a tan out of the deal. The water thing deviated from the normal right away. It seems there was a leak at the wellhead, and the area around the worksite was turning to mud as the water spread out over the landscape.
Four or five of us, including an engineer and an architect, took shovel and hoe to the problem and channeled it away to a hole. It had become considerably, uh, enriched by flowing over the ground.
Little boys and batey dogs peed in it, ducks and chickens poked about in it. It was brown. But it was only going into a mix for flooring, so we dug the hole deeper in order to be able to dipper it out with a bucket. The little buckets, I had three of them, were those rubber jobbies they use to measure aggregate for a mixer-load of concrete.
I'd fill the five-gallon one with them and then refill them, leaving them to settle out a bit while I carried the five-gallon over to the mixer area. Coming back empty I could scoop off the chicken feathers and roots floating on the top and pour the thing full carefully enough to avoid the sediment at the bottom of them. Then I'd refill the rubber buckets and go again.
Some little boys, about six, watched me do this awhile. Then they began to fill my five gallon for me whenever I came back. They got to play in the water and also help "el hombre con la pipa" with the water detail. They captured a total of five rubber buckets and involved a seven year old girl in the team at the peak of the thing. I had to set down the five-gallon and stand back quick as they surrounded it and poured it full all at once in seconds. We were all delighted with the system. It was sort of sad when someone fixed the leak and the hole ceased to replenish itself.
One kid stuck to it to the bitter end. I told him "Mouin chouazi yo patizan-m" which I *think* is Creole for "I have chosen you as my crewman (or partner or even disciple, maybe; I don't get the Creole really well, but he seemed pleased with me for saying whatever I said.)
Two days at Las Cejas and two days at the hospital for me, and then Friday I accompanied the medical team.
At the hospital, which is now a working clinic six days a week, by the way, an amazing thing all by itself, the biggest priority is to repair the fence wall around the property, which the hurricane had broken in many places.
All semblance of security was gone, anyone could walk in at any of a dozen places, some places without even stepping over anything. The gate had been ripped down and whatnot. If the fence is not fixed people will begin to set up housekeeping in there. Squatters arrive anyplace convenient all the time and throw together "housing" out of available materials, and are hard to evict once established. With so many displaced by Hurricane Georges this danger is only the more acute.
So we had a mixed team of Mainers and local folk digging out the culch and knocking the broken blocks out all around the wall, pursued by a team of masons rebuilding it behind them. Those guys could actually say they had cleaned up hurricane damage directly. They were not able to set the gate back up, but I daresay the team this week will get that done.
I was adopted by three chldren from the barrio which surrounds the hospital. The oldest one, a girl of eleven, took me to her house to meet her mother. I told her her daughter was charming "Su hija es encantada, senora" and asked her to accept a bible I had in my day pack, a Spanish one I'd acquired three years before and never used for much. She graciously did so.
I played with the kids on my breaks with the bubbles, if you're with me, the little bottles of bubble solution and the dipping wand you blow into to make them, but I refused gently but firmly to give them anything, so that the second day they stopped begging me for stuff.
Instead we talked about my own daughter and what it was like in the north where I lived. They discovered I had very strong fingers when they tried to pry the bubble stuff loose from them. "El hombre tiene de la fuerza!" they said. To test that they had me lifting them off the ground by my fingers.
The roof crew at the hospital was concerned, in addition to acquiring a tan, with the forms that had been pumped full the previous spring to create the framework of the upper story. These needed to be disassembled and stored, since the next story won't be constructed for better than two years, the way it looks now. Most of the ongoing investment is inside the first floor, improving the clinic.
Storing all those forms is a problem. The hospital itself was almost completely undamaged by the hurricane, but the fence wall and also the storage outbuildings were knocked around pretty hard.
The main storage shed had been given a temporary roof already, but all the stuff inside needed to be organized and space made to put the forms. This was my job both days, it being dirty and unglamourous and out of the sun. I was the dude for the back corners of the place where the cockroaches and so on had set up their little homes. We were able to salvage a lot of materials. And organize the place so that they were once again accessible, and sweep the floors up, once we had exposed them again.
Even so, the forms are 24 feet long. The shed can hold only a tenth of them, or maybe an eighth if you get creative. I expect there will have to be another shed made for the rest of them. They'll probably stack them and build one around the stack. It's a big task for anyone just horsing them down off the roof, for that matter. There'll be plenty to do on subsequent trips.
A team was formed under the master electrician in the group to do wiring in the surgical suite, and another under the plumber, but I was on neither of these and so I don't know what they all did, exactly. I know the vents mostly vented into the space above the hung ceiling, and there was to have been a hole or three knocked through the roof to extend those, but there's plenty of plumbing work to do besides that.
All these little subteams, except mine in the shed, needed to be supplied with materials and whatnot all the time. Logistics and the politics of logistics occupied a lot of the nighttime discussions.
The gumby award for flexibility in management went to Pat Taber this year. He's an architect and was everywhere all week. Expeditions were organized to get wire and plumbing fixtures and lumber for the benches, or pews, in Santo Domingo, as well as oil for the forms and all kinds of incidental stuff. A new pump was installed at the main church in town to supply water to the bathrooms, since the old pump breathed its last this past week, for instance. Pat will be there this week as well, still gumbying, I bet, but Karen and I only ever go for a week at a time.
Excitement sort of peaked, as it were, when the wall-cleanup team had to evict a family of rats from a pile of dreck they were removing. All rats are bigger than they have a right to be, don't you find? I mean, nobody ever says they saw a small rat. It's always big! A really big rat! That long!!
So the word was, these were 'way big rats, dude. A big momma rat and a clutch of babies, in company with at least a couple of other big big rats.
After quietening the team members, the obvious task of first importance was to allow rodents to escape so that the cleanup could continue, and it would have worked, except that one of the barrio kids injured one of the babies, probably fatally, right in front of the momma rat. The crew boss was forced, then, to kill it, the baby I mean, to put it out of its misery and to allow the momma to turn her attention to clearing out the rest of the little ones.
Another exciting moment or two was provided by some Really! Big! Centipedes! Life is exciting on wall cleanup, for sure.
Meanwhile the medical team was travelling to a collection of bateys which they'd never been to before, all of which were without branch churches from Jean-Luc's church organization. The neatest of these was one where they set up on the porches of three houses, using the terms "porch" and "house" loosely, there being no other structures to set the clinic up in.
At the same place they gave Depo-Provera shots intramuscularly, meaning in the fleshy parts, in the relative privacy of each woman's home, which allowed them to speak to everyone at length and see where they were all living and so on. That was nice, because it was more personal than the team usually has time to become. A successful improvisation always feels good, anyway.
"Seeing how everyone lived" becomes a bit grimmer if you recast it more accurately as "seeing where they were all forced to live", of course. The bateys are not happy places. At Las Cejas at one point a flotilla of four-wheel ATVs bearing Italian tourists came through. Pat was outraged and sarcastic. "Welcome to Las Cejas!," he shouted at them. "Have a good look at poverty and degradation!" They moved right along without stopping.
There's plenty more to talk about. Friday I took blood pressures and pulses and took temperatures all day, for instance. It was the first time I'd done anything medical with the medical teams, although I have been a pharmacy tech in the past. I was very polite, almost courtly, and sympathetic, and kind, to belie the feeling of being processed which could have developed otherwise.
For some reason, middle-aged women and mothers in their late twenties cottoned to me; I may have been a touch too polite and courtly. No direct offers of marriage, but they smiled and touched my hand and told me their problems, and asked if I were married.
Most adult patients passed from the intake table, where a woman asked them to list their medical problems and made out a card for them to carry, through my station where I entered vital signs on the card and took blood sugars where necessary, to the doctors, and finally to the pharmacy and out.
Additionally, there was a Vermox table which dispensed a swig of anti-parasite medicine to anyone who was seen to have such a problem. Everyone had a drink at the Vermox bar, and they got a painted fingernail afterward, to avoid double dosing. The kids loved the fingernail polish, and the guys accepted theirs with jokes and good humor.
This was at Como Quiero. People came back around my table afterward to thank me and debrief about what they'd had done inside, which I found flattering.
I didn't get to do much reading once we hit the country, anyhow. All this takes place in a matrix of talk among the team members, as each personality responds to all they've seen while they go about their work. This journey of the spirit, which is not confined only to those who have come to that place for the first time by any means, is more important than the actual tasks we were accomplishing, I believe. The place changes us more than we change the place.
Because I think shaking down the impact of the third world on the emotions and the mind is absolutely important, I was always willing to listen to anyone. More in demand than the pastors, actually. I am proudest of that, more even than the six-year-old creole bucket team.
-----------------
cantdog
The following is a random e-mail from the year of the hurricane (Georges) which had hit the island pretty hard, at the expense mostly of roofs and standing crops.
The R. D. is the east half of the same island with Haiti, of course. Although we moved about in it, we were there to aid a church group of Haitians whose main concern is for Haitians in the country. Haitians are darker and speak a different language, a French-based creole, and are discriminated against.
Mostly the group serves the impressed Haitian cane workers in their little compounds scattered through the sugar lands. Those compounds, reminiscent of the worst of the ones in our country for migrant agricultural workers, are called bateys. The main church in La Romana, a major sugarmill town on the southeast corner of the island, has some thirty sub-churches, mostly one-room things in various bateys. We travel around in ancient school buses to our tasks and have been helping to construct a hospital in La Romana as well as carry medical care to the bateys.
This year, the island had been hit by a serious hurricane, so we did a lot of re-building and cleaning up. All this is just to while away your time, really. I wrote this up to update my friends about what I did for the week, and all I have to do is paste it into this to tell you about it. So it's nothing special. Here goes:
--------------------------------------------------------------
We filled and poured the floors for a school-slash-church in a batey (pronounced baht-AY) called Las Cejas. The challenge was to keep the children from getting hurt without just shooing them off in a nasty manner. The kids in the batey thought we were the most fun thing to come along in some time, and were under foot a lot, wanting to rubberneck and also to help. A small group of us split off from the concrete pouring to construct benches, or pews if you like, for the structure. And a chair or two besides.
If you build a school, the Dominican government sends a teacher, now, so all the newer batey churches have a second room hooked on the back which is a schoolroom. Build it, and they will come.
Yes, Las Cejas does mean "the eyebrows", but no one knows why. Some bateys, I guess most of them, are numbered. I've been in Batey 205 and Karen's team visited Batey 18 this past week. A good proportion are named, and it seems to me usually frivolously. I've been to Alta Gracia, Mujin, Higuey, Lechuga, 30, 28, Como Quiero. Como Quiero signifies "whatever you like" and Lechuga means "lettuce". No sabe.
The kids and even some moms got involved in the nail straightening team-- waste not, want not-- and also pushed wheelbarrows or shoveled fill when no one was able to stop them. I involved a team of six year olds in my water-fetching. That was cool.
I was asked to keep the mixer supplied with water and "do what seems to be needed" otherwise, a congenial assignment. I did a lot of inside work, spreading fill evenly over the interior for example, because the outside work was more popular with our group of teenagers, who wanted a tan out of the deal. The water thing deviated from the normal right away. It seems there was a leak at the wellhead, and the area around the worksite was turning to mud as the water spread out over the landscape.
Four or five of us, including an engineer and an architect, took shovel and hoe to the problem and channeled it away to a hole. It had become considerably, uh, enriched by flowing over the ground.
Little boys and batey dogs peed in it, ducks and chickens poked about in it. It was brown. But it was only going into a mix for flooring, so we dug the hole deeper in order to be able to dipper it out with a bucket. The little buckets, I had three of them, were those rubber jobbies they use to measure aggregate for a mixer-load of concrete.
I'd fill the five-gallon one with them and then refill them, leaving them to settle out a bit while I carried the five-gallon over to the mixer area. Coming back empty I could scoop off the chicken feathers and roots floating on the top and pour the thing full carefully enough to avoid the sediment at the bottom of them. Then I'd refill the rubber buckets and go again.
Some little boys, about six, watched me do this awhile. Then they began to fill my five gallon for me whenever I came back. They got to play in the water and also help "el hombre con la pipa" with the water detail. They captured a total of five rubber buckets and involved a seven year old girl in the team at the peak of the thing. I had to set down the five-gallon and stand back quick as they surrounded it and poured it full all at once in seconds. We were all delighted with the system. It was sort of sad when someone fixed the leak and the hole ceased to replenish itself.
One kid stuck to it to the bitter end. I told him "Mouin chouazi yo patizan-m" which I *think* is Creole for "I have chosen you as my crewman (or partner or even disciple, maybe; I don't get the Creole really well, but he seemed pleased with me for saying whatever I said.)
Two days at Las Cejas and two days at the hospital for me, and then Friday I accompanied the medical team.
At the hospital, which is now a working clinic six days a week, by the way, an amazing thing all by itself, the biggest priority is to repair the fence wall around the property, which the hurricane had broken in many places.
All semblance of security was gone, anyone could walk in at any of a dozen places, some places without even stepping over anything. The gate had been ripped down and whatnot. If the fence is not fixed people will begin to set up housekeeping in there. Squatters arrive anyplace convenient all the time and throw together "housing" out of available materials, and are hard to evict once established. With so many displaced by Hurricane Georges this danger is only the more acute.
So we had a mixed team of Mainers and local folk digging out the culch and knocking the broken blocks out all around the wall, pursued by a team of masons rebuilding it behind them. Those guys could actually say they had cleaned up hurricane damage directly. They were not able to set the gate back up, but I daresay the team this week will get that done.
I was adopted by three chldren from the barrio which surrounds the hospital. The oldest one, a girl of eleven, took me to her house to meet her mother. I told her her daughter was charming "Su hija es encantada, senora" and asked her to accept a bible I had in my day pack, a Spanish one I'd acquired three years before and never used for much. She graciously did so.
I played with the kids on my breaks with the bubbles, if you're with me, the little bottles of bubble solution and the dipping wand you blow into to make them, but I refused gently but firmly to give them anything, so that the second day they stopped begging me for stuff.
Instead we talked about my own daughter and what it was like in the north where I lived. They discovered I had very strong fingers when they tried to pry the bubble stuff loose from them. "El hombre tiene de la fuerza!" they said. To test that they had me lifting them off the ground by my fingers.
The roof crew at the hospital was concerned, in addition to acquiring a tan, with the forms that had been pumped full the previous spring to create the framework of the upper story. These needed to be disassembled and stored, since the next story won't be constructed for better than two years, the way it looks now. Most of the ongoing investment is inside the first floor, improving the clinic.
Storing all those forms is a problem. The hospital itself was almost completely undamaged by the hurricane, but the fence wall and also the storage outbuildings were knocked around pretty hard.
The main storage shed had been given a temporary roof already, but all the stuff inside needed to be organized and space made to put the forms. This was my job both days, it being dirty and unglamourous and out of the sun. I was the dude for the back corners of the place where the cockroaches and so on had set up their little homes. We were able to salvage a lot of materials. And organize the place so that they were once again accessible, and sweep the floors up, once we had exposed them again.
Even so, the forms are 24 feet long. The shed can hold only a tenth of them, or maybe an eighth if you get creative. I expect there will have to be another shed made for the rest of them. They'll probably stack them and build one around the stack. It's a big task for anyone just horsing them down off the roof, for that matter. There'll be plenty to do on subsequent trips.
A team was formed under the master electrician in the group to do wiring in the surgical suite, and another under the plumber, but I was on neither of these and so I don't know what they all did, exactly. I know the vents mostly vented into the space above the hung ceiling, and there was to have been a hole or three knocked through the roof to extend those, but there's plenty of plumbing work to do besides that.
All these little subteams, except mine in the shed, needed to be supplied with materials and whatnot all the time. Logistics and the politics of logistics occupied a lot of the nighttime discussions.
The gumby award for flexibility in management went to Pat Taber this year. He's an architect and was everywhere all week. Expeditions were organized to get wire and plumbing fixtures and lumber for the benches, or pews, in Santo Domingo, as well as oil for the forms and all kinds of incidental stuff. A new pump was installed at the main church in town to supply water to the bathrooms, since the old pump breathed its last this past week, for instance. Pat will be there this week as well, still gumbying, I bet, but Karen and I only ever go for a week at a time.
Excitement sort of peaked, as it were, when the wall-cleanup team had to evict a family of rats from a pile of dreck they were removing. All rats are bigger than they have a right to be, don't you find? I mean, nobody ever says they saw a small rat. It's always big! A really big rat! That long!!
So the word was, these were 'way big rats, dude. A big momma rat and a clutch of babies, in company with at least a couple of other big big rats.
After quietening the team members, the obvious task of first importance was to allow rodents to escape so that the cleanup could continue, and it would have worked, except that one of the barrio kids injured one of the babies, probably fatally, right in front of the momma rat. The crew boss was forced, then, to kill it, the baby I mean, to put it out of its misery and to allow the momma to turn her attention to clearing out the rest of the little ones.
Another exciting moment or two was provided by some Really! Big! Centipedes! Life is exciting on wall cleanup, for sure.
Meanwhile the medical team was travelling to a collection of bateys which they'd never been to before, all of which were without branch churches from Jean-Luc's church organization. The neatest of these was one where they set up on the porches of three houses, using the terms "porch" and "house" loosely, there being no other structures to set the clinic up in.
At the same place they gave Depo-Provera shots intramuscularly, meaning in the fleshy parts, in the relative privacy of each woman's home, which allowed them to speak to everyone at length and see where they were all living and so on. That was nice, because it was more personal than the team usually has time to become. A successful improvisation always feels good, anyway.
"Seeing how everyone lived" becomes a bit grimmer if you recast it more accurately as "seeing where they were all forced to live", of course. The bateys are not happy places. At Las Cejas at one point a flotilla of four-wheel ATVs bearing Italian tourists came through. Pat was outraged and sarcastic. "Welcome to Las Cejas!," he shouted at them. "Have a good look at poverty and degradation!" They moved right along without stopping.
There's plenty more to talk about. Friday I took blood pressures and pulses and took temperatures all day, for instance. It was the first time I'd done anything medical with the medical teams, although I have been a pharmacy tech in the past. I was very polite, almost courtly, and sympathetic, and kind, to belie the feeling of being processed which could have developed otherwise.
For some reason, middle-aged women and mothers in their late twenties cottoned to me; I may have been a touch too polite and courtly. No direct offers of marriage, but they smiled and touched my hand and told me their problems, and asked if I were married.
Most adult patients passed from the intake table, where a woman asked them to list their medical problems and made out a card for them to carry, through my station where I entered vital signs on the card and took blood sugars where necessary, to the doctors, and finally to the pharmacy and out.
Additionally, there was a Vermox table which dispensed a swig of anti-parasite medicine to anyone who was seen to have such a problem. Everyone had a drink at the Vermox bar, and they got a painted fingernail afterward, to avoid double dosing. The kids loved the fingernail polish, and the guys accepted theirs with jokes and good humor.
This was at Como Quiero. People came back around my table afterward to thank me and debrief about what they'd had done inside, which I found flattering.
I didn't get to do much reading once we hit the country, anyhow. All this takes place in a matrix of talk among the team members, as each personality responds to all they've seen while they go about their work. This journey of the spirit, which is not confined only to those who have come to that place for the first time by any means, is more important than the actual tasks we were accomplishing, I believe. The place changes us more than we change the place.
Because I think shaking down the impact of the third world on the emotions and the mind is absolutely important, I was always willing to listen to anyone. More in demand than the pastors, actually. I am proudest of that, more even than the six-year-old creole bucket team.
-----------------
cantdog
Last edited:
herecomestherain
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2003
- Posts
- 908
Carson -- how can you renounce Josie and The Pussycats! I'm shocked 
What about the evocative Prince Planet -- I had a crush on him and wanted the P pendant badly.
Here's a light hearted one from my blog on the seductive nature of hair products...
What about the evocative Prince Planet -- I had a crush on him and wanted the P pendant badly.Here's a light hearted one from my blog on the seductive nature of hair products...
herecomestherain
Literotica Guru
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- Oct 3, 2003
- Posts
- 908
Thanks cant -- loved your account of your work -- great stuff.
AppleBiter
In Cognito
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- Mar 4, 2005
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05/26/2002 "I want to relax. I want to have the courage that I tell others to have; to love myself as I am. I guess, in that way, you could say I'm a hypocrite. Or, maybe just someone trying to instill in others what I so desperately want for myself. I want to believe that I can love myself unconditionally. But then, isn't there an arrogance to that? Doesn't that just scream "me, me, me?" And it is here that I am at an impass. When I can figure out whether it's worse to be selfish or self-loathing, I will have found the answer. Until then, it's a double-edged sword."
TheEarl
Occasional visitor
- Joined
- Apr 1, 2002
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A passage from my journal that I wrote whilst travelling in Vanuatu (a small group of Pacific Islands near Australia and the only place I have ever been to without a McDonalds in the entire country).
Is it odd that I wrote my diary as letters to myself?
The Earl
carsonshepherd
comeback kid
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2004
- Posts
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TheEarl said:
why doesn't that surprise me?
you're so cute
TheEarl
Occasional visitor
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- Apr 1, 2002
- Posts
- 9,808
I love reading my diary of my travels. Even the dark times where I was miserable as sin are good because I can feel the strife I was in again and the relive how it got better. I feel all the feelings I felt then over again. Plus I have a couple of hand-written Lit stories in the back of the journal!
I'm entranced by reading the ones up here as well. Other people's lives are so enthralling, from the sweetness of Jammies' "Daddy fix," to the travelling experiences of Cantdog and the memories of my own that that piece evoked. Thanks all.
The Earl
I'm entranced by reading the ones up here as well. Other people's lives are so enthralling, from the sweetness of Jammies' "Daddy fix," to the travelling experiences of Cantdog and the memories of my own that that piece evoked. Thanks all.
The Earl
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AppleBiter
In Cognito
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Deleted. Stint of bravery over.
Last edited:
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Sunnie
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May 29, 2005
"...but the most pressing question on my mind now is what to do about my lover once he returns. Seeing him yesterday was more difficult than I had anticipated, and for what reason? I began to think that perhaps our 'affair' is little more than an escape from the mundane lives we all lead, and to be smacked in the face with reality is too troublesome for me. The masks we wear grow too heavy. And am I greedy, after all? Am I selfish, if all I want is for us, the three of us, to live as we are, and do it openly?
"Perhaps I'm too used to polyamoury, and I forget that others simply aren't equipped to understand it.
"It's been a week since we last had a serious talk about all of this -- perhaps I expect too much from him -- and at that time, he promised to talk it over with my husband, which he still has not done. My fear is that I will be completely unable to resist him when next we are alone together... Of course, he would not advance on me without my consent, and he is aware that my consent depends completely upon my husband's approval. But would I lose my presence of mind long enough to give in to the ever-growing lust between me and my lover?
"Something tells me I must be the one to open the lines of communication between them..."
"...but the most pressing question on my mind now is what to do about my lover once he returns. Seeing him yesterday was more difficult than I had anticipated, and for what reason? I began to think that perhaps our 'affair' is little more than an escape from the mundane lives we all lead, and to be smacked in the face with reality is too troublesome for me. The masks we wear grow too heavy. And am I greedy, after all? Am I selfish, if all I want is for us, the three of us, to live as we are, and do it openly?
"Perhaps I'm too used to polyamoury, and I forget that others simply aren't equipped to understand it.
"It's been a week since we last had a serious talk about all of this -- perhaps I expect too much from him -- and at that time, he promised to talk it over with my husband, which he still has not done. My fear is that I will be completely unable to resist him when next we are alone together... Of course, he would not advance on me without my consent, and he is aware that my consent depends completely upon my husband's approval. But would I lose my presence of mind long enough to give in to the ever-growing lust between me and my lover?
"Something tells me I must be the one to open the lines of communication between them..."
impressive
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2003
- Posts
- 27,372
McKenna said:
(and gorgeous)
Remec
Master Glomper
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2003
- Posts
- 8,468
I haven't been writing anywhere near like I had thought I would when I first set up my LiveJournal, but here's a little glimpse. It's under the name Aldarras, which is my yahoo handle.
07:08pm 24/11/2003
So, there I was, trying my best to weed through the forest of oneline messages from a yahoo group I'm on, and I catch sight of my stepdaughter doing something she shouldn't and correct her about it.
Moments later, I hear her from behind me asking if she could have a hug. "Of course, c'm'ere...", I say, extending my arms to her and pulling her close. Then she notices something on the screen referencing to Thanksgiving coming soon, and she gives my arm a tug.
"When is my stepdad coming to get us for Thanksgiving?"
"What do you mean?"
"When we go to Grandma and Grandpa's...my stepdad is taking us."
"Um, ****** I'm you're stepdad."
She reaches in and runs her hand through my beard. "You know, not the one with black...the one with the orange (her dad has carroty toned redhair)..."
"That's your father."
"Oh." She giggles and slips from my arm and side to go back to watching PBS cartoons.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXX
07:08pm 24/11/2003
So, there I was, trying my best to weed through the forest of oneline messages from a yahoo group I'm on, and I catch sight of my stepdaughter doing something she shouldn't and correct her about it.
Moments later, I hear her from behind me asking if she could have a hug. "Of course, c'm'ere...", I say, extending my arms to her and pulling her close. Then she notices something on the screen referencing to Thanksgiving coming soon, and she gives my arm a tug.
"When is my stepdad coming to get us for Thanksgiving?"
"What do you mean?"
"When we go to Grandma and Grandpa's...my stepdad is taking us."
"Um, ****** I'm you're stepdad."
She reaches in and runs her hand through my beard. "You know, not the one with black...the one with the orange (her dad has carroty toned redhair)..."
"That's your father."
"Oh." She giggles and slips from my arm and side to go back to watching PBS cartoons.
EmeraldKitten
Sweet & Twisted
- Joined
- Feb 22, 2004
- Posts
- 4,844
I don't have a traditional 'journal', but I do write about things that bother me, or make me happy, etc.
My senior year of high school, in my AP English class, we had to do a 300 word 'writing' everyday.
I still do that pretty often. Not everyday, but I find they make me feel better, regardless the subject.
So, without durther ado.. lol.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Father’s Day is right around the corner. What do I do?
I feel bad.. I know there are a lot of kids out there that don’t have dads. And here I am, with a father, that really isn’t one. Ya know what I mean?
Do I go out there, hand him a card, give him a hug and a kiss, and pretend everything is grand?
Or do I ignore the holiday, as though it doesn’t exist?
I suppose I do owe him something… I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him.
But do I really owe him anything? He hasn’t shaped me into who I am.
Or maybe, because of what I’ve been through, he’s done more ‘shaping’ than I realize.
~
My life has always been sunshine and roses. For the most part.
As I’ve said before, I burst into tears because the leopard print seat covers I got didn’t fit my seats. That’s all I had to worry about. I don’t know if I’ve been sheltered, or I’m just naive, spoiled, or what the deal is.
I grew up with a mom that would do anything for me, within her means, (sometimes beyond) and within reason. (Sometimes not even that.)
I had a step-dad that wasn’t an ‘emotional’ father, but he was there.. He is more the type that tried to buy your love. (He doesn’t know any other way, his family is very well off.)
I’m technically an only child, even though I had a step-brother and a half sister. I never had to share, or worry about not being the favorite.
I have a step-mom, who has always treated me like her own, and now, has become more like a friend, and we can discuss anything under the sun.
I have a few close friends, ones that are ‘good’ kids. No drug use, even for shits and giggles. These boys won’t even take a puff of a cigarette.
I have a grandma, and a great grandma that love me unconditionally, and that would do anything for me if they could.
I grew up surrounded by wonderful people, wonderful friends, and I think I’ve turned out pretty damn good.
What don’t I have?
A father.
Well, I do. A ‘sperm donor’ as I call him.
I want to be able to go to him, call him ‘daddy’, and be able to hear the love in my own voice as I say it. I want his eyes to be clear, and his mind to be open, and not preoccupied. I want him to call me his ‘Original baby girl’ again, and mean it.
I want to go out and visit him, without worrying if I’m tampering with his drug time.
I want to be able to look at his hands and his arms, and not see tracks.
I want the beast to disappear from his face.. The strain to disappear from his eyes.
I’ve said it before, I look into the mirror, and all I see is him.
I put on my eyeliner, and look right into his eyes.
I get confused about something, and know that when my brow furrows, the same line between his eyes appears between my own.
I want to be able to say one day, “Dad, I’m so proud of you. You had a rough way to go, and you came out the victor.”
I want to walk down the street, or into a store with him, with my head up, and a smile on my face, and pride in my eyes, saying “Yes, this is my dad.”
Why doesn’t he realize, that that’s all I really want?
I cringe every year, for the past 4 years, when Father’s Day rolls around.
I have to decide to be a bad person, and not acknowledge the holiday.
Or be the bigger person, and pretend everything is wonderful, and wander down the aisle of cards, and select a Father’s Day card, worthy of this man.
I think I need to let go of harsh feelings for now, and accept the situation as is.
I’ll not give up hope, but I will give up my imaginings of a perfect world. For now.
Maybe one day, I’ll be able to do the things I say I want to.
My senior year of high school, in my AP English class, we had to do a 300 word 'writing' everyday.
I still do that pretty often. Not everyday, but I find they make me feel better, regardless the subject.
So, without durther ado.. lol.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Father’s Day is right around the corner. What do I do?
I feel bad.. I know there are a lot of kids out there that don’t have dads. And here I am, with a father, that really isn’t one. Ya know what I mean?
Do I go out there, hand him a card, give him a hug and a kiss, and pretend everything is grand?
Or do I ignore the holiday, as though it doesn’t exist?
I suppose I do owe him something… I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him.
But do I really owe him anything? He hasn’t shaped me into who I am.
Or maybe, because of what I’ve been through, he’s done more ‘shaping’ than I realize.
~
My life has always been sunshine and roses. For the most part.
As I’ve said before, I burst into tears because the leopard print seat covers I got didn’t fit my seats. That’s all I had to worry about. I don’t know if I’ve been sheltered, or I’m just naive, spoiled, or what the deal is.
I grew up with a mom that would do anything for me, within her means, (sometimes beyond) and within reason. (Sometimes not even that.)
I had a step-dad that wasn’t an ‘emotional’ father, but he was there.. He is more the type that tried to buy your love. (He doesn’t know any other way, his family is very well off.)
I’m technically an only child, even though I had a step-brother and a half sister. I never had to share, or worry about not being the favorite.
I have a step-mom, who has always treated me like her own, and now, has become more like a friend, and we can discuss anything under the sun.
I have a few close friends, ones that are ‘good’ kids. No drug use, even for shits and giggles. These boys won’t even take a puff of a cigarette.
I have a grandma, and a great grandma that love me unconditionally, and that would do anything for me if they could.
I grew up surrounded by wonderful people, wonderful friends, and I think I’ve turned out pretty damn good.
What don’t I have?
A father.
Well, I do. A ‘sperm donor’ as I call him.
I want to be able to go to him, call him ‘daddy’, and be able to hear the love in my own voice as I say it. I want his eyes to be clear, and his mind to be open, and not preoccupied. I want him to call me his ‘Original baby girl’ again, and mean it.
I want to go out and visit him, without worrying if I’m tampering with his drug time.
I want to be able to look at his hands and his arms, and not see tracks.
I want the beast to disappear from his face.. The strain to disappear from his eyes.
I’ve said it before, I look into the mirror, and all I see is him.
I put on my eyeliner, and look right into his eyes.
I get confused about something, and know that when my brow furrows, the same line between his eyes appears between my own.
I want to be able to say one day, “Dad, I’m so proud of you. You had a rough way to go, and you came out the victor.”
I want to walk down the street, or into a store with him, with my head up, and a smile on my face, and pride in my eyes, saying “Yes, this is my dad.”
Why doesn’t he realize, that that’s all I really want?
I cringe every year, for the past 4 years, when Father’s Day rolls around.
I have to decide to be a bad person, and not acknowledge the holiday.
Or be the bigger person, and pretend everything is wonderful, and wander down the aisle of cards, and select a Father’s Day card, worthy of this man.
I think I need to let go of harsh feelings for now, and accept the situation as is.
I’ll not give up hope, but I will give up my imaginings of a perfect world. For now.
Maybe one day, I’ll be able to do the things I say I want to.
G
Guest
Guest
rambles from a mad woman
journal entry from last night...
~~~~~~~
My dearest love,
I am so very sad that you are leaving me in the morning but I understand that it is what it must be for now. I look forward to the day when that will not be the case but rather when you leave me, it’ll be for a short shift at the hospital. When you come home, I’ll have dinner ready and a cool drink available for you.
You are my sunshine. You are my heart. I wish I could convey to you the importance of you in my life. I have never felt the way I do when I am with you. Can you understand how much you mean to me? Can you even fathom the depth of my feelings?
What a wonderful thing it was for John to offer up his home to you and our littlest one. It still has the ability to choke me up…even now as I sit here, getting ready for this long and meaningless meeting.
I have such guilty, selfish dreams. I can not even share them with you sometimes because I am so ashamed of how self-serving they are. Yet, in the end, I will follow through with my every promise. I will come to you as I have said I would. Because, this surrounding pales when you are not here… the sundial can only cast its shadow if the sun shines.
We have a five min. break before the public hearings so here I sit, dwelling on the fact that I need to be with you.. need to be spending time with you. My brain is screaming, railing at my loss of time with you. DAMNIT. It should not be with way. Ill be ok.. everything will be fine, so sayeth the rational brain. You know how I can be. I know what is right and yet the other factors are glaringly obvious, sometimes blindingly so.
How right it is to be with you. How wonderful each day when I come home from work and you are there. How perfect every day seems when you are by my side. This will be my most trying year, being apart from you. I find myself whispering “if only…” frequently. Patient, I am not. Patient, I will force myself to be. Please help me in this? I will need to lean upon you so very much in the up coming years.
I know that you think I am strong, and sometimes I can see that too, but when it comes to leaving here and all the comforts of familiarity, I will need your strength. I will need your heart. Yes, I am scared. I think its so very important that you know how I feel…that I know how you feel every step of the way. Though I know we will be together before long and that a few years from now my thoughts and feelings today might seem a bit silly, I can’t help but tell you of them all.
I am not worried about the girls. I am not worried about how we will be together. I am worried about moving so far from everything I have ever known, so far from family. I know what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. You would feel this way too. Just promise to be my friend and to support me when I falter like this?
I was just chewing on my nails, my pinkie nail actually, and I was thinking how it was buried deep within you last night. Do you find it odd that I get great pleasure just from watching your pleasure? At times like these, when I’m ‘off’ because of monthly ‘business’, it makes me feel better to see you enjoy. I can’t explain that but I hope you can see it for what it is.
Only two more hours to go but two more hours for sure. Sigh. It would be so very sweet to just get up and leave right this moment. This is the moment when it is no longer financially beneficial to be here. Do you see what I mean?
***break*** ohmigod… just shut the fuck up. How can some people be so nit picky??? Ok, yes I know that I would be too if I felt strongly about something…and still… STFU!I have to pee. When are we going to take a break and let my bladder rest? Member how I told you that Saturday, and Sunday, I didn’t pee much… I think im catching up right this very moment.
Yes, I have just fallen apart. I am no longer good humored about this one fucken public hearing that has been going on for nearly 1 and ½ hours. Its chaffing my ass like wet leather on a hot summer day. I think I just shut my brain off and stopped listening. Not a good thing but necessary for sure. Please let this guy stop talking so I can go pee…please?
As of this very point, I have 13 paragraphs and over 850 words, enough to constitute a story at lit min. length. 9:30 and people here are bickering over the word shall. S h a l l . I shall pee my pants if we don’t take a break. I shall grind my teeth down to nubs if people don’t start being relevant. Ok, I’m playing tom cruise right now, making a break for the bath room…NOW. I feel more betterer now. Whew! Can you imagine trying to figure out when you can go pee safely or without a squillion eyes watching ya?
Ok, I just checked the agenda. It states that no new business shall commence after 10:30 and that the meeting shall end at 11pm. So, at most I have another hour to go. Zzzzzzzzzzz. I’ve had enough already.
I kissed you today.
Do you remember the feel of my lips against yours?
Do you remember the quick intake of my breath?
Did you feel how you made my soul quiver with love?
Its been a long time coming in my life, this love
This wonder
This greatness.
I am forever grateful
Ok.. its 10pm now and I think I had better pay attention. I love you gorgeous. Ill see you in two weeks when we can watch our eldest walk graduation.
I cant even begin to state how very pissed off I am over the loss of time this meeting has caused me.
I cant even begin to state how hard it is to swallow the rage I am feeling right now.
What a waste of time this whole process is. Life is too short to let things like this effect my home life. I’ve got to look for another job.
This sucks so badly.
Im still hating this
Im such a baby. Im such a crybaby and I cant even write this without choking up.
I cant help it. Im being kept here, against my will for a small fee of less then 100. im so pissed off.
I know I said that already but im obsessing and fuck it, im allowed.
Im feeling distinctly unstable right now. Can you tell?
Its freeken 1138 at night and we are quibbling over the word shall… the words sight line
We are so lame
Im crushing his head. My fingers are tired. And I just wanna come home and be in your arms. I don’t want to be here any more and im so close to tears its hard to breathe.
What is the huge deal? Ijust almost fell asleep right now. Can you believe it? I know I shouldn’t rant like this but im not able to think pleasant thoughts right now. Im sorry. Please understand. I think you do.
Some people have to fucken work tomorrow. What do these people do for a living that they can stay up this late and still work the next day? That they can just deal with no sleep?
This is just plain ridiculous. Is this my payment for past sins? I don’t understand.
The chairman just stated that the meeting will close at 12:20. wow. This is more than I care to deal with.15 min seems so damn far away to me. I could possibly chain smoke all the way home only, I ve got one cig. Hrm.
I’m coming home love….I’m coming home.
journal entry from last night...
~~~~~~~
My dearest love,
I am so very sad that you are leaving me in the morning but I understand that it is what it must be for now. I look forward to the day when that will not be the case but rather when you leave me, it’ll be for a short shift at the hospital. When you come home, I’ll have dinner ready and a cool drink available for you.
You are my sunshine. You are my heart. I wish I could convey to you the importance of you in my life. I have never felt the way I do when I am with you. Can you understand how much you mean to me? Can you even fathom the depth of my feelings?
What a wonderful thing it was for John to offer up his home to you and our littlest one. It still has the ability to choke me up…even now as I sit here, getting ready for this long and meaningless meeting.
I have such guilty, selfish dreams. I can not even share them with you sometimes because I am so ashamed of how self-serving they are. Yet, in the end, I will follow through with my every promise. I will come to you as I have said I would. Because, this surrounding pales when you are not here… the sundial can only cast its shadow if the sun shines.
We have a five min. break before the public hearings so here I sit, dwelling on the fact that I need to be with you.. need to be spending time with you. My brain is screaming, railing at my loss of time with you. DAMNIT. It should not be with way. Ill be ok.. everything will be fine, so sayeth the rational brain. You know how I can be. I know what is right and yet the other factors are glaringly obvious, sometimes blindingly so.
How right it is to be with you. How wonderful each day when I come home from work and you are there. How perfect every day seems when you are by my side. This will be my most trying year, being apart from you. I find myself whispering “if only…” frequently. Patient, I am not. Patient, I will force myself to be. Please help me in this? I will need to lean upon you so very much in the up coming years.
I know that you think I am strong, and sometimes I can see that too, but when it comes to leaving here and all the comforts of familiarity, I will need your strength. I will need your heart. Yes, I am scared. I think its so very important that you know how I feel…that I know how you feel every step of the way. Though I know we will be together before long and that a few years from now my thoughts and feelings today might seem a bit silly, I can’t help but tell you of them all.
I am not worried about the girls. I am not worried about how we will be together. I am worried about moving so far from everything I have ever known, so far from family. I know what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. You would feel this way too. Just promise to be my friend and to support me when I falter like this?
I was just chewing on my nails, my pinkie nail actually, and I was thinking how it was buried deep within you last night. Do you find it odd that I get great pleasure just from watching your pleasure? At times like these, when I’m ‘off’ because of monthly ‘business’, it makes me feel better to see you enjoy. I can’t explain that but I hope you can see it for what it is.
Only two more hours to go but two more hours for sure. Sigh. It would be so very sweet to just get up and leave right this moment. This is the moment when it is no longer financially beneficial to be here. Do you see what I mean?
***break*** ohmigod… just shut the fuck up. How can some people be so nit picky??? Ok, yes I know that I would be too if I felt strongly about something…and still… STFU!I have to pee. When are we going to take a break and let my bladder rest? Member how I told you that Saturday, and Sunday, I didn’t pee much… I think im catching up right this very moment.
Yes, I have just fallen apart. I am no longer good humored about this one fucken public hearing that has been going on for nearly 1 and ½ hours. Its chaffing my ass like wet leather on a hot summer day. I think I just shut my brain off and stopped listening. Not a good thing but necessary for sure. Please let this guy stop talking so I can go pee…please?
As of this very point, I have 13 paragraphs and over 850 words, enough to constitute a story at lit min. length. 9:30 and people here are bickering over the word shall. S h a l l . I shall pee my pants if we don’t take a break. I shall grind my teeth down to nubs if people don’t start being relevant. Ok, I’m playing tom cruise right now, making a break for the bath room…NOW. I feel more betterer now. Whew! Can you imagine trying to figure out when you can go pee safely or without a squillion eyes watching ya?
Ok, I just checked the agenda. It states that no new business shall commence after 10:30 and that the meeting shall end at 11pm. So, at most I have another hour to go. Zzzzzzzzzzz. I’ve had enough already.
I kissed you today.
Do you remember the feel of my lips against yours?
Do you remember the quick intake of my breath?
Did you feel how you made my soul quiver with love?
Its been a long time coming in my life, this love
This wonder
This greatness.
I am forever grateful
Ok.. its 10pm now and I think I had better pay attention. I love you gorgeous. Ill see you in two weeks when we can watch our eldest walk graduation.
I cant even begin to state how very pissed off I am over the loss of time this meeting has caused me.
I cant even begin to state how hard it is to swallow the rage I am feeling right now.
What a waste of time this whole process is. Life is too short to let things like this effect my home life. I’ve got to look for another job.
This sucks so badly.
Im still hating this
Im such a baby. Im such a crybaby and I cant even write this without choking up.
I cant help it. Im being kept here, against my will for a small fee of less then 100. im so pissed off.
I know I said that already but im obsessing and fuck it, im allowed.
Im feeling distinctly unstable right now. Can you tell?
Its freeken 1138 at night and we are quibbling over the word shall… the words sight line
We are so lame
Im crushing his head. My fingers are tired. And I just wanna come home and be in your arms. I don’t want to be here any more and im so close to tears its hard to breathe.
What is the huge deal? Ijust almost fell asleep right now. Can you believe it? I know I shouldn’t rant like this but im not able to think pleasant thoughts right now. Im sorry. Please understand. I think you do.
Some people have to fucken work tomorrow. What do these people do for a living that they can stay up this late and still work the next day? That they can just deal with no sleep?
This is just plain ridiculous. Is this my payment for past sins? I don’t understand.
The chairman just stated that the meeting will close at 12:20. wow. This is more than I care to deal with.15 min seems so damn far away to me. I could possibly chain smoke all the way home only, I ve got one cig. Hrm.
I’m coming home love….I’m coming home.
