the saints can't help me now........

mary mother of god, i am so f**ked. spring training is over and mom has come ready to hit some balls. is it too early to start counting day? i love her, i love her, i love her. but as the song says "love hurts"
well i would be hurt if i wasn't so god damn stunned and impressed. that woman's got game.
some topics covered this already this morning.....

childbirth (overheard telling my youngest child., a girl by the way) - when she came out your mother ripped me from stem to stern. and then the doctor said "you have a big girl" a GIRL, i didn't want a girl.

homeschooling (direct hit) - is this what time you get up every morning. could you tell me how my grandchild is supposed to get an education if you're laying a bed half the day.

junkmail and finances (another direct hit) - russell says you throw out the flyers.  (no response needed from me). how do you know what's on sale (again no response necessary). if you ask me that where all this money is going. if you went through the flyers and planned your groceries russell wouldn't have to work so hard

welcome, it's not yet noon on day 1

bev
PS - later today i'm being made to watch jeopardy and wheel of fortune

The Greatest Show on Earth.........

on to that in a minute. firstly i'm sure you've all heard the expression "everytime a bell rings, a fairy gets her wings" now that i think about it, maybe its angel not fairy. but  really they are probably interchangeable.
but have you heard this "everytime you masturbate, god kills a kitten". oh, i'm soo sorry i wrote that - well not really sorry. masturbate is of course not a swear word, not even slang dirty. but i don't think i've typed it before and now i've gone and done it twice. but back to the tale, yesterday i was in a  serious meeting - 3 hours it went on and on. and for the entire time i could not concentrate on the matters at hand because i was looking at the person talking and thinking, Sir/Madam every time you masturbate god kills a kitten. torture it was, pure torture. i pictured quite a kitten stack building beside one particular fellow. and that ladies and gentlemen is how i spent my afternoon.

 on with the show, this is it.......

mother is coming to visit and the self-esteem circus is about to commence. the big tents are up, people are taking their seats and its just too tempting not to join the show.the spotlight finds me balancing precariously on the high wire while underneath in the shadows, mom moving my safety net around. it's excitement and danger served with a side of guilt

oh before you start trying to make me feel bad - trust me i've got that part covered nicely. firstly, i fear in just writing this i 'm courting disaster. next, don't go on about how lucky i am to have a mother and all that bla bla bla. for christ's sake, i'm not 10 years old, i know all that. see, look your getting me all worked up and i'm starting to swear. i probably type masturbate again in a minute.

let me just clarify a couple of things. i love my mother. my mother is a saint. she spends thousands of hours doing good works. she is the jerry lewis of her peers. my mother has survived disease, war, the depression and me. She's a tough nut and she likes to call them as she sees them. believe me upon meeting her you will be weighed, you will be measured and more than likely you will be found wanting.
that's just the way it is.. it's quite entertaining when you're not the target.

so pull up a seat, the next 5 weeks are going to be great.

tough as a nut and cunning as a wagon load of monkeys......

i know that is quite a random title but i think that is what i aspire to be

it has been a difficult couple of weeks for me. i have at various times been - discouraged, panicked by self doubt, enraged, wallowing in self pity, and i took a bit of wound to the heart. now, before you think i should be medicated or put in the nervous hospital i should add that for the most part i have been able to conduct my daily affairs and carry on happy as a clam. i have been crafting up a storm. i have been bombarded with ideas - in the shower, before i go to sleep and weirdly when i cleaning the cat litter box. i feel content and hopeful

and.... i had customers in the store - real ones. not just the imaginary ones i convo with when i'm cleaning. those chicks are quite complementary, they say things like "you've lost some weight" or "if i had half of your talent". the real customers are very nice as well and much better because they have actual wallets. i love watching people choose things for a project. sometimes it almost makes me cry, their creative energy is something you can almost see. it is a happy high.

but as the 11th hour approaches, i must give myself a bit of pep talk. a guide to follow for daily sanity

my pinata theory

everyday you receive a life pinata. what's inside that puppy will be the framework for your day and you must get it out. some of us will whack it with a stick, others shake the shit out of it and the rest with kick it in the balls. i'm more of the kicking type

so all this stuff fall out of your pinata and now you have to sort through it. some of things are easily recognized as belonging to you. those are the things you must do everyday.

 some of things are your problems and burdens - pick those up because they will just keep coming back if you don't recognize them.   BUT BEWARE not all the problems are yours. sometimes you accidentally or habitually pick up other peoples problems. now if you realize you've picked up someone elses shit, either quickly put it down or better yet, if you know who's shit it is put it down beside that person and say inside your head "i believe this shit is actually yours"

now, all over the ground are all your little pieces of possibilities. don't be afraid to pick them up. some of them may turn out negative - a bit of bad karma. but most of them are all the opportunities you have yet to take advantage of. a smile that leads to friend, a chance to create good karma, permission slips to be creative.....and so on

now all that's left down there are your blessings for the day. grab those and read them right sway. commit them to memory. they will help you through all the difficult parts of your day. your blessings may be big - health, family, friends or something quite small like making a baby laugh or a new magazine.

there you have bevy's blueprint to a successful day

confessions from my dark black soul......

well, before i spread my social netting i feel i must get a few things off my ample chest.

confession 1

i have a very, very dirty love happening for willie of swamp people. the fact that i watch the show at all should be confession enough but no i couldn't leave it at that. the idea that my man willie can pull a 600lb alligator over the side of the boat single handed is one thing. but the fact that he can do it while never taking his cigarette out of his mouth is quite another. oh my good god. you must realize that at my age i rarely have dirty thoughts at all but willie has changed all that. he small and only weighs 150lbs but he's young and strong so i believe i won't break him. anyway he's already missing some teeth.

i realize that the other confessions will seem quite boring now as they are not sexual in nature but that's the way it goes

confession 2

i do copious amounts of counted cross-stitch. there its out now, i've said it. mock me if you will. this has been my dirty little craft secret for a long time. i don't know why i'm embarrassed about it it's not like i'm stitching angels or clowns but nonetheless i am stitching. i always thought cross stitch was one of the lesser crafts like liquid embroidery but recently, the lovely alicia paulson of posie gets cozy did a cross stitch alphabet sampler. i love mrs paulson , not dirty willie love but a gentle sister/daughter love. i read her blog daily. she makes the most beautiful things but i have never commented because she is so famous and i didn't want her to find out about my cross stitching but then she up and did some. hallelujah i have been set free.

confession 3

i graduated top of my class from psychic school. well it wasn't called that but generally that was the gist of the whole thing. look people, i was in my 20's - bored and lonely on the farm. there weren't such things as cable tv or internet. so i took a home study course. christ all mighty, i can't believe i'm telling this. i have no pride. anyway i learned among other things how to create and interpert astrological charts, numerology, tarot card reading, rune stones, i ching, palm reading and so on and so on. i am a very well rounded member of the CPC (canadian psychic council) sorry that bit's a lie, there's no such thing. but the point is i can perform all this parlor tricks and i graduated with a 98% average. so bring it on - i'll tell your future.

well that was exhausting. you now know mostly everything. i can go forward towards success with a happy little smile

bev

Revelations under the Mexican sun

elenor roosevelt once said "you must do the thing you think you cannot do"

now, i don't know what she was specifically referring to but i'm choosing to take the high road and imagine she was referring to something noble - not mr roosevelt and his bag of sex toys.

now this little quote has been my mantra for the last couple of months. i can tell you for certain we will never face enemies greater than our own fear and apathy. the invisible barriers we construct are tightly woven with our darkest thoughts. i know there are those go-getter's out there who have no idea what i'm talking about. bless you. but there are those of us who are being eaten alive by our own overactive minds. we feel like fakes and we wait with bated breath for our world to collapse around us. i have read that this phenomena is quite prevalent with creative, intelligent people. but most likely a creative, intelligent person wrote that to make himself feel better about failing.

i have tried for the last little bit to come to terms with this. and quite frankly a cure is unlikely. i have been an actor for far too long to find another profession. this is just the way it is. what cannot be changed must be worked around.

can you imagine that all this agony is over listing items in my etsy shop and starting a facebook fan page for the store/ blog. i am so pitiful.

all this churned in my head while on vacation in mexico. yes, i mounted yet another aircraft and put my life in the hands of captain somebody or other. i found that a
6 hour delay and a bit of liquor put me in the appropriate aeronautical mood and strangely i found that flying in a southerly direction did not cause as much distress as flying easterly towards my mother. go figure. speaking of my mother she referred to the lovely place that i stayed on holidays as a REsort. its astounding how quickly she can completely change one's concept of something just by changing the syllable accent. i suddenly felt that the lovely accommodations where somewhere where we had resorted to go or the place had resorted to take us after all the good tourists were taken. ah, the breadth of her power is great.

so when i returned from the REsort i told my self i must stop this foolishness. i must stop being such a big baby. so i decided to do the thing i cannot do. but first i bought some books on how to make this happen and i'm almost finished them. so some pretty big, small things are on the way

finally

off topic but still slightly related -
sorry to all you fellow holiday goers who were left with the impression that i was one or more of the following.....

a) a critical care nurse named deb
b) a sunday school teacher named beth
c) a frustrated former athlete who barely missed the Canadian Olympic rowing team in the 80s named debbie
d) a recovering coke addict named bethie

i'm sorry but i had to sit with the lot of you by the pool everyday and you all certainly took the "all inclusive" thing to heart. you drank and you drank and being a non-drinker it was all a bit bewildering. how you all managed to stay alive for a week is akin to some medical wonder. getting a good story out of a drunk is much harder than you think. you must begin with a very compelling opener that captures the intoxicated mind right away. so i became whatever struck my fancy at the time. some of you needed medical advice, some counselling and the rest of you just needed to feel better about your own situation. i simply provided the correct platform from which your story could be launched. but come on didn't it feel good to get all that stuff out.

see you real soon
bev

upon finding herself on the naughty list, betty bawled....

remember, we are never as nice as we think we are. its a shame but nonetheless true.

presents
i sent my mother a big box filled with guilt. puzzles, books.... small tokens of my eternal guilt. and today i'll send my mother an express envelope containing gift cards - the cash equivalent of guilt.

i've been reading on facebook recently a lot of chatter about bringing "my christ" back to christmas. because i rarely think things through - i thought it must be one of those word scramble things. well obviously i found christ right away, but where was my. there was ma christ but that sounded gangster. man, let's hang for "ma christmas" sorry my street talk needs some work. i then found sam christmas. that was a sort of a da vinci code moment for me. had i found some hidden message. i decided not. so in the end i failed to find my christ in christmas which is probably just as well because i would expect a present from him.

HONESTLY i love christmas and i am an extremely kind and generous person. but this time of year does require some resources to be diverted from my needs to meet the needs of others. and that sucks.

ho
bev

Nancy spots a whale and other tales - personal in nature......

my oh my, how time flies when your losing your mind. where to start - not the beginning - that's too obvious - not the end..... i think i'll not start, i'll just carry on. let's pretend in april i sighed somewhat dramatically, took a sip drink of tea and then looked pensively out the window for awhile.

i went on an aeroplane. that practically ruined my entire summer. the anticipation of the crash. of whether i would ultimately sacrifice myself to save other passengers or in the flush of adrenalin i would toss them out in hopes of creating a soft pile to land on.

in the end i went and we did not crash. i hated every second of being on that plane. i sort of forgot about falling from the sky and instead found considerable issue with how uncomfortable i was, how confined and chubby if felt, how goddamn much a mini can of pringles cost, how long it was taking....

but then...
6 days in my mother's house. 6 days of sleeping on feather pillows that were created before WW2. 6 days of not eating any vegetables except canned peas. 6 days of laughing and laughing. 6 days of realizing i no longer belonged in this place. 6 days of soaking up the song of a people that is still my own. 6 days of my dear susan

i grew up among people who valued the art of the telling over the art of the tale. which meant we thrived on the details. god how i miss that. i miss the sheer thrill of the tell. where facts are passed over for the more speculative approach. where judgements are passed before plots have unfolded. and to have 6 days of that wonder and recognizing yourself in the words and cadence of those around you is just to lovely for words.

during those 6 days i had use of my mother's car. firstly she said - "i would appreciate if you didn't go over 80km." i didn't see that restriction coming. that's the great thing about my mom - you can't predict her next move. her offensive game is just outstanding. mom had other rules regarding her 1991 ford focus. no driving after dark. no rough roads. no unlocked doors or windows left down. and under no circumstances was i to hit a deer. hmmm...

the first time i sat in the car. i said "ok little ford focus, you better keep your frigging mouth shut about the next 6 days or i'm going to slam your tiny, god damn ass into a deer."

those 6 days were filled with immaturity and joy. my baby girl got to see humpback whales with here auntie sue. we ate clams and lobster and fish. we slept in the ancient lakelawn motel where we found blood, mysteriously smeared on the door and top sheet. we all had our theories and we felt delighted to have been assigned this family double. we found sea glass and iridescent blue plastic tampon holders on the beach. we picked apples and ate them unwashed. we sang filthy,dirty songs about sailors and german soliders.


we had the time of our lives. but at times i looked in the face of my friend and found a happiness that i cannot find on my own.

bev