Charcoal and Canvas

It's been gray mornings, and different degrees of chilly to cold in the NW Indiana.  Not a biker in sight.  The old train tracks pulled a few cargo boxes across the grassy plain where in childhood Myra embraced on hot summer nights with torn thigh Hugh Jean shorts, flip flop and fat bring juices from infomercials she'd put on her credit cards.

Situps, Pink Floyd,  severe  weather warnings of tornadoes to undertoes, impeccable pride, more Pink Floyd, tobacco, hair dye, fake tanning lotion, tanning beds, and ice cream shop jobs burned out.
Little American Poremba, Santos, Jones, and Joel sled down snowy hills along the bridge in early 90s, while Myra and Elton experienced the pleasures of sexuality with their orphus's, mouths and fingers with sucking, kissing, or stroking various ducts of the human body  under bridges, and in public bathrooms.

Just a candy bar and a cigarette used to satisy the streets, fireworKS crackling and sizzling  and smoking smells red skies, and clouds covering the big white moon.  Somethings people just don't lose, and keep forever no matter how far or close the hot dog with loads of ketchup and corn dogs hot and smothered in mustard.

The youth of Jordan Street met up for sips of water and pitchers of coffee in the 90s.  Only minutes away was Soldier Field, and Navy Pier where Myra embraced to work as a bar tender, waitress, and dinner reservationalist.  Later she found careers at youth career centers, Chicagoland Bloodbank, university, and cinema ushering.

She loved art though. Sculpting,tattoo parlars, and babies.

The little broken street with the Willow tree where she little high school sweetheart used to meet a block away from Meadows Pond where they'd find a thrill and excitement in each other's eyes and ears, Myra only 17 years old, kicked little pebbles, and eat a broiled burger from Burger Mans.

The large cold onion ring and the sesame seeded bun were bigger than her head and in the summers her hot pants caused her legs to squeeze and stick to the booths when she slid out to get up.  She wouldn't miss a single hair stub or she'd slide on a pair of jeans and khakis.

The many watches she'd lost that came to her on Christmas morning.  Money on a card was cool then and always will be until overdraft charges would come around and her dad would pay the fees for several years before she learned a lesson about money.

She learned she was a Mexican when only a few lived in her town so she was left asking tons of questions until one day in her late twenties Myra learned that her grandma's mothe was French. After all the name calling and labeling, and pride in her culture, French decided to rear it's romantic head.  Myra thought the Irish were romantic with their rainbows and pots of gold.  She even tattooed a shamrock, two celtic cross, and on the other wrist Gaelic or garlic as she called it.

Chipping nail polish and dull razors were off her mind when her son Tyler was born and instead she opened her eyes to shocks and surprises she couldn't get enough such as all the areas of campains for children, elderly, middle class collars, and the disabled.  She could see her future of plazas, and game centers for her un infante.

Laughing to herself of impatience, pay days, and getting up and down out of time and money in her infantry of life to its fullest with things of success and good living.

Travel Delayers

The trip to New Orleans French Quarters was dazzling and bewitching with a friend there ready to meet up for drinks.  Elsas wedding anniversary of 30 years and her oldest daughter Myra checked into a two bed hotel where parades and jesters filled the streets. They shared crawfish, and alligator nuggets.  A ferry picked them up, a trolly thru Bucator St. where ghostly memories of job bankruptcy, and for a  man who won her love plagued her throughout her stay in New Orleans after the hurrican devastation. So they texted back and forth between dinners fancy lobster bisque and oysters to the arts of phantom masks captivated the very essence of expression over facial gestures with feathers and paint.

   There Myra kept to herself. She felt an emptiness going through the cemeteries and French marketplace where fresh soaps and herbs were homemade and sold.  Her weight, and frumpy clothes and thick glasses were dull yet her happiest getup since bright blouses and long hair.

Smoking too was not her best habit.  It was a pleasure to hang out at Three Sisters jolly morning buffet breakfast with her parents and their friends who lived a town or two over who ate squirrel meat and visited Indiana townhouse of married couples welcome singles beware.

Lake Geneva, WI and Milwaukee were two of the places Myra would be saying.goodbye to as.friends were diminishing and fading.from their meeting places here giving her time to self examine and reflect, learn, and make good.decisions with planning her faithful journey through wellness and work.

Lake Geneva: Myra often found a.remote place to reflect and think, coffee shop across the way, a bait shop near the cottage, she counted her blessings, and didnt know how but would come home to Indiana with a job, and a house of her own, a son, and a cancer scare while a cyst grew to be the size of a tennis ball on her overie, removed.

Fort Pickens, Florida came by surprise with Elsa and Ernesto.  Myra went.  Her sister blanca and husband ranchito came. They drank and played Craps on the doc.

Baby's up....gotta go

Dreams is Smaerd Backwards

Gray forcast and rainy, a lot of food and drinks over breakfast.  Three days ago a man I used to date in '98 dropped me off at my parents where I live in St. John, IN.  Disheveled and scared I climbed out of his car, keeping my composure I think after a ride from his parents home in Highland Indiana three towns north of St. John.

The morning was dim,dingy, and moist with a chilly breeze. Traditions of chores and culture of family blew my mind.  Dishes enough to feed colloßsal all armies for three people and enough television sets to open a Circuitry City my highschooligan boyfriend was still the same.

Up and down these big bulky, wooden staircase with a layer of dirt film thicker than I don't know and it makes me wonder these construction workers who build decks and balconies haven't revamped their own staircase leading upstairs to a mega hallway connection two rooms and a bath bigger than a studio apartment.

Little Miracles

Another day face to face with a grandmother out of town and another right here the one and only courageous grandmother of two who wakes at 4am, every Tuesday to feed one baby and to pack for an hour train ride in to feed and and care for her other baby in the ferocious city streets of Chicago.

She never saw it coming two grand babies in less than 6 months apart.  Her hair is kept in a tight ponytail and her husband follows behind with the keys and formula/diaper runs every week while washing and drying dirty and clean bottles three to five times daily, sweeping and scurrying up with laundry and folding clothes while taking the trash out every Sunday.

The Moosepaw family make consistent trips back and forth from Chicago to Indiana at least three times a week.  While grandma is excited and over joyed to be a new grandma the first year isn't easy and the new year hasn't had the best start and in fact the worsty start.

Moosepaw Blessings

The morning is halfway through and noon is always lunch time ever since college years in 2000.  The sun didn't come out today or the winter. There is a warm temperature and gray overcast in St. John, IN.

Addicted to love remade is always cool, and so is any oldie.  And Ragga covers for played out songs rock the house.  What's the difference between basil and parsley, two very dried up herbs? Too much sharp cheddar on my omelette God tastes blob by and this cold won't help, everything is bland.

The Moosepaw gourmet popcorn has these chocolate chunks I dig.  There isn't much to blog accept maybe about the tie down of grandparents when you just want your parents or his to be healthy. Nap time for little muncher, and quiet blog time for mommy. A name I'm not used to being called and it's been 8 months since a wallabies delivery.

Gas. It comes with the environment and is contagious along with caress belching when counting your blessings living with the grandparent's/parents know your middle thirties.  Yet all appliances and groceries with the rents/grand rents are over stocked quality goods.

We have soft toilet paper, tissue paper, dry skin lotions, the back scratcher, Mr. Clean cleaning agents, layers of bed comforters, and quilts, hot water heater maintenance, light bulbs, and high speed Internet access.

Baby toys allore, and diapers in bulk from warehouse club memberships, gas tanks always full to the brim.

The Moosepaw gourmet popcorn has these almonds too that today don't taste good with this terrible cold.  The sun didn't come out . Yet the sun in Gredas heart did. Elsa got her nails done and looked for a while at the hair salon availability with her favorite hairdresser Fall Farrow.  Fall was Else's youngest girl of two friend from highschool.

She watched them rise into young mothers and then wives feeling very responsible and warysome.  Seeing that they were beautiful and healthy with careers of serving others with beauty and welness, Fall being a hair dresser for over a decade, and Anique her youngest daughter being a fitness trainer for same time span of ten years or more.

There wasnt much else to figure into the equation of a very small town with four seasons that was turning into a neglected linearity of crime.  Newborns of her own Fall Summers stayed close to the Moosepaw family. Summers being her married name.

Big Bay

A peanut.  Who knew the peanut sized baby on my ultrasound would be born May 27th, 2017.  And that 8 months later "peanut", would be the height of a watermelon hopping around in his four wheeler with grumps.

The days have been better since the beginning of peanut.   No snow has been around since early November and rain has been very kind keeping the end of January warm and The Regions grass green.

The largest grin on my little lemonhead from ear to ear keeps me laughing.  It's better than a coffee break.  There's not much fun without him.  The constant contact with the same old shmoes isn't easy and not on them God knows.

I've felt sucked dry.  Sinks cleaned all day.  Dishes too.  Laundry every time. Baths. Constant suspense over whose watching who, break time, exhaustion, and exasperation

this town is for motorcycles with winding roads that stretch for miles.  Bugs in your mouth no problem.  Enchanting bars in the middle of a hog hangout no problem just be sure to have a boots, goggles, and a helmet.  And no rocking the bikes on the back seat. Best way to make enemies is to wear sandles and dance on the back of a Harley.  Love Jealousie.

Soap is put of the question.  Pretry scents, and jewelry too for new moms.  Baby is so new to mother earth they need generally only you.  Weightless teas are not weightless teas get that one straight.

Running with milk jugs is the same as jogging and breastfeeding so bulky and swish swashy.  No the milk dosent spill from breasts yet it will cause it to go flat from the shaking up and down while jogging.

Learn about books, babies will love them when they get older.  And story problems so they can solve family problems such as who ate the cheese off the pizza and who stole my hearing aid...hint no one.

Then help find lost items with a small fee lessons come next while living with grandpa.  When the millionth accident happened it had to be with Ethan.  The sadness of the morning pushed back all I believed and could be into a very down and scared mother. His tiny skull bumped and healed in immeasurable time.  

IV and blood samples breaking his newborn baby skin into the safest and kindest place a baby can be his mother's arms.   Being faithful to this belief and seeing that it was in my arms Ethan's bump happened brought me to my knees to God.

As the ER nurses and doctors examined Ethan and put him in another ambulance going to Rileys somewhere past Indianapolis,  I saw I.U. signs everywhere, but why; I was very moved by this and under a calm there was still chaos seething inside.  

So much prayer,love,and care flooded Ethan's life.  Rileys took good care of us all while a transformation again grabbed me and tightly squeezed the life out of me I had planned of a love and bond between Ethan and me so full of joy.

Doubt were large buckets of water dumped over me daily as Ethan needed strength and courage of a mother.  Coming home a week later with the miracle Ethan was going to recover fine and the blood clots were closing up well, I feared he might have lost cognition and more.

He was healthy, happy, and loved.  That was all I could discover and explore, while my family were interrogated by social services in our vulnerable and fragile time.  A fresh c section wound, a couple a new parents, and a world with nothing for us.

.

• 
  

Patterns of a Heartbeat

Reclined, cozy, and kind was my chair and nurses in mom and baby unit.  Cubs were on, and heading to the World Series.  Wow. I could hear the earth breaking and my stomach rumbling with suspense and a hunger from hell.

There in the background a far off bellow from a woman giving birth captured my attention.  She to me sounding in distress, and despairin agony.  A blood curdling longing for relief from pregnancy. You feel the humanity in you slip away, and you take the production of an incubator.  I didn't make much sense most of the time and someone very dear said once being pregnant is the same as climbing a mountain.  So I watched Mount Everest twice and I have one word, fascinating! Who could have the desire to climb a monster of a mountain as Everest, it should be called Evilist.  Nothing beautiful about some snowy peaks without oxygen tanks.

It was the week Prince died.  It was the saddest thing I heard that day while Purple Rain, and Cream erupted through my mind and radio.  Little feet were kicking from the inside of my uterus.  Too real for words and anything else I should have exaggerated.  Potter patter Potter patter little thumps through the monitor and speakers.  Bump bump.  Bump bump.  Fast, slow, spacey, and distant rythmns of a tiny heart beat inside my uterus.