Trump on Ukraine phone call: Impeachment for that?

Greenbelt Damn It! Give Me a Greenbelt Htown

Ok this is a real sore spot for me I want a Greenbelt in my town now!

I Want a 20 mile stretch with clean water - air - trees bushes - grass - no buildings - no hamburger stands - no tamalli trucks - just somewhere calm and nice to hang out and go biking and walking/running - no roads next to it like Memorial Park - yuk

And dont even think about telling me Brase Bayou is a Greenbelt - hell no I grew up killing rats and Nutria there as a kid and it stunk then and smells worse now! Its all about concrete drainaige and sewage = not a Greenbelt.

I dream of chilling out on an afternoon after work or even skipping work to hang out under trees hearing no cars or boom boxes and maybe even hearing some moving clean water! So give it to me Mayor of Houston ------! I want my Greenbelt to go biking on and I want it now.

Look at Austin if you need a model it shouldnt be that hard to figure out - just build the thing now before I move out of energy city in search of a better quality of life!

Holiday Bad News

Yesterday I heard my ex has cancer. Damn she is way too young to have crap like that enter into her life. This hit me hard. I didn't ever expect to hear anything like this on Thanksgiving Week.

This has been one of the most messed up emotionally draining weeks I have experienced in a while.

I feel for her she must be scared out of her mind to be cut on and all. I am just numb about it not sure what to think.

I have had not contact with her since she went to work on her issues in Abeline. Absoutely nothing - wrote her there alot and never heard anything back. I wrestled with what to think or do for her. About the best thing I could ponder is to send her a card with some personal words of encouragement from me.

If I could give her 5 minutes of peace its worth reaching out as awkward as it feels.

I hope she has good people surrounding her this week as it cant be easy to face treatment and the looming fight that she has to live.

I even prayed a while for her which is something I gave up when things for us crashed and the people at the churches we attended acted in ways that were fishy and duplicitous.

All the same God is important in her life and if there is a chance it would help it didnt cost me anything to spend some time Praying.

Great Friends and Retarded Relatives

It is so awesome to have some of the friends I do! It is cool how one of my people in Austin knows me well enough to talk some sense into me from his personal experience as well.

It goes back to being "disowned" earlier this month and that makes Turkey day not fun at all.

For the most part the day has been ok got to the gym , worked on XML , talked to some friends on the phone from out of town, installed some video softwares on the workstation at home, but there is still a fucked up funk to a holiday when you don't feel wanted by your family.

So my friend starts into telling me how he deals with his crazy mother (prolly why he and me understand each other well having grown up each with a shit to the wind loopy mother) and he tells me that he treats his mother like she is retarded. Anytime she gets manipulative or out of hand he just treats he as a retard even though she isn't actually that far gone just crazy and mean.

Its a brilliant idea in that I just cant allow my self to get sucked into that emotional game. It should work in that I have to just understand that my mother has no real clue on the meanness she deals my way. What I need to keep working on is that I cant count on her for anything at all in this world, and continually have to forgive her for the shit she tosses my way - and yet its my responsibility to take care of her as she gets older.

That seems like such a raw deal but I have to live with my choices and actions and the values that I carry are not to abandon friends when the shit gets deep so the only choice is to step up and do the same for family even though it cuts deep at times.

So its off to see whats up at moms place maybe make her day better - just need to keep growing and be aware its not always about me.

Big Bend Awsome

Taking an impromptu trip is so cool.

I got burned out on work and fed up with stuff going on in Htown so just decided to take a trip with three days notice. Not thinking work liked it too much but I rock their job and the vac days were stuff i had from last year - so hell yeah!

Went to Big Bend nattypark and it was so good. Gave my head time to look at what I am up too in this life with a perspective of not having work to clutter my thinking and judgement.

Basically i figured out that I use work to avoid dealing with other things that I am not completely good or comfortable with. That and my other "drugs" of choice to escape reality seem to be Diet Coke (apsertaine + cafinee) in huge quantities and also junk foods.

The work one caught me kinda by suprise as its so pervasive in our culture to be lauded for work ethic and commitment whist is can obscure really living - and being a person that is really into stuff i played the workaholic card to the hilt. Granted it served its purpose for a time when the woman I was going to marry had issues that tore our relationship down.

Work was a refuge that allowed me to escape an emotional morass that i had no way to make better. It was the one place that my head was somewhat clear and functioning while the girl i loved went to the asylum for 6 months - then after that she just dissapeared out of my life without a word .

So thats the history of the work and diet cola addiction just things i have been using to exist not really live. It all just came crystal clear as i journaled and read on this adventure away from work.

Anyways the mountains the deserts are supremely beautiful there. The temperature changes per area type! The air is crystal- and the different animals and plants are vast and calming to look at ( ok i didnt see any of the bears or mountain lions the park has as those might not have been so calming). The funny thing a park brochure says is that everywhere you go in the park is the territory of one of the lions. That is so cool to know that the big cat owns the place and that I am just visiting in good spirit! Kind of puts a perspective on things.

So just being there taking it all in let me start to let myself want things again - stopped wanting things a couple years back as the things i wanted were not happening for me and hurting to much to keep those hopes alive. Mainly love stuff going a rye can fuck up the rest of my life pretty quick. Just one of my quirks that i wish i had a better handle on but i accept is as it is and try not to give myself too much grief over it.

Anyways with things getting good for me inside my heart and head i figure out in the middle of this amazing park space what I want:

I want to play and record music again - (gotta find a drummer to get stuff done - this one needs to happen soon - and its freaking hard to good ones are either in bands or have not time cause the ones i grew up with got stupid real jobs - ha look who's talking).

I want to make video art - (damn i haven't done that since college - freaking web whore that i am using my brain for cash and not art WTF? I learnt computers to make art not cash).

I want to work less and feel more - (kinda got this one under control bailing for the vac impromtu - that and the attitude that "i go to work cause i want to" not an attitude i had of " i got to work to keep them happy" thing going now).

I want a good woman in my life - (I found an awesome woman who's been right here all along BUT whilst I was sorting out my personal shit from a past relationship and not noticing how wonderful she is, she found another guy, so I don't know what to feel on this one right now its really raw on the heart).

I want to get back in to kick ass physical shape - ( so far so good 4 days back from vac and 4 kick ass days at the gym. Food thing is way good too as its mostly proteins and all with NO bullshit eating so far! Am getting off the diet coke slowly as the cafine addict headaches are absolutely day killing for me).

I want to live slower where i understand and really experience what i do each day. (Need to spend more time realizing what is around for the good and the bad - i tend to be too too too too goal oriented and am kinda - ok am superior in a bad way about shutting out living to get stuff done - hell i need not to do that to myself).

I want to be real with my friends and let them know more of who i am and not just be the busy dude that they come to for help when their lives are difficult -

I want to make choices that are healthy for me and make me a better person just not a working machine

ok that seems to be a good list - will tackle each one of these over the next couple of weeks just to clarify what the hell I am thinking.

Disowned

Ok this is about the strangest and somewhat troubling thing - ok completely troubling thing that i didn't expect going into the holiday season this year.

Getting disowned by the family - well by one family member (the only one i see regularly) - family has always been a complicated thing being that others in the fam tree have avoided our branch due to mom's being crazy.

Its always been a rough ride dealing with Mom in that she is harsh cruel and dosn't really show any evidence of trying to change that. Its not like i don't know she is mean - I limit how much I hang out at her place - but check in on her regularly since Dad died. Trying to do the right thing and honor the parents and look out for her no matter what barbs she was tossing my way.

So recently took her over to the mini storage to help her ferret out some papers she needs and she flipped out and started cussing me directly as she had brought the wrong keys and made it my fault. WTF?

She then itemizes catagorizes the hows & whys the way I live is in her words "Fuck Upped Crazy Messed Up" so some more expletives come way whilst I try to explain to her hey lets just go find the right keys the worlds not ending cause she brought the wrong keys and this just flips her out more.

Anyways i hadn't gotten that type of lambasting fury from her since I was 12 and actually thought at the time she might be right about some of that stuff (being 12 they don't really tell you that crazy people will lie to kids and make them think there is something messed up about them instead of the crazy person) - took years to sort out that warped point of view. and to have it visit again was pretty unreal.

So drive her back to her house and she starts talking about that she dosn't want me coming around to visit anymore, and goes into more of this litany of how much she dislikes my life and the choices I have made and that it would be better just to stay away for good.

So thats it basically disowned - granted I have to take stock in that its not the first time to be hurt by this person - just leaves me feeling unattached confused and floating that and down.

I do have a solid group of good friends - but how the hell do I explain to them that I am getting disowned at this late date in life and for no actions of my own. I don't want to talk shit about my mother being crazy and all but there isn't much other way to explain me feeling odd for the holidays.

Living - Existing - Surviving - Dieing

Halloween is closing in and I am fretting over going out for the first time in ten years on that night.

It has been a night of mourning and contemplation, but there is a band playing that makes me really happy to hear. The people in the band are wonderful folks and it shows in their music - I almost always walk away from their shows happier than when I arrived. So its a pretty safe bet that it will be a good night. That and its kind of a big night for them with a new line up and opening for a touring band of note.

Its not that I have anything against the day or the festivities of Halloween - its more about it being the day that my father died on in 1997. Its was a really rough experience to watch him fight and die from a bad case of cancer.

Seeing the man I had always looked up to and admired taken apart by an illness was something that was really hard to make sense of and process, and it made a day of mourning a good thing to do. Its been had to be optimistic and do more than just exist since then, that and a convoluted past relationship framed by illness /death issues have me living as / being less than who I am.

The thing I do know is that there is no guarantee of more than the day that is at hand to be alive. I want to wake back up too and be more aware of what is important and stop being so busy that I am not really living.

So bring on the songs Sharks it going to be a good night for a show and a series of moments to savor!