The Dust Has Settled.

And we can now see the massacre left behind. Bane will have been gone a week ago tomorrow. My older brothers, husband and myself have been going through Bane's things and trying to make sense of his world. Every time we lift a piece of paper, open a drawer or move furniture we find knives, guns and writing. My father wasn't exactly... organized and I can't tell you how many times I've heard the words "Fuck, another knife. Add this to the pile".

I haven't taken anything for myself to remember him by except a small .25 cal handgun and all the writing we can find. It's my intention to get a hold of every thing that Bane has written and put it together in book form. If anyone has any experience with that please e-mail me. This might take a while because my oldest brother has a handful of computer hard drives that Bane had lying around. He's going to dive into them and see if there's any writing before we throw the hard drives away.

The other night we gathered up about five guns and shot them off in honor of Bane. We took the empty shells from the ground and mailed them to someone in the family that loads ammo. When we get a small percentage of Bane's ashes we are going to have them loaded into ammo and close family members will be welcome to keep a Bane Bullet. He would have loved that.

The rest of Bane's remains will be buried in a beautiful cemetery on Tuesday, September 30th. All six of us kids, four from the first marriage and Nattie and Johnny, will be there as well as a large number of family. I never really knew we had a big family, but they've been coming out of the woodwork and I've had to mix my dad's passing with being cordial around old farts that I don't know, yet they share my blood.

I'm worn out just writing about all of this. Maybe I'm just not ready yet. But I will tell you this: When we were saying goodbye to Bane in the hospital, he was coming in and out of consciousness. In one lucid moment Mrs. Bane was trying to express to him the seriousness of his situation. He asked "Am I dying?" and she said "It's very likely, honey, I'm so sorry". And with that Bane closed his eyes and a strange smile stole his face. He just laid his head back and his smile looked like one of bitter acceptance. But there was no fear or pain.

Bane.

For those of you that pray, do it now. I won't go into details just yet. But please pray for Bane and our family. He's been writing about this for a long time now. I appreciate your support.

Will Write For Metallica.

I just sat here for a few minutes trying to pull something deep out of my anus but I've only come up with a few disappointing farts.

God, I love comparing creativity to shit. It's just funny.

I'm staying at someone else's house and the TV is always on here. I can't concentrate. At least it makes me appreciate the silence of a cable-free home, when I do go home. How can some people just watch hours and hours of Television? Don't get me wrong, I can rent a whole series of a good show and devour it in one evening. I definitely couldn't sit and watch until I'd seen everything there is to see on 900 channels and then watch some more. And commercials are the worst. TV just makes me despise humans.

I'm gonna go play video games now.

I'm a bad, bad blogger...

Husband has been in the field for a while, again. So, of course, I've been traveling around the area because I have a hard time staying in one place by my self. Anyways, I'll get back to this later. Sorry to the 1.5 of you that might be stopping by.

In the meantime, I hope you are all having a great week!

On this day

I'm reminded of one of my favorite essays

Tomorrow's the big day.

Go here and tell me what you think.

I personally think they need to pull vocals back just a bit on some of the songs. James is getting old, his voice sounds a little strained. The good news is I think I'm actually going to be able to make it to at least two of the shows this fall.

I'm blushing, but I'm not the bride.

I did it. I went to another awkward military wife get-together. This one snuck up on me, though. It was disguised as a bridal shower for a girl I get along with just fine but she doesn’t know a lot of people. Thusly the guest list was pretty much comprised of women pulled off of the ACo social roster.

Argh.

It was held at a café and I showed up late with no gift in hand. That’s two strikes against me. I lied and said I left the gift at home because I didn’t want Bride-to-be overloaded with gifts in a small public setting. Now I have to go buy her something really nice, dammit. Shortly thereafter I struck out a third time.

We were all sitting around a table chatting and failing to avoid those long drawn out silences. Which, by the way, when that happens with NINE women sitting in a circle it seems obvious to me that things are being a little too forced. So one of the girls who apparently had the inside scoop asked Bride-to-be how her ‘Family’ bridal shower went. She said:

It was great; I got lots of frilly things.

And thinking I was a champion for keeping the conversation rolling I piped up:

Oh, that’s so cool. Were they, like, heirlooms or something?

At this point everyone chuckles and I look around the table with a smile that says ‘alright, assholes, I don’t appreciate being duped. What am I missing here?’ See, I assumed getting ‘frilly’ things from a Grandma meant table cloths and hand towels or something. Apparently this family is a little more edgy. ‘Frilly’ things actually meant sexy lingerie.

And here’s my point in all of this. As I feel my face heating up with embarrassment (which I have a hard time revealing any social weakness in public) someone nearby me points and exclaims “Dur, look how red she is!” and then I killed her. Not really. And everyone had a giggle at my expense. I’m sure it’s considered graceful to take that kind of situation and laugh along, which is what I did on the outside. But on the inside I couldn’t help but wonder why, whenever I blush, some idiot has to point and announce to everyone within shouting distance. Have you ever noticed that?

So I figured that since I felt awkward I wanted everyone else to shift in their seats as well. So I went on about how you wouldn’t want Grandma’s heirlooms in that case because they would probably be large and crusty and way out of date. And then I got a few others to blush and my revenge was exacted.

Husband, Father, Soldier, Man.

He’s still home
But he’s gone from me again
No longer the man I wed
No longer his mother’s son
He silently puts on his uniform
In the morning before dawn
And by the time I lift my head
He is already gone

Up to my neck

In miserable, smelly, ungrateful laundry. Husband went back to work today. Gremlin is sleeping. How did I go from frolicking up and down the west coast with my happy little family to lame and lonesome blogging so quickly? The thing about vacations is when they're over it's like they never happened. Except your bank account insists that you really did spend hundreds of dollars on booze, food and gas.

And here I sit, tickety-typing away.

I've represented Zero Ground long enough now. I feel like I'm ready to continue posting and moving them along down the line. Thanks for bleeding your ears out, even if it was just for a second and giving them a try.

Ugh.

This is horrible.

I think the inside of my head is full of mashed potatoes. Must be all that metal. I'm going to stop typing for now.

I'm back.

And you need to hear this:


I don't care if you like metal, this is my new favorite band. My oldest brother and I happened upon them in Northern California this last week, and we were both made more complete. The first time we saw them was last Wednesday night. We were both adults in our hometown, together as such for the first time and, dammit, we wanted to go to the bars. So we heard on the radio that a certain bar was going to have an open Guitar Hero III contest and four live bands, you could not have gotten us there sooner.

Wait. I have to stop here. I feel like a spastic child that has just seen her first magic show and I want to tell you every thing at once and I'm not making any sense. Which means, if you're anything like me you probably want to slap me sideways right now and tell me to get a hold of myself or the dogs are getting my dinner tonight. I want to write about this more in depth, but I have to get this whole Zero Ground experience off my chest. So please, go, listen, watch. It sucks for you because they are SO much better in a live performance than anything you will see or watch on the net. Hopefully someday they will make it 'big' and play all over the damn place. Until then, take the scraps you are given because I know there's a hungry dog in all of you that hasn't had good Metal in a very long time. And if not, go away. This blog might not be for you.

Ok, now I can get to telling you some fun stories about our trip. Sound boring? I'll try to throw in lots of swear words and embarrassing moments so that I seem edgy and entertaining.

Oh yeah, and. Go here and show some love. They should be at the top of the list and you can help.