bekah
the most beautiful girl in the world to me
- posted by barbara @ 4/22/2004 07:09:00 PM

 
Sugarfused: The light of day
Deb had a big fire at work and today posts from exhaustion - i can kinda imagine that exhaustion real well, though from a different circumstance. in this part of the world my psyche's gone retro if not infantile and i'm feelin' fucky:

email to a friend
i'm gonna go back to sleep now, going to apply at trader joe's later. nerves all shot to hell and exhausted too. my fingers are crossed so hard my whole body is knotted up.

do you think a pawn shop might give a loan on the car?

i really wish i still had my counselor who's been gone with congestive heart failure since january. there's something about getting with all my siblings that's got me really like nervous. well i guess it is that i don't have any money or a job. no spouse. i'm the youngest of four and close to 50 still a fuckup?!

even before bekah died i could be so diminished by them. i've raised four children on my own but somehow that wasn't me doing a good job i just got lucky in spite of myself. i've written a book and stall at the point of finding a publisher and i think it's because my ego is weak and faulty and a paralyzed prima donna due to lacks in the household during the early years.

maybe i'm just paranoid and, well - no good. maybe the book's no good, and maybe me thinking i might do anything worthwhile or rewarding following bekah's murder was delusional on my part...hm. hmmmmmmmm

i don't know about families. except for the one i made. oh that's BS, i love my brothers and my sister very much. i just somehow feel INFERIOR to them and as if they believe that i am and this won't change. oh yeah and i'm the fat one. i'm the only one who still smokes. i'm the only one whose daughter was killed, the only one who had so many kids and mostly without a husband...the needy one.

it's like a carved in stone dynamic left over from the dregs of a dysfunctional home. i'm the baby of the family and i guess if i make 100 i still will be - i might be an actual grown up otherwise. there are friends even readers who don't think of me as the littlest one the neediest one the fuck up. just no one whose going to be in morro bay this weekend.

[wrong! there will be my five boys and the spirit of my girl]

eh, as if i don't have enough shit with the cash shortage now i have to fuss myself silly because my brothers bruised my little ego years ago, and my big sister cannot rise above her mother's drunken neglect even though that mother's been dead for 23 years?

help. lol ... bet you didn't read all this but i had to get it off my chest so thanks for being there anyhow. okay, thanks dr bob i'm going back to sleep. it's 5:30 am...no, it's almost 6 now - i had quite a bit to spill.

love, barbara

gimme call after you sleep ok? love you
barbara
- posted by barbara @ 4/22/2004 06:16:00 AM  0 comments

 
Writers In TouchWriters In Touch
Writers and Writing Website - Write, read, give feedback and make friends with other writers...


looks just like thought cafe, with a slightly different color scheme. okay! i'll join and put 'em on the blogroll too
- posted by barbara @ 4/22/2004 01:36:00 AM  0 comments

 
musings of the season, or at least the morning.


i only get to use my current graphics server hpphoto.com: home for my blog for five more days...figgering just what i ought to do now. i haven't posted much anyway - haven't written much - haven't painted much...haven't done much.

thought a lot. :) read a little. connected, with bereft mothers and benefactors and friends, andy's here til next monday so i have reason to rejoice. my brother will be 50 tomorrow, my daughter-in-law is 29 today, and one of my two lifelong friends was 49 yesterday.

we don't talk about her birthday being the same as hitler's, or the anniversary of the day a high school in CO became a bloodbath of terror for staff and students and viewers [like me].

i'd run away from home the night before, and was spending the day in the motel room i'd run to. i walked rory to school and called my boss and gave him a synopsis of the previous night's events...leaving out the part where i'd been threatened with death almost nightly for the months preceding this move. i had gathered up rory, some clothes, and the work i'd brought home the night before after my sister called me from her home in WA and heard the terror and despair in my voice. she told me she was going to call the police.

i had been begging him daily to move back out. i wouldn't sleep with him, and tried to stay out of the bedroom where he would trap me with the malevolence of his countenance as he stood between me and the hallway beyond. we had had the same conversation so many times i was running out of energy to say anything at all. who was i? i sat at my computer and played online poker; i could not write around him, or on the computer, as he was a computer genius/professional who could and would find out everything that i did, said, or wrote on the computer.

1999, that was. five years ago now, and between then and today the greatest most debilitating tragedy a mother can know...yet, even now, i am leery about posting this. he has no name; that goes without saying. call him the fire, because he caught me on the rebound from a frying pan we'll call Dick.

anyhow. happy birthday marcia! something great did happen on april 20, too. love you



completely incongruent to the above picture of my lovely daughter bekah, here is a poem i wrote in 1996-1997, with the quote i like to preface it with:

Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it. Bitterness paralyzes life; love empowers it. Bitterness sours life; love sweetens it. Bitterness sickens life; love heals it. Bitterness blinds life; love anoints its eyes.
Harry Emerson Fosdick

Bitterness

So you will greet 40 tired and sweating
and sucking the love from your children
like some bizarrely reversed pregnancy -
And you will be, as ever,
alone

But you will not be grown-up, or graceful you
klutz of a slut you bad girl you.
You’ll be an ass, drunk and stupid
Or an old maid staring blankly at - what? why?
while the shrivel you spoke of
when still just a girl
destroys all your chances,
succumbs to the bitterness -

Oh you tried to swallow it -
You tried turning it loose
But it wound itself around you
like a python.

So finally you embraced it.
It was a man
any old man
Not the ONE man who could have redeemed it
Or kept it to himself!

Just like that you were quite, quite old.
Everything about you got tired and fat -
And you had lost so much caring
A crying kitten couldn’t move you
You could shrug at a newborn
As bitterness beamed expansively

© Barbara Bales 1995-2004 all rights reserved
- posted by barbara @ 4/21/2004 08:42:00 AM

 
Truth About War [home]
It's easy to believe politicians in other countries lie to justify their wars. And it's even easy to believe a U.S. President would do so—as long as he's a member of another party! But if we expect other people to question the claims of their leaders, then we must do the same with ours.

We will show that our politicians have lied to justify war, and that these lies endanger the American people.
- posted by barbara @ 4/18/2004 12:00:00 AM  0 comments

 
free diet pills! only 2.95 shipping and handling......
my letter to the bastards:
you now have 3 of 5 bottles of your product. i received the receipt from the post office today. GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK.

you have cost me time, money in referred charges as well as postal charges, emotional and mental as well as financial stress, and you should be ashamed of yourselves for perpetrating this fraud on an unsuspecting public.

you owe me 2.95, 36.90, and another 36.90. i will advise you of the charges my bank assessed after i was left overdrawn due to your unauthorized plundering of my account, and the postal charges. how do you propose to pay me for the time i spent waiting in line at the post office, or the frustration and anger?

GIVE ME MY MONEY BACK.

i want you to know that when i ordered your 2.95 special, i made it ABUNDANTLY clear to the person taking the order, as well as her supervisor, that 2.95 was ALL i was signing up for. ABUNDANTLY CLEAR. do you get it? when someone says, "all i want is the 2.95 special," that does NOT give you any kind of authorization to go back and take money from her bank account!

do you still appreciate my business?

barbara bales

and yes, i feel like an idiot. better an idiot than a thief. sniff.
- posted by barbara @ 4/15/2004 06:03:00 PM  0 comments

 
rapeasterbunny.swf (application/x-shockwave-flash Object)
i don't actually observe the holiday, but this is so cute. thanks to CC
- posted by barbara @ 4/12/2004 05:00:00 AM  0 comments

 
3rd-striker gets 85 years to life in stun-gun attack on Torrance restaurant owners
nobody died. but they got 85 years and seven plus years. in the meantime bekah's murderer will be out next month.

go figure.
- posted by barbara @ 4/09/2004 04:43:00 PM  0 comments

 
Crack.ass
Now, this is why I never had a blog before. You put yourself out there, let others see what you see, and instantly you're being prodded and pushed by random people. Well, Mr. 'mom,' if that is your real name (which i doubt), you need to know that you can't rush the creative process.
fatandy goes on to explain that as a "world-reknown purveyor of wisdom" he cannot be rushed, but he can be embarassed. especially by bloggers named "mom." :)

hehehehe
- posted by barbara @ 4/09/2004 04:55:00 AM  0 comments

 
because i want to know
today's question as far as i know simply cannot be answered - there are way more than five songs that i cannot live without
- posted by barbara @ 4/04/2004 09:04:00 AM  0 comments

 
L.A. could seize drunk drivers' cars
The council has repeatedly expanded its vehicle forfeiture program, allowing cars to be seized when they are used in prostitution, street racing and, more recently, illegal dumping and drug transactions. So far, 102 cars have been seized for those offenses.

That number could spike dramatically if police begin seizing cars involved in drunken-driving cases. The LAPD had 9,812 drunken-driving arrests citywide last year and 100 DUI-related deaths from 2001 to 2003.

One of those fatalities occurred in July 2001, when 21-year-old Rebekah-Marie Bales Zask was struck and killed in San Pedro as she tried to cross 25th Street. The driver arrested by police was found to have a .20 blood-alcohol level, more than twice the legal limit.

i skimmed this article earlier, shaking my head. forfeiture is getting out of hand, i think...then, talking to my friend bobby this evening, he said, "did you see your daughter's name in the daily breeze?" and it was the same article i had opened briefly. needless to say i did not read it very carefully; there indeed is bekah's full name.

i may not necessarily endorse this practice of law enforcement agencies profiting from expanding forfeiture laws. but it does warm my heart a little to know that my girl has not been forgotten. the byline for the story is David Zahniser, Copley News Service. i don't recognize his name from the stories that ran in the breeze in 2001.


the story told here is not entirely accurate and certainly far from complete; for instance, it is not mentioned here that after killing bekah, her killer drove home and passed out before being arrested hours later and charged with murder. anyway. he did get my girl's name right.

- posted by barbara @ 4/02/2004 11:36:00 PM  0 comments

 
Crack.ass
there's a terrific young writer starting his blog over at jesse's place...:)

- posted by barbara @ 4/01/2004 10:28:00 PM