Well we live off of Elmwood closer to Allentown so my mom and I walked to meet the girls at the arena. We were early. Today was a weird day. Got up visited with our neighbor who made breakfast and lunch for us in turn for cleaning his kitchen. We figured why not? Then my Aunt and Uncle came to visit for a few hours. The my dad and his good friend were visiting. Phone calls. Then it was time to go to the hockey game. I wasn't excited, but I wanted to go.

We got there and spent a half hour waiting for the girls to show up. This gave us time to people watch. I watched girls coming in and couldn't believe some of these outfits... why would you wear a mini skirt to a hockey game on a cold rainy night? Why wear beaded suede boots at the hockey bar? Don't get me wrong all of these fashions were hip and cool. Just not appropriate. I wouldn't wear nylons and a skirt with high heels to work out at the gym.

Anyhow we got in and ate the all famous meal hot dogs and fries with a pop. At intermission we had pretzels. This was culture shock for me. I have only been in the auditorium once before so I was really confused as to were we were going and how to get there and every usher I ran across gave me some weird line about how this leds to the 200 level and you have to have 200 level seats and you are not allowed. Like I am underage or something. So finally I dished it back and told the usher that all the ushers are making my first hockey game a memorable experience but one I would not like to repeat again. One of our other married friends suggested we go to the bar and see if there was anyone we'd like to strike up a conversation. We couldn't find it the first intermission. The ushers weren't helpful and until I dished it right back at one of the sphinx of police did i get any cooperation or explanation to the mystery of the well guarded 200 level. As if the President were there or something. Unreal. We finally find the bar. I was outraged at the price of my favorite mixed drink and discovered why I drink at home. Because it is simply cheaper to buy a bottle and share with friends instead of spending the same amount on 3 drinks at a bar with questionable company. It is not like there weren't cool people there. I was just so agitated by the time I got there I could have used the drink and then thought Chippewa Street is cheaper and on the way home.

The game was cool but I wasn't sure of the rules or what was happening and they would announce things with these times that were different from the count down clock but everyone thought i should mysteriously know this. I'm like whatever and still asked a million questions to the woman next to me throughout the whole game and she was very helpful. We ended up winning 3 to 1 in a very fast paced game that was both exciting and enjoyable to a beginner spectator for the grand sport of hockey. But somehow I could just imagine my Great Uncle and my grandfather (who have both passed) yelling and talking about the controversy that I didn't see at the game. The lady next to me explained some of the new rules and how this has taken a great deal of the fighting or controversy out of the game. There was a wild call in the second period - I think - where the ranger scored a second goal and it turned out the whistle had blown before the puck made the goal. All very confusing at the time but what a crowd uproar.

I got confused when they switched sides after intermission and I got back from the bathroom and I am routing for the wrong team. I miss the blue and gold jersey's and I'm not even a died hard fan. It was easier to tell the teams apart. We ended up being in a section where there were a lot of Ranger fans. That part was pretty weird.

Food was good. I still think baseball games are better, but maybe that is just the weather. I found most people to be decent. There was a great deal of drinking and some rudeness. One lady in the bathroom was telling me as we waited in a line that wound around the hallway that football games are worse and you hate to bring your kids because people get violent besides rude.

Well in summation I had a good time. Hockey is fun. Game was good. We won - that was great! Good eats. Fun company with friends. The walk home was good exercise. Spot stop for an ooie gooie treat was worth the warmth. One thing that struck me was a desire to run into a high school friend, Scott. He played hockey and we shared like three of four classes and an easy way of communication. I wanted to ask someone about the plays and the strategy and the rules. None of my girlfriends were very helpful. So I found myself thinking, why did I never go to one of his hockey games? Suddenly I missed, Scott.

My horoscope told me to do something I had never done before and I did. It was a good change. It got me thinking about interesting things. Where ever you are Scott you are remembered. YEAH - we won! Not sure when I will go to my next hockey game, but it is definitely on the cool events things to do in buffalo. Time for a hot shower to melt away the rainy night and get my body temp back to normal and my asthma under control - a little weezie tonight.

Rosemary how is it that life got so busy I missed your passing. Here I am a month later, missing you, crying for you, crying for me. Did you really know what an amazing woman you were? Did you know I miss hearing from you? Did you know I missed saying goodbye? I am so sorry that my last hug wasn't more of a potent memory. And thank you for making me a special person on a special night. Thank you for believing me. I am going to miss the sound of your voice... and your way of saying things... and seeing you at the back of a room smiling at me...

Crying really affects ones ability to proceed, even when you are journaling.

Death always hurts
a little deeper,
an extended ache
reaching past the physical
into this deepest
most private
part of our emotions
when it is someone
you love!
© Di M Rivera @ 11:15am 2005 Monday 10-17

I am going to miss you.
I am going to miss your smile.
I am going to miss your voice.
I am going to miss your personality.
I am going to miss your thoughts.
I am going to miss your creativity.
I am going to miss your concern.
I am going to miss your questions.
I am going to miss your cooking.
I am going to miss your home.
I am going to miss your messages.
I am going to miss your poetry.
But all of these you left
As memories shared with you
that as long as I remember you
You will always be there
Where ever I am
in my mind, in my heart and in my soul.
© Di M Rivera @ 11:30am 2005 Monday 10-17

You are gone
Traveling to the unknown
Having an adventure
Reaching to your limits
Surpassing knowledge
And experiencing for yourself
What it means to have an afterlife.

So why does Death humble us so?
Why do we ache for what we should celebrate?
Why do we wish for your presence here?
Why are we so selfish, can't I let you go?
You went before me, you had the courage to let go.
How do I?

Everyday this earth is a different place.
Elmwood will be bleaker this winter,
just because I won't run into you.
Your little person made the difference
in every life, person and friend
you had the pleasure of getting to know.
You enjoyed our lives, shared our pain,
Felt our sorrow, excited by our joy,
Experienced our happiness, worried with us,
And were elated by our victories.
You were a blessing.
I am blest for having had the honor
Of being one you called friend,
Of having your respect and
Your unwavering faith in my abilities.

Journey on, my friend.
I'll see you on the other side!
© Di M Rivera @11:45 am 2005 Monday 10-17

You never know where life will lead you. It was your normal every average work a day in the neighborhood sort of morning with 12 people wanting something from you in an unrealistic time frame and me with the it will get done WHEN it gets done perspective.

I even let go of one of my own deadlines and decided to just go with the flow. Fluid-day. Classes came and went. Cool moments, fun moments, not so fun moments, lots of emotional floaty moments... Lunch finally arrives... Today was a hungry day and me with my roman noodles as a back up for being too lazy last night to make a lunch... onto greener pastures and gineapigs. Bus Duty. Papers to correct and dead tired. Home. Dinner. Feet hurt... slowing down... need to go see dad at the skilled nursing facility... oh god - i am not going to make it... We get there it is a full house! Visit, laugh, bitch, moan, tell stories, share ideas, plan evil ways to torture offensive people, all in all - make each other laugh and know we are not alone in the good fight. Home. Too awake to settle in for TV watching. Too awake for surfing the net. Needed to sum up - in little less than half and hour Princess Buttercup will marry... oops wrong class!

I am thankful for blessed people who share their blessings with us in mysterious ways!

Fighting Temptations Soundtrack has a song that I play over in my mind when I have had an especially trying day... I feel blest!

It was a good day, time to crochet - got to get to making the x-mas presents, they do take time!

There is something inside me that is struggling. It feels very broken, just now. It seems that on every front that there is a battle going on. Frankly I am tired of fighting. I've been in this tired of fighting stage for 15 years. Saturn, Let me go! PLEASE!
My dad is in the hospital again. Surgery went well. He still has his toe! This is good and he is at a health care facility that sent me back to my teenager hood when my great grandmother was in a nursing home. These people moved like molasses yesterday. The attitude that they are old, so they can wait. SHIT! I hope they reach 70-80-90 they receive that very same attitude. HOW RUDE!
My neighbors or the tenants that live in the same house as me really need to have a wake up call. They are rude. The doors to the house are always open, front and back door! There are always people coming and going. The apartment they live in should not have a constant 10 people living in the apartment. They have company between 1 AM and 6 AM. Their company always knocks on the window, the door and rings my doorbell trying to get to their friends. I really am at my wits end with the whole issue.
Work. I do not care where you work. People are always going to be people. Why do co-workers need to approach each other with such disregard for respect and professionalism? I don't know about you, but when someone comes at me full force attitude waving like a battle battalion over their head - I am going to take the defensive because I feel like I am being attacked. Instead why can't they just walk up to you and say; I was thinking could I have a moment of your time to discuss an important matter to me... You might be interested in.... Did you know that... Would it be possible... - and the list can go on and on and on... The point being that if they want to ACTUALLY get the cooperation they seek they need to approach each other with a modicum of respect and treat each other like equals.
Due to my home situation I have been spending a great deal of time at my parents, one to help my mother with the care-taking of my terminal ill father. The other to stay away from the house until the landlord does something. This seriously limits my ability to be independent and have my own downtime and do things at my own pace, and yet is strangely comforting about being able to be with my parents. Yet I am happy that it will be temporary.
My father does worry me, though. When he is in high spirits he will fight the world and be a survivor. Yet, he can a deep level of depression, that is hard to help him out of, or even be supportive, because mom and I are not going through what he is. And as I have posted before I can't handle losing a parent right now!
Change is a funny thing, for the most part I can go with the flow and be flexible. Sometimes it's a wicked mistress that tempts you to go past your comfort zone and allows you to become someone else usually smaller than you are and you are not sure how to balance this experience.

After my first full week of work I came home and slept for several hours. Life has really been interesting as of late on many levels. I have decided I am a workaholic. So when I come home and just become one with the couch I begin to realize that I need to balance my time.

Trying to get the energy to get up a move is really difficult and I have one really special friend counting on me to get up and move. I have somewhere to be in less than and hour. I need to finish organizing some stuff and then I need to get dressed and go and I was hoping journalling would get me to move.

I really love rain. Most of the time I enjoy sitting and watching the rain and just connecting with the universe. Usually peaceful and cleansing moments evole to journal writing and meditation. Basically quiet time and I have a hard time giving up moments like that when the real work a day reality severs my moment and causes me to have to be social or keep an appointment.

How do you know when you schedule something that your not going to want to do it when the time comes. Actually I just want to be in my quiet space. I think that has to do with the vary fact I work with kids all week and I NEED my quiet time. It is very valuable to me. The rain doesn't help.

Ok. There is someone counting on me to do something so I need to go do it. I really need to post more often.

YOU will get it!
Last summer before I went camping I said to the universe with the utmost confidence, with the I-Know-What-I-Want-Request. I simply stated to the universe I want to get laid.
The Universe in it's ultimate wisdom and incorrigible humor answered me in ways I never expected.
After 3 weeks of being in Nature with other Nature "lovers" I had the great honor of being asked by 12 different couples to join them in there love making ventures as the guest star to their sexual partnered family. Now this group of couples was quite diverse and I doubt highly that they knew the others or they had had something of a common interest. I spent 3 days deliberating over the requests and made a very real enlightened moment.
I had realized that I had very distinct wants and needs met that had very little to do with getting laid, but more to do with cosmic connections, loving relationships, genuine friendships and a need to better understand myself in terms of what attracted me sexually and what made me step out of myself and ask another human being to be in a very private part of my existence.
Last year I wrote fifteen pages front and back of very specific things I desired in a lover/mate/relationship. I left it alone like all good writing, so that I could get some space from it, to gain a little perspective.
This year I went camping and I was very specific with my requests. See I lost my male best friend and I so need a male perspective to balance me and the other was to get reacquainted with a specific person I enjoyed his company greatly. The results were interesting. The week before I left I had a friend who wanted to introduce me to someone she felt I would get along with on many levels, but she lost his information. After a lengthy discussion of future events I told her where I was camping and she sent me on a mission to make contact with this friend. We did get along. We shall see. I ran into the now ex-girlfriend of the specific person I was interested in getting reacquainted with and discovered that this year had been difficult on him and he was unable to come camping. We have exchanged email information in order to keep in touch. Yet I met wonderful people that have the great potential to become life long friends... I got more specific and the universe became more vague and lets us make more choices in the directions we think we would like to experience life from. Every step, our own choice... Empowering - Scary - and cosmically cool!
So the moral of my story IS: Be Careful What You Wish for - You Will Get It! Be as specific as you need to be, but remember the results are in direct connection with how much effort you put into your request.

I can't believe that it has been 4 months since I have posted. Seems like life got really busy....Father's Day is always a hard day for me, as my father and I are way too much alike for our own good. The hard part is that it is also my grandmothers birthday and it is always hard after a loved one passes on and leaves you to fulfill your dreams without them.
I have never known a world without my grandmother. Needless to say we are really close. Her death has definately been a journey of faith for me. She was always my sanity, my sanctuary, my friend, my mentor, my voice of reason and most of all she was my grandmother. She was the head of the family. I am getting closer to the chair of matriarch and I do not want it yet. I am not ready to become someone people look up to... I still make too many mistakes!
I bet that is what she thought when her mother died. I love her so much and I miss her terribly. It has been almost six years since her death. Life hasn't been the same without her. Somehow I manage to find away to keep waking up and find a reason to get out of bed simply because she always did. She like structure and self-discipline.
She taught me so many things. I discover something about myself everyday I try to attempt to live life as if it were my last moment (-something my great gradmother taught me-) and I begin to understand what she meant when she said I would understand in time. Not when I grew up, but when it was the right time I would understand and learn. My grandmother was a great advocate for women and education. She always told me that it was never a waste of time to learn new things. That an education may put me indebt financially but it could not be taken away. That my education was a way to independence and freedom.
She was a very cool person and I am honored to have known her for the blessed 24 years that we had the opportunity to become friends. A cherish moment I will always be blessed for living. Her mother, my great grandmother, thought two very different people were pretty amazing women. Strong, loving, kind, outspoken and passionate women.

When I was a child I used to have pen pals all over the world. I just realized that I haven't written to anyone in a very long time. True, I stay in contact with my friends via email and the phone, which have their benefits especially part of the current technological age we live in.
There is something about seeing a letter in a familiar hand addressed to you. There is a joy that wells in ones heart when you realize someone took the time out of their very busy lives to take a few moments to tell you about their life, share an experience, ask advice, reach out to you, tell you a funny story, share a photograph of a child, friend, boyfriend, something significant in their lives written in their handwriting and took the time to mail it.
It is true that email is quicker, faster, more convenient but somehow less personal it is easier to put it off, it is easier to do that important research, there is always another way to spend you time. Yet there is no personal touch. It is amazing how much of ones personality disappears without handwriting versus typed information. There seems a lack of personal touch in our sophisticated lives where we sacrifice little things with other things and somehow we lose a great deal more than we bargained for. A compromise without realization about what makes us happy.
I remember that when I was a child the excitement of finding out all the news when I received a letter from my pen pal Tonya in Alaska. I remember tearing open letters from my cousin while she was in college. I remember the joy it brought me to see someone took a moment of time to write something important about their lives to me.
I think the thing that saddens me is the fact that I have no idea where these precious individuals are now in their busy lives. It is a strange thing that happens when we grow up we forget the very important things. The magical things that make our lives happy and bright. It is a strange thing that happens when we grow up we lose a great deal of innocence. We lose the power to BELIEVE! Why would we give up such a precious gift. The power to believe in fairies, never land, unicorns, that someone could fly... I don't honestly think we would choose to give it up. I think it is those little compromises we make to become adults. But what does it really mean to be an adult? Did we buy into an illusion and give up our real power to create? Did we give up our divine right to be a part of creation?
As an artist I am always searching, asking questions, researching, questing, creating, solving problems, creating solutions... what is more magical than creating a solution out of complete chaos? Human beings have an amazing opportunity to be part of a larger part of life, just with the ability and the use of that ability to believe.
Our society loves to be entertained. We love stories. We love to surrounded in a good story, even if it make you cry. Someone once told me that without stories in our lives we would find it hard to live life. There is a connection with innocence, belief and the soul food of a good story. What is it that makes you happy? What little things reach into your heart and make it sing?

I have been sick for 8 weeks officially today. It is viral. I can not believe how a little thing like staying hydrated can make the difference to some-what-normal functioning versus complete shut down into rip van winkle mode. All the important preventative measures: vitamin c, pushing the fluids (water especially), a multi-vitamin, trying to eat solid foods that react well with ones intestines, getting 8 hours of sleep, taking naps when tired, and taking all the medication the doctor gives me.
This makes me tired of most things and most of all other people's psycho dramas. I am glad I am slowly developing a social life again, but most people don't really care that you feel like shit and it isn't going away no matter how good you are.
One friend is in love with a man who is recovering from a divorce and he is doing the best he can to heal because he really wants to be with her. She is sitting on her laurels partly pining away and when the insecurity mounts she sabotages the relationship that they have worked so hard to repair. She is using the sexuality sword. Currently they have both agreed do to several thousand miles to have another sexual partner. Yet their fragile emotions don't seem to be doing well with this emotional, what if - about the other person they don't know, but they know their significant other is sleeping with. This is truly a tangled web. I don't really believe either wants to force the others hand, but they both have conflicting interests and the thing that is holding them together is love, but they are afraid to call it that.
I am happy for another friend who has a date over the next coming days. Too long over due! It is a good thing for a girl to be in love. I think it is a healthy state to be in as long as you keep it in perspective. I am wary about the BLISS stage, unless it can stand the test of time.
I just recently got back in touch with a new friend from the summer and we are writing furiously about how maniacally crazy our year has been. It is so good to be in conversation with her.
I have another friend who is in-love with another friend of mine. The romance has ended. She is fine. He is not. I have been trying to be the sounding board to help him get where he has got to go, but I am feeling a little like either way I might betray one of them at any time. She is a better friend, when she can. He is a new friend. I am trying to be neutral ground.
I found out new information about where I go to vacation and want to get involved in the changes but being that my life has such volatile changes on a daily basis I want to wait until some of the deadlines have passed.
My dad is out of the hospital and home heal ling. I am his alternate nurse. My mom can't deal with blood. I can. She can do with other bodily fluids, most of which I have no desire to deal with - so that is her job. I still go through my ER - Journal emotions pretty regularly. There are good days and there are bad days.
PMSing and Stress recently have been the monkey on my back and once I could identify the mischievous monkeys I felt immediate relief. PMS rises it's ugly head every now and again. Stress has been a perpetual state of existence this 9 months or so. Therefore it is just figuring out when there is a problem and how much of a peak it is. High or low.
Bills always present. So my finances are relatively stable but not exactly where I want them. Things could be better, but things could also be worse. I'll take what i have and pray for better once the certification hoops are successfully completed.
Teaching is a funny business. Students are always unpredictable. There always seems to be a conundrum that always needs to be unraveled.
I myself have been a bad student. I have an incomplete whose deadline is rearing its ugly head at me and I am only half-way through my coursework. I am off to see the wizard the wonderful wizard of oz and try to complete the impossible incomplete on time!

A friend of mine has a studio with some other artists called Art Brutale at 2923 Main Street, near Sisters Hospital. They had an Open mic last night Thursday. I got a chance to meet some really cool peeps! New musicians, new poets and new artists. It felt good to read again. I read three poems that were never read aloud. The other thing that was really cool was the relaxed atmosphere and the communication between the reader and the audience, got some feedback on a new work in progress. It felt good.
For all those e-peeps that like to try something new, you might want to give the small but family style gallery a try. There is a number of different events that they have from art on the walls, t-shirts for sale for the gallery and a local rapper, poet, artist: MC Vendetta. Very cool. Music. All around arts.