Being Amber Rhea

I was reading the Wikipedia entry about Kurt Cobain* and saw this, and it freaked me out:

Near the end of the vigil, Love arrived at the park and distributed some of Cobain’s clothing to those who still remained.

Somehow I had never heard about that before. And the reason it freaked me out is, a few months before Kurt Cobain’s death I had a dream that he died, and in the dream Courtney Love was selling his clothes. I remember the dream was very vivid and at the time I told my friend Kate about it and was very shaken.

Then, a few months later when he died, I thought of the dream and was slightly frazzled. But this adds another dimension to it.

I’ve had a few other prescient dreams but they’ve been about really minor things like sitting on a friend’s bed reading a book (a dream I had when I was 6 or 7 years old).

My mom had a prescient dream about death. The night before Dale Earnhardt’s death in the 2001 Daytona 500, she dreamed that he died in a car crash. She has never been a NASCAR fan (although my dad was) so it was off-the-wall for her to dream about a NASCAR driver. She said she didn’t feel alarmed or anything - it was just a feeling of acceptance. When she woke up she had the very clear thought, “Dale Earnheardt is going to die today.” Then when she heard on the radio that he’d been in a crash, she thought, “Yep, he’s going to die.” She told me about this several years after it happened.

Stuff like this really makes you wonder about the nature of time, dreams, interconnectedness, and what we think we know about existence.

—
* How I ended up reading the Wikipedia entry about Kurt Cobain: I was looking at my Tumblr dashboard, saw Caroline had posted a photo of Courtney Love (which I then reblogged), clicked through to the site the photo was from, saw a picture of Courtney and Kurt together, tried to remember the date of Kurt’s death and couldn’t, so I Googled it and ended up on the Wikipedia page.

When I was in Augusta last weekend, my mom dug out a tape from the 80s where she’d recorded some things of familial significance. I hadn’t watched it in years, but when I saw it, I knew immediately that this stuff would have to go on YouTube.

First up is my 30 seconds of fame on local television in 1986 (or it might have been 1987; I can’t remember for sure). My parents knew the guy who owned this piano shop and he asked us to be in a commercial. I remember we did several takes. I also remember complaining to my mom that I was too old to say “Mommy” and “Daddy,” and she explained to me that actors and actresses often play characters who are younger. That satisfied me.

Next is an Augusta local news segment from the mid 80s. My parents are in the B-roll of Maxwell’s for a few seconds toward the very end, around the 1:04 mark. It’s funny for a number of obvious reasons (80s hair, 80s attire, etc.) but also because it shows just how little local news has changed in the past 20 years.

Finally, my dad’s winning chicken recipe. Wait, let me explain: In the 80s, “Midday on 12″ was a program that came on at noon on Channel 12 in Augusta. They had a segment called “Lookin’ at Cookin’” where viewers could submit recipes, and a winner was chosen each month. My dad’s honey-baked chicken recipe was the winner one month in 1984. He won a set of really cheap pots that we ended up giving away to someone.

Aside: I love these two ladies’ Southern accents!

I also want to give a plug for Affordable Video Solutions on W. Peachtree. Originally we were going to digitize the video at home, because Rusty has one of those converter boxes to connect the VCR to his computer. But our VCR tried to eat the tape. So we took it to AVS and they fixed the tape (it wasn’t actually damaged; they just had to wind it back into the housing) and converted it to DVD. They were very friendly and fast, and the price for the conversion was $29.95. I definitely recommend them if you need anything like that.

ETA: Ha, the chicken recipe video is already the top hit on Google for "midday on 12" augusta.

Debating over whether or not to post this here, but here goes…

Last night, I made the apparent mistake (sad that it’s a mistake) of telling my mom about the plans Rusty and I have for the Georgia Podcast Network. Immediately she started talking about how and why our business might fail. Now, it doesn’t matter whether she actually had good intentions; that was completely inappropriate. I am not someone given to doing things on a whim. She should know this, after almost 27 years of knowing me.

So today I decided to email my mom and tell her that I was hurt by what she’d said. I could’ve taken the all-too-familiar tactic of just saying nothing, and letting it all blow over (on the surface, anyway, while unspoken feelings fester just below). But I’ve done that for too long, and it’s been too damaging to me; I’m not going to continue doing it. So I sent an email explaining my feelings on the matter and why I felt as such, and said that it’s my wish that she would be happy for Rusty and me. Seems reasonable, right?

Well, she writes back and says, “I’m not going to apologize for what I said. And you hurt my feelings too.”

I don’t understand how I could’ve hurt her feelings. I can’t apologize, because I don’t know what it is I’m apologizing for. Besides, that turns the conversation around and takes the focus off of my original grievance.

I shouldn’t let this bother me as much as it is… after all, on a certain level I knew what her response would be before I even started telling her about the GAPN stuff. But whether I should know better or not, I do want to share my dreams and excitement with my mom, and I want her to be happy for me. As Cliff Bostock said in this week’s Creative Loafing, “The yearning for a mother’s love never disappears.” (Perhaps that’s a bit hyperbolic for this particular situation, but whatever.)

When Rusty told his mom about these same plans and dreams, she said, “That sounds great.” And really, that’s all I was hoping to hear.

(And now… do I leave comments open, or not? Because I know my mom reads this, even though she says she avoids my blog because it’s “too personal.” Ah, let’s throw caution to the wind… comments are open, for now.)

I just gave my mom a check comprised of donations from readers over the past few weeks and my own contribution. She was speechless for a while, then said, “I’m probably going to start crying in a minute, but right now I’m just in awe.” She said I could post a big THANK YOU from her on my blog. So there it is!

I’m going to go ahead and put the stylesheet back. Even though there are still a few hours left of Naked Blog Day, I am going to bed at this shockingly early hour, and I don’t want to be freaked out by the expanse of white and Times New Roman in the morning.

I don’t feel like dealing with obnoxious comments (or even inocuous comments) at the moment, or doing much of anything that requires brain power, actually. I would love not to have to go to work tomorrow. As a quick summation, my mom is sick, and we won’t know how serious it is until tomorrow afternoon. So that’s been on my mind all weekend, despite my attempts not to fret about it. Here’s hoping it ends up being nothing major, and all my worries are for naught. Oh, Naught, how glad I’ll be to see you…

Before seeing The Aristocrats tonight with the GDBF, I decided to call my mom since I hadn’t called in a while. Ain’t I such a nice daughter? Scene (for purposes of your orientation/mental images): sitting on a sofa in the lobby of the Tara theatre, the GDBF to my left. Mom and I chat about work and life in general for a few minutes. Then my dad picks up one of the other phones - so now both parents are on the line, and I am bombarded! The conversation progressed thus:

Dad: Amber, this is your father. Now who is this Rusty character?
Mom: I’m sure she can’t go into a lot of detail right now, he’s probably right there!
Me: He is right here.
Dad: Well, what are his intentions?
Me: [laughing] “What are his intentions”? [GDBF laughs]
Mom: He heard that! I can hear him laughing!
Dad: Maybe he won’t be laughing so much after he talks to your father.

Just gotta shake my head and roll my eyes. So cute, aren’t they?

I can’t believe I haven’t posted anything since Wednesday. I feel like I’m letting you down, dear readers.

I’m in Augusta right now, and will be here until Sunday afternoon. Augusta is a weird place; this is something I realize more clearly each time I come here (as if 18 years of it wasn’t enough to beat that fact into my skull).

Today my mom started going through the Yellow Pages calling every place listed under “Coffee Shops” to ask if they had free wireless. She decided to take it upon herself after I wondered aloud whether there was anywhere in this town with free wireless. (I want to work on some programming projects, not to mention catch up on email, but I can’t get a damn thing done at my parents’ house, because they’re always bugging me.) She called one place and the exchange went something like this (from what she told me afterward - I, of course, could only hear her side of it, which was pretty funny by itself):

Mom: Hi, I was wondering if you have free wireless.

Guy: What? What do you mean?

Mom: Wireless internet service… I was wondering if you have it.

Guy: (suspicious) Why?

[Mom hangs up in disgust and recounts this brief exchange to me; we laugh]

[Phone rings]

Mom: Hello?

Guy: (yes, the same guy) Hi, how are you doing!!

Mom: I’m fine, how are you?

Guy: You just called asking about wireless internet. Why do you want to know that?!

Mom: (annoyed) I am a person who lives in this community, and I am trying to find out if there are any coffee shops that offer wireless internet access to their customers.

Guy: Oh. Because, you know, there are people who, if they know you have wireless internet, they come park their car in front of your store after hours and steal your internet.

Mom: (impatient) Yes, I’ve heard of people doing that.

Guy: (suddenly cordial; realizes that she’s not out to steal his bandwidth) I think the Metro has it… no wait… it’s Mocha Delite. On 5th Street. I think they have it.

Mom: Okay, thank you. [hangs up]

I don’t even remember the name of the place she called, but apparently it wasn’t a sit-down cafe.

Anyway. Bizarre, I tell you.

I might get together with Jen (I’m pimping her new blog) tonight and “show her the river.” No, that’s not a euphemism for naked giggling pillow fights. Don’t get excited guys.

It’s raining pretty heavily at the moment, so Chris and I are taking a break from moving Chris’s stuff into his new apartment. It has been a day of heavy lifting — with more to come after the rain subsides. (Shout-out to Jenny and Niki: hope everything’s going well in moving Jenny into her new apartment!) In the meantime, yet another picture from back in the day… my mom and me, September 1981:

My mom, May 1977: