The other day I started wring a post about my relationship with my mother, but it brought back a lot of hurt feelings and I started to cry, so I stopped.

That night I had a dream that I was in the back seat of a car with my daughter and my mother was driving. We stopped at a red light and saw an albino Big Foot type monster stamping on a kitten, my daughter and I just stared in horror as we watched the poor little kitten's fur fly, but my mother started ranting, "Look at that, isn't that disgusting, what is wrong with that beast?" Well the beast heard her and came over and put his huge arm right through the windshield and ripped my mother's throat out. I hugged my daughter and told her to just be quiet and not look at the beast and maybe it would go away, and it did.

My mother yelled and ranted like that at me all the time, her favorite line was "what the hell is wrong with you", but I never yelled back, I guess I have a lot of pent up anger. I have forgiven her but no matter how hard I try I cannot forget.

Do you think a dream such as this one is a good way to release anger?

Slacker Kid

High school was a place you showed up occasionally, but you didn't really leave a mark. You hated rules, authority, and structure. In fact, you still do.

Yes that was me, for a picture see previous post.

One day during our senior year, me and a few of my friends decided to skip school and go on our own field trip. Although we lived in Queens, none of us had ever been to the top of the World Trade Center, so we decided to go. A tourist with a Polaroid camera took a picture of us. That's me, front and center.

In honor of Blogstream’s one year anniversary, the following is the first few lines of the first post of some of the first bloggers. Can you identify them? If you need a hint their names are at the end of the post, in no particular order.

1. I am having a lot of fun reading different kinds of blogs. There is a lot to be said for this means of communications. It is so much more personal than keeping a journal and a lot more entertaining than reading other peoples websites. 10/4 Colo

2. Today I am inspired by Sylvia Plath. I want to write, yet unsure of where to start. Like a Hollywood movie, a Shakesperian novel, unraveling, I've decided to go back and also forth from beginning & also to end; alternating, until somehow it meets in the middle, yet continues. 9/23 Lucy

3. At a nursing home in Florida, a group of senior citizens were sitting around talking about their aches and pains. "My arms are so weak I can hardly lift this cup of coffee," said one. 10/20Topaz

4. In the recent Hurricane Katrina disaster, the poor (Ninth Ward in New Orleans) got the misery; the rich (Halliburton, Fluor, Bechtel, and Carnival Cruises) got the money; and guess who got the bill? 11/20 Whit

5. Margo and Vincent boarded a train that had no destination. They were strangers travelling west through the desert toward the sea. 11/14 Captain Morgan

6. I sometimes go out at night when I can't sleep, Carson City for the most part being a twenty four hour town, can provide a lot of ways for a person to amuse themself, anytime day or night, casinos and nightlife, along with a lot of desperate people on the prowl for human flesh. 9/30 Scratch

7. Hello, and welcome to my blog, my first blog, and my first blog post. This is something I've been wanting to do for some time, and I'm grateful to Blogstream for making it possible. I love to write and have written in journals for many years, starting when I was fourteen, and oh, how I wish I still had some of those teenage journals. Daisy10/20

 8. Good Morning! Ahhhhh, need another cup of coffee to get me going. Wow,I am sooo glad it is the weekend.. One of my most recent discoveries has been this blogging- I got an email from Angela Shelton the other day, who by the way is a most amazing woman for getting her voice out there about sexual abuse of children.. PolarB10/1

9. Ah... just me and my Corona, good smoke and even better music. I like all types of music. 60's, 70's, 80's "rock," and a little of the modern rock and roll 10/1 Icemelts

10. Love. People think about it,dream about it,search for it, sing about it,and blog about it. I'm in love,(make that: I'M IN LOVE).Belle 10/18

11. Finding the humor in life that usually goes unseen by most people, is a challenge, but worthwhile in our strange times --- so I enjoy writing about thoughts from everyday things that happen to me. Like last night when Elvis gave me a dirty look..... RitaB11/7

12. What the "H" is that???? My husband's words one evening four years ago as he walked in the door and saw a four-legged white thing with a really bad hair cut and no eyes. Actually it had eyes, they were just completely masked in white hair.Puppy 10/13

13. My first post...........arrrgh. First impressions are never easy to make. At least, Dear Reader, you cannot see my bedhead,or straggly pj's that are all kerflunky from sleep Blumoon10/2

14. Ohhhh I feel so virginal and innocent as I write my first words on my first blog! Well I would like to discuss animals and their perversions Donuts are my Life10/7

15. We find one another In a chaotic universe And the dance thus begins Wayfarer11/30


Topaz, Daisy, Whit, Polar B, Captian Morgan, Belle, Scratch, Lucy, Wayfarer, Donuts, Blumoon, Puppy, Rita B., Icemelts, Colo.

This is the street I grew up on. In the middle of the picture you can see the concrete wall that protected our street from the larger two lane road. To the left of the center light pole, in the distance you can see a small bridge that was part of the overpass for the train tracks.

There were four apartment buildings on my street. The rest of the block was taken up by a factory. In fact this area was full of factories and because of that coupled with the railroad tracks, the other kids at school weren’t allowed to come to my house to play. As a child my friends and I would go around to the factory workers at lunch time to collect bottles which we could turn in to be recycled for a nickel and then we would buy candy.

I lived on the third floor and I remember looking out the window as a child, at the trees, wishing I could go over that wall and sit under one. At night I often dreamt of flying, out my window and over that wall and landing in one of those glorious trees. In the spring after I turned eleven my mom decided that it was okay for me to go home for lunch, instead of staying at school. I had to walk past the factories and since it was lunch time the workers would be outside sitting on the ground eating their lunches.

Walking past them had never bothered me before but somehow this time something had changed. They watched me. They stared at me. It made me feel very self conscious. As the weather got warmer and I stopped wearing a jacket it got worse. They started saying things, like oh baby, and making weird smoochy noises and whistling and saying stuff to me in Spanish. It really bothered me, so I put my jacket back on. It was too hot for a jacket but I brought it with me anyway and put it on when I got to the corner. It made me feel safer and less exposed.

My mother never asked why I was wearing a jacket, but one day when I got home my father was there, he had come home for lunch too. He saw that I was sweating and asked me why I was wearing a jacket. So I told him that the factory workers stared at me and said stuff and made me feel funny.

My father got this weird look on his face and turned bright red. He didn’t say anything else about it and he drove me back to school after lunch. When I got home from school my mother told me that he went to talk to the factory owner and to let her know if the workers ever bothered me again. It was a long time before they ever even looked at me again.

I wonder if this is why I get so annoyed when I go out and so many people are speaking Spanish, perhaps the child in me still thinks they are saying bad stuff about me.