August 31, 2004

While I did not complete and send out my chapbook manuscript, I did compile the poems I'd like to put into that first chapbook. And I put together and sent out 5 poems to a reputable national poetry journal. I dropped them off in the post office slot at 9:50pm. Phew.

In the meantime, I see my work as so doggone juvenile, limited and/or self-indulgent. This is not me fishing. This is me saying I need to read more, broaden my vocabulary and subject matter, extend my voice and lengthen but tighten my poems. I don't think I'll get too obscure and academic and intentionally inaccessible, but I do need to move closer to something that can hold its own among the well-known poets in the country today. And dang, there are a LOT of those!

I realize this sounds awfully egotistical, the thought that I could reach that level. But if I don't believe my poetry will ever afford me a reputation and respect among peers, what are the chances that it will all on its own, without me thinking it could happen?

Tired, now. Still suffering from strep (can feel it at night), and last night I didn't really sleep. I played the "I'll set the alarm for an hour from now and get up and write" game from 11pm-2am. After D. got home, I told myself I'd get up at 4:30am and write. Then it was 5. Then I barely made it to work on time after all. So tonight, I'll try for a full (or almost full) 6 hours of sleep.

August 29, 2004

I turned 38 yesterday. The first thing I did was sleep past 7:30am. Then I roused myself and went out to get a latte and a haircut. I came back from the haircut to learn that the hospital had called to say that I have strep throat. So mid-day, I ran up to the hospital pharmacy and got antibiotics.

Later, I picked up a babysitter and D. and I went out to dinner. We tried a new sushi joint. Very nice. Afterwards, we walked downtown and browsed in the local bookstore together. We haven't just wandered and browsed like that in a long time. Wandering and browsing is what cows and horses and the gatherer contingent of the hunter/gatherer tribes do. We are usually more the racing and collapsing types. Or I am, anyway. D. actually has a great gift for relaxing. I could learn from him. If I stopped in one place long enough.

But the birthday was peaceful. I hung out, I napped. I did little. It was good.

And today was good, too. Slept even later. Did very little until I met the writer's group for coffee and butt-in-chair writing time. Still working on the poems. Deciding which to send out in a chapbook, and to whom, and when.

Something will go out by the end of the month - Tuesday! - anyway.

Birthday Eve

I didn't post last night because I couldn't swallow without the kind of pain that made me long for the good old days of childbirth. I'm better this morning, but since I've had this sore throat off and on for a couple of weeks with really no other cold-like symptoms and no fever, I guess I'll call the doctor and have them stick a giant q-tip down my gullet to see what's going on. The no-fever symptom doesn't really count for much in my book because I usually run below normal.

(Unlike my husband, who always runs a temp. slightly above normal, and for a while was able to trick school nurses into calling his mom and sending him home.)

I'm at work, and must catch up - so no greater note than this for now. It's my last day as a 37 year old. Puts me in mind of this Bill Collins poem:


On Turning Ten

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

-- Billy Collins

Welcome Clare

I'm happy to see that Clare has JOINED US and is now blogging. Mwah-ha-ha! There's no stopping The Blog now. It will encompass the whole world -- or The Whole Entire World as Julia's heroic character would say (as in, "I have to save the whole entire world!")

Thank God as much as my job may demand of me - even on my "vacation days" (when I had 4-7 pages or calls a day), at least I don't have to save the world. As Sarah Connor put it, "Do I look like the mother of the future? I mean, am I tough, organized? I can't even balance my checkbook!"

The girls survived their first day of school. And I'm happy to report that so did their teachers. R's class of 18 has 11 BOYS. I want you to imagine instructing a drunk baker's shy-by-one dozen boys between the ages of 9 and 11. Okay, now stop. You should see your face.

And it's not like the girls in the class are sweet quiet demure little things. They can hold their own. They are tough, healthy girls. The kind that are pretty but dangerous. Yeah. That kind.

S.'s Kindergarten consists of playing, singing, hearing a story, playing, taking a walk, and playing. Except that it's a survivalist kind of playing. They have as toys things like metal shovels and a water pump. They will be carding wool tomorrow to sew into a pillow. I asked S. what they did today and she said with great excitement, "I got to wash my own dishes!"

I think the school will be good for me...er, for her.

August 24, 2004

Today was a wholly domestic day. I am tired but feel pretty good about what I accomplished, especially considering I didn't get dressed until after 10am.

By then I'd already taken 2 calls from work and had done a number of chores including getting the girls fed & ready to face a day of shopping for school and other school-starts-tomorrow type activities.

Did I mention that school starts tomorrow?

Both children will be in the same school, only a mile from our house. S. will be in Kindergarten. R. will be in 4th grade. I know I'm more excited about it than they are. Even as tired as I am.

I stayed up late sewing a little apron for S., according to the teacher's cryptic written instructions to all Kindergarten parents. (I pity anyone who attempted it who hasn't sewed much before. ) One side will be worn facing out during cooking, and the other during art. This is a Waldorf-inspired school, after all. With two years of kindergarten and no reading this first year. Although we're working on that at home anyway.

The girls have new lunch boxes, new shoes and some new clothes. They worked together to make their lunches this afternoon, after we got back from a massive Costco trip that it will take me a month to pay off. Good think I bought a month's worth of groceries. Or thereabouts.

Tomorrow I am taking the day off again, and there's the potential (if I get fewer work calls than I did today) that I'll have about 2 hours to work on my poetry.

My current goal: entering a chapbook competition. The postmark deadline is the end of the month. I have the poems - enough, I think. But I need to decide which to use and put them all together. And post some of my newer ones to the lists I belong to for critiques.

On another note, I started to learn Hiragana today. We leave for Japan in 8 and a half weeks. I'm starting to dream about having incomprehensible conversations with Japanese people. In my dreams, I don't understand what I'm saying to them.
And neither do they.

Singing Suzanne's Praises

Suzanne, who is in my writer's group, is tall and graceful, with beautiful long red hair.

She is witty. She is compassionate.

She is smart and kind. She is generous.

She writes things that are clever and insightful.

She once wrote a great essay about the pain of being labeled "average."

She is NOT average.

August 22, 2004

Tomorrow my daughters and I will leave at 6am and I'll drive us north, and home. The plan is to get back home in time to prepare for a Writer's Group meeting.

Okay. So I can't create a 25th hour in the day. And I am still not much good for anything after 10pm. But I can try to write. Even with the friggin' Olympics on in the same room. Right? Yeah, right. I mean "write."

August 21, 2004

I am back in Hemet. I have just had my first professional massage. It's a wonder I can type. My sister, who is the Southern representative of the "Let's drag Rebecca into the world of self-indulgence for her own good" Committee, lined up a day of massages for myself and 3 other friends.

My sister has had hundreds of massages, but this masseur apparently has spoiled her for anyone else. The technique he used with me is Hawaiian.

I found this quote about Hawaiian massage: "There is a sublime awareness that every cell of the body and aspect of consciousness suddenly becomes totally and completely filled with the presence of life force Intelligence, in an ever-vibrant stream of love, beauty, delight and goodness. Intelligence offers conclusive knowing that “I Am This Life” and “I Am One Being, Complete and Whole.” The contrivances and facades of self-image become transparent and unimportant. In its place, a wonderful and triumphant remembrance of true Self-identity emerges and fills one’s entire universe."

Uh.

That wasn't the exact method he was using.

But it was good anyway - even in spite of the fact that I was completely naked except for the hand towel / tucked in sheet that covered only what a small bikini would cover. I'm still modest to the point of prudishness, so to be so exposed (even to a professional) and try at the same time to completely relax was a challenge to say the least.

The method he did use, Lomi Lomi, is Hawaiian for "Make the client think you have 8 hands." Apparently, the idea is to reconnect all the disjointed parts of the body by rubbing them all at once in sweeping waves with the forearms and elbows and all 8 hands. This is unlike other methods of massage that compartmentalize the body into pieces as though they had nothing to do with one another.

I am now one happy intact body, with olive oil in my hair.

And all is well with the world. Everything is good. Anything that is not good is still good. It will all work out just fine.

Thanks, too, to the supportive comments to yesterday's post. They help just as much as the massage. And I didn't have to drink gallons of water after them.

August 20, 2004

I’ve spent the last two days fighting this feeling of being defeated.
Defeated about all sorts of things, but one of the biggies is not having (not MAKING) the time to sit down and write.

In a draft for this post, I whined and complained about how hard my life is. Now I’m much better and I can say only that something has to change. D. and I stayed up very late talking about all sorts of things (which was really important for us to do), including the fact that I HAVE to figure out a set time/day for myself. Alone. Without the kids. By myself. Alone.

You moms out there reading this understand what I’m saying. And I should count my work time as alone time, but really, all day at work I’m at the beck and call of 2-10 people at any given time – needy coworkers (anyone reading this is excluded from that comment) and needy customers.

I like to be needed. I like to help. I like to do my work well. It’s just not relaxing, quiet time, though – is it?

Oops. I thought I’d gotten all the self-pity out of my system. Nope. Guess not.

I’m better now.
Thanks for the read.

August 17, 2004

I have officially broken my blogging streak, but I'm not going to let that stop me from getting back on the write-everyday horse.

The flight home Sunday night was delayed by three and a half hours, so I didn't get home until 1am. Knowing I had to be at work at 6am, I just couldn't blog. I am weak. And then last night I chose sleeping over writing. Again.

The delay at the airport was a good thing, though. I love hanging out at airports and watching the people. I think about why they're traveling, where they're going, who's waiting for them at the other end. Or who isn't. And why not. I love the power of the planes taking off and landing, the over-priced gift shops, the food joints with people reading or working on laptops while they eat. There are people with tattoos, dressed in crumpled ill-fitting clothes, and people wearing the best suits. Some dress for comfort, some still dress especially well for travel.

I even enjoy studying how people respond to the new security measures. The men who protest about taking off their shoes, the mothers trying to juggle four children and all the little bits and pieces that go with them: blankets, dolls, gameboys, books, pillows, snacks, drinks.

I’m much more alert at airports than I used to be. I evaluate people more for hidden motives. I decide who is an undercover Federal Air Marshall (or who is IS, Kate). I try to avoid racism, but it’s hard not to give an extra glance to a young middle-eastern man traveling alone who looks nervous. Then I think, “I’d look nervous too if everyone in the airport were scrutinizing me.”

On a completely different note, today my older brother is 44 years old. My oldest brother turned 45 at the end of July, and my sister turned 36 a week ago. I'm next in the line-up. I used to joke that by the time they got to me, my parents were out of money for birthday presents.

August 14, 2004

I'm at my mother's house in Hemet, California. I've called this town the mobile home capital of the West, but I may have to change my opinion of it. Last night, my mother & sister gave me a tour of the newly opened Club House and facilities at the housing development where my mom lives. It's downright palatal. It's like a Palm Springs resort, only a tad cooler.

There's a marble-tiled high-ceilinged lounge with an enormous fireplace, a bistro area, a massive ballroom, a billiards room, a library, a gym with top-of-the-line equipment, and a game room. I think the idea for the last room is poker or chess, but the way I think, I see "Game Room" and I picture four or five wrinkled, stooped octogenarian sitting around with cranberry juice and goldfish crackers at midnight croaking things to one another like, "Okay, so you see this manor house guarded by three Orcs. What do you do, Violet?" "I pull out my broadsword and charge the place, Vernon!"

My favorite perk here is the Theater. It's a private movie theater with a big screen and a DVD player. Every seat is an extremely comfortable stuffed chair with a cup holder built into the right armrest. They show a different movie every week (this week it's "I am Sam"), but if no one is using the room, you can bring your own DVD and have a private screening. Between this theater and the incredible palm-tree surrounded courtyard, state-of-the-art BBQs and huge swimming pool, I'm thinking this is the place to be if you're 55 or older and don't mind living in Hemet. The hot tub is nice too. I estimate you can fit about thirty-two well-sized senior citizens in it easily. Some people's built-in backyard pools are smaller.

Today we slept late, had home-made eggs Florentine and coffee for breakfast (after I did a short jog), and then I payed my bills and we swam. For lunch, we had Chinese food. It had a very soporific effect. My sister and I napped. My mother played solitaire on her computer, and my daughter read all of Espiranza Rising.

I think the three of them are watching the Olympics now. Television, which does not exist as a medium in our house, has already cast its evil spell on R. Maybe I'll blog about WHY I HATE TV (by a former addict) soon.

On a lighter note, Spellcheck has once again brightened my day with its highly-evolved sense of humor. I just quickly checked this post, and I knew I'd said "yes" to fixing something I didn't mean to fix, so I reviewed once again.

I'm glad I did. I wouldn't want word to get out that the Four Seasons at Hemet has "a bigotry area" instead of a Bistro.

August 13, 2004

This weekend R. and I are flying to visit my mom and sister in Southern California. I'll leave R. there for a week with Grandma then will drive down next weekend with S. to spend a few more days and head north again before they start school. The summer is almost over. S. will have one more week of preschool and then we will have reached the milestone of having both kids in elementary school. At the same school. Dropped off at the same place, at the same time M-F.

Kindergarten is half-day. We have no idea where S. will go for after-school care. I might even have to line up baby-sitters at first. This may seem amazingly irresponsible of me - not having this figured out yet - but it is dependent in part on the other Kindergarten parents at our Charter School who are trying to organize a co-op or hire someone to do on-site afterschool care. This is one responsibility I'm not stepping up to take hold of. Yet.

The charter school, although good in many ways, is notorious for its poor communication skills. I could tell lots of stories to illustrate this, but it wouldn't be charitable. And I have other, better stories to work on anyway...

August 12, 2004

This year marks the centennial of my maternal grandmother's birth.

Allison Dorsey Hale Fadeley was born October 13, 1904 and died July 14, 1996. She was my mother's mother, the relative with whom I was closest. We shared a love of books, of education and English comedy, of coffee, and sour dough toast with red current jelly. I still miss her terribly.

The last few years she was alive, her sight was very poor due to macular degeneration. I would come to her house about once a week and help her with her bills and writing checks for charity (she was quite a philanthropist). We would talk about religion and politics and biographies and the day-to-day annoyances that came with growing older.

After her vision failed, Nana’s hunger for books had to be satisfied by books on tape and by me reading to her. She had me read the entire Mapp and Lucia series by E.F. Benson. She also had me tape myself reading it so she could listen to it while I was gone. So I have something like 30 tapes of me reading books to my grandmother. The tapes also captured her coughing, the long-dead dog’s tags clinking together while he scratched himself, and us laughing at the story and making random comments to one another. It’s a strange thing.

I also have her last driver’s license and her tax returns from the 1930’s, and pictures of her in front of a little plane she flew in sometime around 1920. I have cards and letters from the many close friends she had all over the country, and tapes from an oral history she and I worked on.

I’m transcribing the tapes. I hope to put them on paper and print it out for my mother and brothers and sister in time for the 100 year anniversary of her birth. Maybe later a fuller biography will come, but for now, setting down what she had to say about her life is enough.

August 10, 2004

Is there some reason that we can't all wear sari's and salwar kameez if we want to?

The day I gather my courage and buy such an outfit and wear it, I will be declaring independence from the opinions of others. Some of you may already not give a fig about what other people say, but I am not so thick-skinned or self-confident.

Indian clothes are beautiful, and practical and comfortable. (I think.)

And I know I should be able to wear what I want without caring, but I'm just not quite there yet.

I'm working on it.

When you see me in a sari, you'll know I've arrived.

August 9, 2004

I'm trying to feel no pressure to be brilliant, witty and insightful just because the people I care most about in the world (and whose opinion I value most highly) are reading this blog. This should help get the pressure out of my system: blah blah blah. There.

(I'm really writing this Tuesday mid-morning from work, in between telling people we can save their RAID arrays but that it will cost them over $20,000. And I must quit and post.)

August 8, 2004

All the extra sleep I got last night is now wasted and I'm going to start the week in a deficit again, but it was fun to stay up and watch Wasabi one more time. Without subtitles, so I had to work hard on both my French and Japanese.

We finished the gravel for the courtyard today. Or at least, everything we could without figuring out the fountain and a few other details.

D.'s mom came up for a while and told some very interesting stories about growing up in France and why her mother and older sister stopped speaking to one another. Family history. You gotta love it.

Who just tried to call me 15 minutes ago, though? Hmmm.....
You can try again, but I am going to bed now. Really.

August 7, 2004

Today after R. had her riding lessons and I picked up S. from a playdate, we went next door and met our neighbor's friends from Montreal and swam and chatted. They are nice people, kind people who are bright and friendly and have a good sense of humor. To see a couple who obviously love one another and their children, and to see them play with their children (two girls, 11 and 13) is very refreshing. It reminded me again of what I want with my family.

Tonight the local gym hosted a Parent's Night Out. For $25, we were able to take the kids to play in a fun safe environment from 6:50-10:20pm while we had a chance to be alone together. (With the added benefit that I didn't have to clean the house for a babysitter.)

Dan and I were able to talk about what's working and what's not working in our lives, and we had a good sushi dinner to boot. The girls came home exhausted.

August 6, 2004

Here's how you'll know I'm cheating: the time of this post is 11:59pm 8/6/04, which means I really am posting early morning 8/7/04.

What would I do without the Writer's Group? So nice to have accountability and an ear and two other sets of eyes, and so nice to hear other writers' work develop.

J. - good luck with the book treatment!
S. - good luck with contacting the PD!
(Go ladies, go!)

I, in the meantime (who am strung out on decaf mochas and on too much talking about myself) will research the market, work on short stories, work on poems - chapbook competition, deadline the end of this month - and in general try to stay focused (focus, Julia) on my work.

I have a drawer of rejection letters, but they're old. At the very least, I should update my collection of no-thank-you's from editors. Things don't get published if they sit in a drawer, and certainly they don't get published if they are never brought to fruition by busily typing fingers.

August 5, 2004

Can't post. Busy writing. Falling asleep too, but still trying at any rate to work. Perhaps I could wake myself up by writing about whale cheese, but it's hard to say, so for now, I'm sticking to the story I'm working on.

But I'm asleep. The nonsense words are starting to come. For example, if you skip past continents to Icleland-ica, the grease on the tire iron will shadow the pyramid under your breeze. See? I'm friggin' asleep, I tell you. The above was not some witty example of how I might sound while asleep. It's the real scary thing.

Maybe I can get up at 4 and write.....?

And the cry went up: "Whale Cheese!"

August 4, 2004

It's late again. The night sneaks up on me, daily catches me out.

I honestly think I need two days. One for work and family, and one for me. For writing and walking or running or just cleaning out my wallet. I mean, how many receipts can one keep?

Here's another neurosis I'll expose: I used to keep my Safeway grocery receipts so I could make a log of money spent on groceries per month. I long ago stopped that practice, but now I keep the receipts in my purse so I can take them home and recycle them. Because they're paper. And because I don't want to believe Penn & Teller's Bullsh**t episode about how recycling really does the planet no good. However, since the Safeway receipts also have my name on them, before I put them in my recycle pile, I rip out the part of the receipt that has my name. And that part goes into our little garbage bin of paper to be shredded.

I think of the "to be shredded" bin (really a nice wooden box D. made years ago) as a temporary pile, but in reality, I rarely take care of it, so it's the place any savvy identity thief should go directly to for easy criminal convenience since it contains a ton of personal information like account numbers on receipts and our signatures.

So another thing I could do in my second daily day would be shred that stuff.

HOWEVER

Since I do not have the luxury of two days per day, and since (as I've already pointed out), I don't like to spend too much time window shopping when I can't buy the item in question, less whining is called for.

And, as I'm just starting to see (thanks to Clare for the book that points this out), less thinking is what's really required.

I have a very very noisy brain. And an interesting personal relationship with the snooze alarm, too. I am the only one this happens to? Because the snooze alarm goes off (more than once) while I'm in a some almost waking state, my brain creates all sorts of wildly interesting explanations for what the alarm really represents. For example, I distinctly recall once understanding with brilliantly clear insight that if I hit the alarm button just right, I could get a few more ounces of sleep per minute, and as long as I didn't abuse the privilege, the time would not be too great for me to sleep another pound or so.

This morning I reminded myself that the snooze button's name was really Lolly, and that we'd been friends for a long time, so I could hit her once every seven minutes and she wouldn't mind. After the 3rd time, I remembered that her last name was Gagging.

This makes sense because every time I hit her, she shut up.

Please don't bother to post to say that I'm sleep deprived, because I know all of you who post are probably getting less sleep than I am.

August 3, 2004

Amazing. Somehow, I'm posting again. That three weeks to form a habit concept seems right on. Today makes three weeks since Julia challenged me to blog daily, and even though five minutes ago, I was sure I couldn't do it, I'm now writing. Again.

Kate has also presented something of a challenge by suggesting I submit something to Strange Horizons or Ideomancer.

Let's see what I have to offer in the way of old stuff [putting on my marketing hat, now]:

Hearth - the story of a childless couple who inherit an off-the-grid house that has a life of its own. Speculative fiction, maybe.

Rista's story - about a young women sentenced to exile after avenging a relative's death. She comes from a bi-racial, bi-cultural planet and is dropped, along with other criminals, on an "unpopulated" planet in the middle of nowhere. I don't even have a title for this one yet and I wrote it years and years ago. Science fiction/alien story - light on the science. Too long to publish as a short story, though. More like a novela unless I can tighten it even more.

What's Carried on the Wind (needs new title) - the story of a woman who can literally smell death, but only at specific times in her life, and how she learns to cope with that particular "talent." Speculative fiction.

Something from Quest (aka the Rowan story, aka Senior Thesis)? Apart from the fact that the main character must (thank you Anne McCaffery) be renamed - I think she is Mara now - is there anything I can pull from this? In this world, there are empaths and technocrats, badger-like emotional bloodhounds, wise women and refugees in hiding in the heart of the city. (Do you remember it, Clare?) This would be sort of like fantasy, but not in any high fantasy tradition. I'll leave the real stuff for Julia.

Maggie's story - near-future tale about a girl who works as a sorter at a thrift store and who finds an experimental gadget that acts to motivate its wearer to do whatever they might not otherwise be motivated to do. For better or worse. Seems like a good idea that is too "nice" and watered down, in retrospect. Could be so much darker & edgier. Could be really disturbing fiction if I let it.

Newer stuff:

Rock Garden - a woman going through a divorce takes her son to a mobile home park in the California desert. The son becomes convinced that the entire park is populated by aliens and the mother must try to strengthen his grasp of reality even while her own is faltering.

Trained as I was - could-be creepy Halloween story about a father who, on the way home from trick-or-treating, leaves his two young daughters standing on the side of the road so he can go investigate a mysterious circle of chanting people in a nearby field. (Thanks Dad.) I've been reworking this and other "family" stories.

Not yet written:

Whale cheese for Julia.

The story of the couple who bring their baby home from the hospital only to find that he has no belly button.

On that note, I think I'm going to go to sleep now.

August 2, 2004

It's Monday night. Every Monday night, D. goes to his friend's house & games until around 2am. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it's his chance to get out and blow off steam and he's a happier person for it, and it's certainly better than having him go watch a football game and drink great quantities of beer like some men do. Also it means that I can (and do) get a night of my choice out whenever I might need one.

On the other hand, it means that he's trashed every Tuesday and (I think) gets sick more often because he gets so little sleep once a week. I also feel that it makes him an enabler to his best friend's pathological reality-evasion. And I'm bitter that his friend never comes here. And I'm often suspicious about that, too. Why don't they game here? In our garage? Even once in a while? Blech. Blech. Blech. Excuse the ugly emotions boiling beneath the surface, please.

More of a problem than the others, his Monday night gaming session means that I single parent every Monday night & if anything comes up I might want or need to do, I pay a babysitter so I can go out. Tonight, for example, I went to an ADHD Overview at Kaiser so I could learn more about R.'s attention challenges and what they might be and what we can do about them. D. also cares about what might be going on with R., but it's Monday, so tonight I represented both of us.
It was a very interesting overview, taught by an obviously highly experienced, compassionate, bright doctor. It's pretty clear that R fits most of the categories and behavior patterns associated with attention issues. But there are other things going on, too, and D. and I are so intent on addressing everything WITHOUT medication, well..I know there's lots more to learn about how we'll do that.

On a completely different note, I think I'm going to get a new car. Soon. I just can't wait to own a hybrid any longer, and I've found I do not need the mini-SUV like I thought I did. I had started to make this decision anyway, and then I got a call out of the blue from my sister-in-law saying she had a friend who is looking to buy a slightly-used mini-SUV.

I think only an idiot ignores synchronicity.

August 1, 2004

I'm cheating. I'm posting early morning 08/02 but am backdating to call this 8/1/04's post, because I'll post again tonight.

The party went well. I know this because when I asked D., "How do you think they party went?" He said, "It was great!" And then he gave R. his fake psychopath google-eyed glare and said, "How do you think it went?" until she stammered, "Fantastic!"

D. knows that even if the guests arrive before I unload the groceries and while there is still a stack of dirty dishes on the counter and we have not disinfected the stinky dog pen (all of which was true in this case), of even if children melt down left and right and parents fight and things get broken (none of which happened, fortunately) - he knows that no matter how dismal a failure a party we host is, if he says the party went well, I'll believe him.

There were 8 children between 4 and 10 (including our two), and 11 adults (including us). Seven of the guests were neighbors, two were S's preschool teachers (current & past). D's father was the only relative who made it - and since he (and my oldest brother) have the same birthday as S., we were celebrating his day too.

There were no party games. I'd bought some "fun foam" for the kids to make things with, and that kept them very entertained. They just played, apart from that. And we had cake. Giant Care Bears on a Sugar Rainbow cake. Let me know if you'd like some - we have extra left over and it's going to take all my will power - plus this statement in writing in my blog - for me not to have any more of it.