Sometimes Saturday night feels like Sunday night

It’s after 10:30 and the girls are only now going to bed. The local gymnastics club for kids hosts a “Parents’ Night Out” once or twice a month, and this time we took advantage of it so we could go out to sushi with an old co-worker of D’s and his new bride. It was a nice dinner. They’re interesting and fun people, and even though it’s hard for me to force myself to be social, I know that it’s good for me to make the effort once in a while.

But boy, am I sleepy and ready for bed! I started the day before 7am with a long job (10 miles again, finally!), followed by getting S to dance class & R to riding lesson (accompanied by D’s sister, who is herself a rider). We had a relaxing afternoon, just hanging out, and then Aunt H left and R decided she wanted to re-arrange her room, which took the rest of the afternoon. D & S napped. I wish I had!

Tomorrow, even though it’s Sunday, I’m working 7am-3pm. Not really looking forward to it, but the pay is good. The cough I have is persistent. Running doesn’t seem to make it any worse – in fact, it may help it – but I know I need more sleep. Bonne nuit.

Undeferring the funny story

R's 4th grade teacher told me during our parent/teacher conference that on Tuesday (the day after the MLK holiday and the day after Lime's death), her whole class, which is normally very active anyway, was so hyper that it was like having a roomful of monkeys on speed. Well, actually, she just said it was like having a room full of hyperactive kids, but I don't think that paints the picture as well.

Anyway, the children were so out of control that toward the end of the day, the teacher stopped everything and everyone, and went to the chalkboard and wrote something like this:

"Dear Miss Jane,

Today during class, many people were rude, silly and disrespectful."

The children were each to get out a piece of paper and complete the letter. Lest you think she was totally off her rocker, they have been working on letter writing lately.

During the conference, she said she wanted to show me R's letter. I braced myself, but since she was already laughing about it, I wasn't too worried. Anyway, it went like this:

"Dear Miss Jane,

Today during class, many people were rude, silly and disrespectful.

I'm sorry if I was one of them, but you should know that I have been going though a lot lately, such as a recent pet death.

R--"

Saved by Sleepiness

Beloved audience,

You are hereby spared yet another how-my-kids-are-so-cute story because I am too sleepy to blog it. You'll get it tomorrow. Learn to live with the nail-biting suspense, already.

Here's what I did today, for the what-I-did-today record:
work
parent/teacher conference (insert funny story here)
get the kids from their Thurs afterschool care
home for snack for them and late lunch for me
gymnastics for R
to a sandwich shop for a highly nutritious dinner (This is the very closest we ever get to fast food, and it's when I'm glad the kids will take veggies on their sandwiches)
35 minute run at the gym for me, kids happily in childcare there. (I'm so glad they love doing that, still.)
bedtime routine

I fell asleep in the big bed with the girls after reading another dramatic entry of The Dark is Rising and only woke up at 10:30 and thought, "Oh no! I haven't blogged yet!"and then crankily accused D of taking advantage of the "alone" time in a quiet house instead of coming to check on me/us. He now has instructions to save me from myself if I fall asleep prematurely again. Sheesh. What? Does he think I need rest, or something?

The truth is, I do sometimes have a moment of anxiety wondering if one of these nights I'll fall asleep early and not wake up until after midnight - without having blogged! Yikes!

I mean, it's become that important to me to do this every day.

Back to bed now. Bed. That big flat horizontal piece of furniture that I love so much.
Bed is my friend.

Writer's group : good

Another horribly insanely busy day at work (the other person who shares some of my job duties is out all week in Costa Rica - the nerve!), but the afternoon was peaceful at home with the girls after a conference with S's Kindergarten teacher. I found out when the conference was winding down that I'd confused my dates and was supposed to be meeting with the 4th grade teacher instead, but it worked itself out eventually. This seems to be my week for making mistakes. Think of all the lessons I'm learning! How exciting!

Writer's Group tonight : excerpts from the gals' highly entertaining novels, and a little from the uncomfortable short story I'm writing, as well as the usual deeply satisfying gabbing about all topics under the sun. Worth staying up late for.

I haven't been able to shake the cold I've had for a couple of weeks, though. Hmm...could it be the lack of a full night's sleep, or the not having taken a day of work? I wish I could just sleep all day and drink tons of good stuff (not necessarily vodka) and get over it.

The next few weeks will be challenging: getting geared up for the charter school's auction (I'll be writing all the "copy" for marketing both silent and live auction items) and training for the 1/2 marathon. The auction is the 5th and the race the 6th. Not the best timing. Also potentially I'll be getting a new car in the next 2-4 weeks. I feel like I need my strength to be there, and these wimpy little coughs I have all day are not inspiring confidence.

But really, all is well, and all shall be well, and the niggling little stuff doesn't matter a whit.

Life's lessons

I'm afraid the patient didn't make it, which was no less depressing for being half-expected.

I wasn't here in the morning to tell the girls the news- I'd been at work over an hour by the time they got up, but I called to check in and they seemed okay about it.

I got a voicemail message from my cell phone from R around 11 or so, though. When I called back, I learned that she'd been in the office twice so far, feeling blue. They'd finally had her speak with the school's educational director, who might qualify as the best "counselor" there right now. But this director (very Waldorf trained and up until now respected by me) not only commiserated with R, she also told her that animals that have been paired with other animals generally do not do well when left alone, and we should consider getting another bird to keep the remaining one company. That's right, for those of you like Lisa who are surprised or even outraged to hear this, I'll say it again: this woman in a position of authority suggested that we should replace our dead pet, and soon.

Weigh against this the idea that it's better to give kids a chance to experience loss a little, and that I don't want them to think it's that easy: a pet dies, you get a new one. Besides, just on the off-chance that it was a birdie virus that killed Lime, Lemon (the widow/er) could also be sick. How irresponsible would it be for us to get a new bird just in time for Lemon to infect it and then drop to the bottom of the cage him/herself? And what if Lemon doesn't like the new bird? And - more to the point, I think - this is not a decision that a teacher or school administrator should be making, right?

So we had an impromptu family meeting in the two minutes that we were all home this evening (before I dashed off to a meeting for the school auction), and we've decided to wait and see: observe Lemon, take it slow. I think the indecision is hard on the kids, though, and I think we'll end up replacing the bird. But on our terms, not the kids' "Can we go to the pet store right now" terms and not based on someone else's, "The survivor will be sad and lonely otherwise," suggestion.

On a completely different note, can I just say that sometimes, for all the great pay and the wonderful service we provide and other incredible perks - sometimes, work is just not worth it. If I'd had any more brutal an afternoon, I would have had to sit in my car and bawl before I even left the company's parking lot. As it was, I was over an hour late picking up my (mourning, grieving, needing-mommy) kids, and I had 3 phone calls from work before I made it 10 miles from the office. Blech. There's more, but I'm pretty much over it. D had to hear me "download" the ickiness. I only had a little left. I'm better now. Thanks for listening.

Vigil

While I write this, one of my daughter's two parakeets is sitting on the bottom of the cage, breathing in a way that is just wrong for a bird. I've got the cage in a warm, darkened, quiet room, and at this point, we simply need to wait and see if he's going to make it through the night.

At first, he'd been in his food dish, and R had thought maybe he was really a she (since we've never been too sure about this with either parakeet) and maybe she was laying eggs, at which point the girls did a great gleeful happy dance all over the livingroom, squealing and crying, "Babies! Babies!"

After I'd taken one look at him, though, I'd warned the kids that the bird might not be nesting. S/he might, I said, be very sick. (I mean, this parakeet looked for all the world like Job after he turned his face to the wall. And I'm sure the squeals of joy a few minutes before hadn't helped.)

With my diagnosis, the girls were so distraught that they could hardly think. I made them get into their pj's and the five-year old said, "Mommy, but what if Lime dies tonight?. We'll have to dig a hole and put him in a graveyard. Why are you so happy?"

"I'm not happy," I said, "I'm very worried too."

"Then why are you talking in a loud voice?" she asked.

So I lowered my voice to an anxious whisper to match theirs and said, "I'm sorry. I hope Lime doesn't die. But you still have to get into your jammies."

I'm that kind of mom.

R asked to call a friend and ended up leaving a very rambling, distraught message on their machine before I realized she wasn't actually talking to anyone.

Later, S said, "It's just that I love Lime and I'm very feeling very protecting of him. Because he's such a little animal."

And R added, "And I feel the worst out of everyone, because I practically raised him from an egg, and I'm his mama."

We talked a little about how hard it is that birds don't show they're sick until they're very sick. I called around and spoke to a few vet answering services, and finally consulted with an emergency vet clinic in Berkeley. The doctor there passed along the message that there's not much more we can do than what we're doing. It doesn't seem to be a female bird with egg binding (a stuck egg, which of course can kill her), but I'd only done a superficial exam, and I didn't want to disturb Lime any more than necessary anyway.

I can hear the girls in the other room now, working at the kitchen table: S is drawing pictures, R is finishing a book report on poster board. There's also the sound of suckling baby polar bears, which would be very unnerving if I didn't know what it was.

The girls sound cheerful again, but the last I'd checked, R had started to draw a tombstone on a piece of paper. It had writing on it: "Lime P----, a good bird who was nice, 2001-2005."

"Honey!" I'd said, "He's not dead yet. Don't do that."

"I know," she'd answered, "but this is handy, just in case...you know."

What a strange combination of drama and practicality she is.

Hmm.

The Best Laid Plans

Somewhere between 6pm and 8pm, the drive I had to completely clean up and organize the house curled up in a corner and fell asleep. I could start blogging in the early morning, say before I leave for work, but it's unlikely that I'll have many inspiring thoughts at 5am. Unlikely, but possible. Maybe I'll try that tomorrow.

Today went like this: I ran from 7:55-9:23 (8 miles, 11 minute mile pace), showered, dressed, and went to the the cafe to write (well, to talk and write a little anyway) with the writer's group gals. Later, D dropped off the kids at the cafe & I took the elder to a friend's house for an all afternoon playdate & the younger to the mall with me to return some things and buy a few more things: photo boxes and a scrap book for myself using a gift card from my sister, and for the girls, long-requested but somewhat frightening little stuffed polar bears that wine and whimper, suck very noisily from a bottle, and on top of all that have the audacity to snore.

After shopping, we picked up R, and the two girls and I worked off a payment plan for them to cover half of the expense and ill-mannered bears. Then we had a healthy dinner, followed by cleaning of bird and rat cages, bath, vitamins and teeth-brushing (the girls, not the pets). They're waiting for their nightly installment of The Dark is Rising (the girls, not the pets), so I have to stop writing now.

And just posting this has awoken my tidy-and-organize drive, and I might just be able to plow through Mt. Clean Laundry enough to find my bedroom floor once I took the children and Snowy Sleeping Beauty and Sagwa (the bears) in bed.

Cold and sleepy

Since it was Titan-cold today, I didn't get any gardening done. I did run while R had her riding lesson, which warmed me up a lot. And then took a two-hour nap this afternoon, while S & D napped too and R read. I love Saturday afternoon naps. I don't mind Sunday afternoon naps, either, and if I didn't work, I'd nap Monday through Friday too. When I was young, I read once about a study that had been done showing that people tend to have better dreams when they sleep during the day than when the sleep at night. I've liked afternoon naps ever since.

Hmmm. There's something I could say about how I made up stories at night to put myself to sleep when I was little. There's something I could say about night battles in my dreams, about lucid dreaming. But not this late, and not when I'm this tired. My judgment is blurred. Maybe tomorrow, when writing with the gals at the coffee shop, if I need a break from working on my "pawn shop" story. We'll see.

It's always nice to make it to Friday

By Friday, the bribery I've used all week to get me out of bed and to work can itself take a rest. This weekend will be the first one in ages where there won't be rain. Things haven't dried up enough for us to want to dig in the adobe again, but at least I could work on finding the backyard under all the weeds if I wanted to. Tomorrow, S starts her new ballet (although Thurs. was a preview "makeup" class), and R has riding lessons. Sunday I'll have BIC time. And somewhere in there, I'll get a couple more runs in. Today, it was 6 miles on the treadmill, some of which was "pick-ups" where I pushed myself until I was breathing hard. It turns out that breathing hard at the end of a longer run now means 8 miles per hour where it once meant 6.5. Still slow by many runners' standards, but I'm happy with the change. The head cold I've had honestly seems to be clearing up, although I could still try to get a spot on radio or in disreputable phone work with my voice.

Clare says she's made this page her home page! Wow, am I honored. And it gives me even more incentive to write. I wish I had something more interesting to say than "had tea with Mr & Mrs. J" but really that's what this blog often gets down to. So sue me. It's a journal, folks. :)

Here's the philosophical thought I had before I sat down to write, though. I'd fallen asleep on the couch with the girls - all of us in a big snoring pile of arms and legs and blanket - while D was on the phone with his best friend (a nightly occurrence), and when I got up to put the girls to bed, I was feeling (for the moment) unlovely and unloved.

I recognized the feeling and let it go and am now fine - especially easy once I remembered all of the many blessings in my life, including the love of family and friends. But that low moment also led to an epiphany ("I just had an apostrophe!" as Smee would say. )

Those of us walking the earth who feel unlovely and unloved are capable of great harm to ourselves and others. We have nothing to lose. We feel we are justified in striking out. This is old news - thousands of books and plays and true life crime stories and statistics have been born of this very well-known concept. I just understood it more clearly tonight than I have before. Does this mean that one angry unloved person who has hurt other people can always be won back by the love of one other person? Always? No, I think not. I think that violence and self-righteous self-loathing have their own addictive qualities that are hard to fight. Is love as addictive? If one is addicted to it, is it really love? No, I think not. But how else to explain the majority of us moths searching for a light to fly into? For Plato, it was the Forms looking for the Ideal, if I remember correctly. For others, it's something else. Something to do with God or the Universe. Obviously, it's time to read more. Not just Tolle, but also from some of the scores of philosophy books I still have from college. I was just a few credits shy of being a Philosophy Major, after all. I'm a moth trying to read the map on my wings.

A scribble before bath & bed

That's about all I'm good for, now. A quick note to keep up the posting habit. (Notice how I didn't say "dare.")

I've been going to bed earlier, getting to work on time (or close to it), and leaving work on time. All good habits, but it means that crazy thought I had of running at the gym from 8-9:30 went out the window.

Tomorrow, says Scarlet.

My voice sounds wretched but I feel fine, so in spite of several co-workers insisting I should be home sick (or at least take advantage of my voice & fake it & stay home sick), I don't expect to miss work and I hope to run at least 2 of the next 3 days.

R is just fine. So is S. And D. And I'm sure all the other letters of the alphabet are doing fine too, in their funky-fonted way.

Say good night, Gracie.

And even that worked itself out pretty well

So in spite of any lingering concerns I might have had, the fearsome engineer was perfectly reasonable about yesterday's mistake, and the day at work went well. Busy, as usual, but fine. For which I am horribly grateful.

I did have to leave an hour early (again) to get R from school. Whatever low-grade bug she has, it doesn't come with any symptoms other than a headache and slight stomach ache and no energy. She was apparently depressed all day at school yesterday, too. But she napped this afternoon and rested all evening, and I hope to have all the girls in the house in bed by 8 tonight - thus the earlier than usual post.

Signed up S (aka Isadora Duncan) for ballet again - her request, even though she's not yet six and she said she'd start to dance again when she's six. I'm glad she's not waiting. She so obviously loves dance, and takes it so seriously when she does dance for us, it seems like a good idea to let her pursue it this way. This time, she'll be with the local studio that puts on the Nutcracker, so in theory, she could perform in it in a year and a half. (They must be 6 and must have danced for a year at the studio). We'll see how it goes. If it starts to kill her love to dance, we'll probably stop again.

But there's a fine line I've discussed with other parents before - when do you push, to teach your child discipline and that they can't just quit things in life, and give them the chance to get beyond resistance or plateaus into a place of greater competence and confidence - and when do you back off, simplify and let them let it go?

All is Well

How lovely to come home (at 10:45pm!) to the supportive comments from my friends. It means a lot, especially considering the day, which was challenging but rewarding. As far as our guests from Japan are concerned, I believe it was a successful day. We picked them up at noon as expected, drove them back to the office under scrubbed-clean blue skies dotted only here and there with puffy white clouds, had our tour and our meeting, and answered all of the questions they had prepared for us. Then we went back to the city and to Mac World, answering more questions on the way and telling them more about our approach to tradeshows and how we market our company. We toured the show, H-san realized he had left his business cards at our office but I was able to contact someone else coming to the city in time to have him meet us at the restaurant with the business cards (phew!). Dinner was probably the best series of gourmet courses I have ever had in my life, and I may ask the restaurant to fax me their menu so I can post all the incredible foods I ate, because I'm sure I'll never see that type of meal again and I want to document the occasion.

The only real glitch in the day, which I've pretty much already let go of so I can sleep a full night in peace and get on with my life, is that during our tour the VP of Sales and I (both of whom should have known better) committed a major faux-pas and brought our honored guests into one engineering area without adequate (and, as I learned, previously requested) forewarning for the engineers. This resulted in the person in the company with the one of the worst tempers becoming livid, and unloading what I know was only a fraction of his fury at me in a quick aside while the tour was completing. I sit next to this guy every day. In some ways, he's my boss. Tomorrow morning, I'll no doubt hear the rest of his incensed lecture about how completely terrible what we did was. I mean, he was pissed. And he's a big, angry guy in general. And why was he pissed? Besides the stupidity and disrespect of us not warning him - when really, really, we knew better, I admit it - he's sure that our guests were only there to see what they could about our technical process to steal it. That's his take on it. Mine is not quite so paranoid or racist. Besides which, I'm convinced they couldn't have seen anything from the 20 seconds they were partially in the room that would have told them anything of importance. But it'll be a long time before I hear the end of it, and a long time before the sore spot that was created today heals, if it ever does.

But as for me? I don't care. I just don't. I really am not concerned about what happened. I'm only hoping I can maintain the correct respect and contriteness while keeping detached and while not letting on that I really don't give a fig about his anger and that I refuse to take up the anxiety and negative *stuff* that he'll be wanting to perpetuate for who-knows-how-long. That's his deal. It's not mine.

Sigh.

I mean, come on. Lighten up, buddy. We don't have that kind of time. Move on.

Curve balls

Sometimes life throws you curve balls, and it's hard to remember that there's a reason for them just as much as - mabye more than - the clockwork smooth days with which we are sometimes blessed.

I had an appointment today at 2, and so made every effort to leave work at 1:30, only to be waylaid by several last-second emergencies, including one that shot the appointment to bits, anyway: a call from the school to say that R wasn't feeling well. After about 30 minutes of poorly-controlled frustration while I tried (in vain) to cancel my appointment by phone, I remembered to take a breath and know that in the big scheme of things, it didn't matter. Maybe I was really meant to leave work at 1:30 to get R all along, and the appointment's timing was just put in place (a month ago) to allow me that opening. I think that's how life works.

Anyway, we had a quiet afternoon and evening at home. There's a fire going in the wood burning stove, S. is in the bath, and R. is working on a book report. D. is at his weekly gaming session, and the rain is coming down outside with great mocking drops because I had my car detailed today in preparation for driving H-san and his assistant around tomorrow from the city to the office to the show.

If I stop writing now and focus on the bedtime routine, we might all be asleep before 9. Hooray!

Clare's Epiphany parable and notes from today

Check out Clare's story of Fafnir. She calls it a parable, but I enjoyed it as a story too.

It's been a good day. Slept in until 7:30, felt better but still didn't run. Had a nice morning with the girls, then took R & her friend to her friend's house to play, and took myself to the Box to write. It's always so nice spending time with the gals and talking about such a wide variety of things, and then writing. The three of us sit in the back room of the coffee shop, each with our white Macs, and write. I came to an important point in my short story. I think I know how things might fit together, but still I know it will be a hard story to write because the subject matter is serious and there's not any room for what R would call "comical relief."

I hung out with S after writing, just had cuddle on the couch and book reading time, then we folded laundry together. Which was actually fun, too. I ran for an hour, and felt even better after the run, well enough that I really think I've beat out this cold thing in record time. Part-way through my jog, I met up with a couple from church. They're a very devout, very involved husband and wife whose son is in seminary, being sponsored by the church. And they wanted to make sure I was all right, and offer support and help in case I needed it. I assured them that just because I was away from church and questioning the basic principles of Christianity, I didn't feel outside of God's grace. They took it well.

Someone's Singing, My Lord...

The meeting at school went pretty well. We narrowed down our areas of focus from 100+ written statements of what would make our school outstanding to 6 things: finding a permanent "home" that would include a working farm that would inform the curriculum; funding issues; values that are clearly articulated internally and externally; top-notch teachers and staff that are well-educated, well-trained and happy; and having a community of parents, teachers and students working together with common goals. I'm not sure why I'm writing all this here. It probably couldn't matter less to everyone except the people at the school. But this blog seems to have become a way for me to process stuff, too. So maybe that explains it.

Anyway, at what other public school meeting would you start the session by singing, and close the session by standing in a circle, holding hands, singing. In a round. It wasn't Kumbaya, but it was close. And at what other school meeting would someone say in the middle of the day, "I want everyone in the room to take three deep breaths and feel their heart energy," and get away with it? And would someone else say, at the close of the session, "Everybody look out the window!" because there was a rainbow. And everybody did get up and walk over and look out the window and exclaim over the rainbow. And half of us thought it was an omen that all would be well with the school. Yeah. Scary, huh? I know. But it’s my kind of place.

And better yet, I didn't commit to anything beyond today's work.

And even better than that, I think I've beat this cold thing enough so that I can run in the morning and then go to the Box for BIC writing session.

Got to go now. R. has a friend staying overnight and I need to read another few pages of The Dark is Rising to them. It's my autographed copy from when I met Susan Cooper at a conference (Children's' Literature of New England) in 1992. Which reminds me of a coincidence - I just got my CLNE mailer for this year's conference, and I see that Neil Gaiman may be there, schedule permitting. I'd never heard of him until Kate sent him one of my poems, once. And now I hear about him all the time. What a world. Makes me want to hold hands with someone and sing in a round.

So much for that plan

Go figure. It took me longer to wrap up my blog entry and get off the internet than I'd thought it would, and by the time I did, I was so chilled that I had to have a quick hot bath. I went to bed at my usual post 10:30 time. Got up around 5:15, got to work about 15 minutes late.

Today I've been fighting off messages from my body that I'm coming down with something. I won't have it, I tell you! Must! resist! I did hold myself back from going to the gym to run today. Yeah. Right. That was difficult.

And then tonight from 6:30 until after 9pm, I was at a planning "retreat" at the girls' charter school, working with about 35 other parents on our Vision for the next 3 years. Tomorrow this "retreat" continues from 9-4 (what a way to spend a Saturday!), and I think we'll move from phase one to phase two. Phase one started with the singing of a round - I kid you not - this is a Waldorf-inspired school, after all - to small group discussions and writing down "Challenges" and "Opportunities" with environmentally-friendly crayons (because the markers were too stinky for everyone) on those massive post-it's on steroids that they now make. We put the lists on the walls and compared notes. I was inspired, I must admit.

Phase two, however, will, I suspect, be Action Plans and probably Committee Formation. I am practicing saying, "No."

"No. No. No."

Yes, I support the school - hence this weekend craziness. Yes, I'll do my part. But heck, I work full time and am also trying to write and keep house and raise kids and have a healthy marriage and train for a marathon-before-I'm-forty and learn Japanese and find a cure for cancer (schedule permitting). I can't do it all, can I? Everyone say it with me, now.

"No."

Going to bed early. Really. Because I'm fighting off this bug. The one I won't get. That one.

Less than perfect is okay

It's only 9:15 and I may go to bed right after posting this blog - and get more than 6 hours of sleep! I know - it's so boring to just sleep when I could be finding the cure for cancer or at least folding the mountain of clean laundry. But as D pointed out, when I'm chatting with him at the dinner table, and I blink, and my eyes sort of stay rolled up in my skull, it's a hint that I need to get to bed at a decent hour.

Tuesday, representatives from one of our Japanese "partner" companies will be here, and I'll be picking them up at their hotel, bringing them to the office for a meeting and brief tour, then taking them to MacWorld, and then out to dinner. Fortunately, the VP of Sales and the CEO will be joining me for most of these activities, so I don't have to entertain them alone or be the best sales exec. on the planet. I just need to dress well, have a really clean car, show up, drive carefully, pay attention, and relax.

And this is where I publicly remind myself that if I don't buy a new (inexpensive yet tasteful and well-fitted) business suit, it's OKAY. And if I don't review the Japanese I knew plus learn more, it's OKAY. And my weight is all right, and can't be changed too much in 4 days anyway. And I don'thave to call the local Toyota dealerships and insist they somehow come up with my new car a few weeks early just so I have something nice to drive these guys around in.

I am so neurotic. And tired. Neurotic and tired - a bad combination. Going to bed should eliminate at least one of those things.

Expletive expose

Lately, S. has taken to saying, “Darn-it!”when you tell her “No.” (As in, No, you can’t have two desserts, No, you can’t stay up until 9pm, No, you can’t wear a tank-top in the rain in December. That kind of thing.) I’ve been suggesting milder words, words that won’t annoy the other Kindergartener’s parents when their little one’s pick them up from my kid. I feel “drat” might work, or “gosh” or “golly” or maybe even, “dang-it.” Of course, this is coming from someone who – much to the distress of a coworker – just yesterday said, “That’s swell!” about some good news. And meant it.

So I was surprised when the other day S., in a fit of mock-5-year-old anger, said “Jesus Christ!” Now that I write this, I wonder why I was surprised, since one of D’s most common exclamations of frustration is “Jesus H. Tap-Dancing Christ on a Biscuit!”
And here I thought our daughters never listen to us…

I very carefully explained to S. that some people, myself included, really do not like to hear God’s or Jesus’ names used as swear words. I said, “If you want to say ‘Jesus Christ,’ say it when you’re praying. Not when you’re mad. Don’t use it that way. That’s not okay.”

Later that day, she was upset about something else, and – I am not making this up – she said, “Jesus Christ!” paused, and glancing at me out of the corner of her eye, added, “Amen.”

Will Write For Sushi

So I see that Ethel (aka Vivian Vixen aka Luscious Lola aka Ava, She Who Ties Knots in Cherry Stems With Her Tongue)has said she'll take me out for sushi for every day that I blog this calendar year. How nice! Thanks Ethel. But really, sushi once a year for a year of blogging will be fine. We are talking about the Julian calendar, right? Not some other calendar like the 400+ day Roman calendar?

Tonight is a Writer's Group Meeting, for which I am inadequately prepared. I'm making a habit of this. One more habit to lose, although as Mark Twain allegedly said, "Habit is habit and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time."

I just checked and the results are not yet in for the poetry contest I entered last year, so it's too soon to say I didn't win or place. Maybe I can finish and submit something else. That way, I'm always waiting for news.

And yet, also not waiting. Trying to live in the moment. Now.

And then there were titles

I've decided to add titles to my blog. I may change the look in other ways, as well in the coming week.

My co-worker (let's call her Ethel) said she liked seeing me blog more regularly again, and I announced that I was going to blog daily. "How long do you think that'll last?" she asked, the impudent thing. "All year," I told her defiantly.

Man, does Ethel know the best way to find that button and push. Her one question may be even more effective than Clare's dare, if that's possible.

Look out people, I'm here to stay.

The Growing Blog

For those of you who haven't already seen it, this article about the growth of blogs in 2004 is interesting. In particular, I hope to learn more about RSS or XLM aggregators, which is something Julia tried to explain to me even though I couldn't, at the time, wrap my head around it.

The Challenge

I have been issued a challenge to blog daily. Well, you're on, Clare! This being day two of the new I-will-write-daily year, I'm feeling up to the task.

The BIC (butt-in-chair) writing time at the Applebox today with Julia helped me feel more writerly, as did the blogging I started up again last week. It also helps that I got my running in today. There's a real connection between me exercising and feeling good about myself and being creative.

After the run and writing session, I took the girls to Borders where they blew only some of the gift card money they got from "grandpere" on lots of books and a couple of CDs. I was pleased that we got out of there with no DVDs, since they're not currently watching any movies at all. One of the things I could (in theory) blog about is this no-media for the kids lifestyle we've adopted: why we're doing it, what it means, how it works on a daily basis.

Tonight we played The Simpson's Clue, which my brother and his family had brought over on Monday. (It was conveniently on sale at Borders, so we got our own copy). Fun, and it'll be even more fun when S. can read. I'm hoping we can do more goofy family things like that in the months to come - even when it's not raining!

All for now. Feeling the energy being drained right out of me, which must mean bed time. Work will be challenging tomorrow, anyway - the first day back after a vacation is the day when everyone realizes the servers have crashed, which keeps us very busy.

New Year's Day

It's New Year's Day. And although I am trying to learn to live in the moment and not the past or future, it's very hard today not to reflect on what I did and did not accomplish or experience last year, and what I hope to do and be in the 12 months ahead.

Here is where I am, now: in a somewhat cluttered "office" at home, writing. The girls are in the kitchen making up stories about giants and sculpting villages for dragons out of clay, and D. is building the kind of aesthetically pleasing million-degree scorching hot fire in our wood-burning stove that only an Eagle Scout can build.

My feet are cold, because I like the lovely idea we've adopted of not wearing shoes in the house, but as much as I exercise regularly, my feet represent a large surface area to warm and my circulation sometimes doesn't manage. But other than that, I'm fine.

How could I not be? I've had 12 hours of sleep and there's nothing pressing that I have to do today. And most importantly, I'm surrounded by a healthy, happy family in a dry home with food in the pantry and all those other countless blessings that are forgotten - until we see so many people in the world suddenly left with nothing. I can't help but remember that this is not a happy new year for millions of the people on this planet. It sobers me, and just like a death in the family can do, it strengthens my resolve to live a meaningful life and not take for granted the many kinds of wealth I've been given, but instead share them, spread them out, connect, and make a difference.

Three Names MEME

You can thank Julia for this "meme."

THREE NAMES YOU GO BY:
Rebecca
Becky
Mommy-mommy-mommy-mommy

THREE SCREEN NAMES YOU HAVE HAD:
RowanEmrys
rpatrascu
RoTN

THREE THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF:
quick wit
comedic timing
ability to learn languages

THREE THINGS YOU HATE ABOUT YOURSELF:
As Julia suggested, "hate" is pretty harsh, but here goes:
My tendency to talk instead of listening
My tendency to speak before thinking
Horrible time management

THREE THINGS YOU WISH YOU HAD RIGHT NOW:
enough money to make a real difference with tsunami relief
more time
a slender figure

THREE PARTS OF YOUR HERITAGE:
what I get from my adopted family
what I get from my biological family
what I get from my historical, cultural inheritance

THREE THINGS THAT SCARE YOU:
the thought that I've so little to show for my life
the idea of my daughters being hurt or scared
that George Bush is our President

THREE OF YOUR EVERYDAY ESSENTIALS:
coffee
food
connecting with my immediate family

THREE THINGS YOU ARE WEARING RIGHT NOW:
my wedding ring
the clothes I put on at 5am
contact lenses

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE SONGS/ARTISTS AT PRESENT:
Dar Williams
Counting Crows
Dave Matthews

THREE NEW THINGS YOU WANT TO TRY IN THE NEXT 12 MONTHS:
another half marathon
sleeping more than 6 hours a night during the workweek
writing DAILY

THREE THINGS YOU NEED IN A RELATIONSHIP:
honesty
respect
love

TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE:
I believe in God
It's pouring down rain here as I write this
One of the above statements is a lie

THREE PHYSICAL THINGS ABOUT THE OPPOSITE SEX (or same) THAT APPEAL TO YOU:
intelligent eyes
a warm smile
posture that shows a guy is comfortable with who he is

THREE THINGS YOU JUST CAN'T DO:
bat my eyelashes
chin ups
waltz (but I can polka in a hoop skirt!)

THREE OF YOUR FAVORITE HOBBIES:
jogging
reading
writing

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO REALLY BADLY RIGHT NOW:
take a hot bath
sleep about 15 hours
watch the new Jean Reno movies I just got from amazon.fr

THREE CAREERS YOU'RE CONSIDERING:
poet
data recovery advisor (current occupation)
childbirth educator

THREE PLACES YOU WANT TO GO ON VACATION:
Wales (as usual)
Antarctica
British Columbia

THREE KIDS NAMES
Myfanwy
Telemachus
Francis

THREE THINGS YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE:
see my great-grandchildren
publish an acclaimed (or at least respected) book of poetry
organize my papers

THREE PEOPLE WHO HAVE TO TAKE THIS QUIZ (and post the results)... NOW!
Suzanne
Clare
Kate

Extended Stay

Due to the bad weather (flooding, roads being closed, people trying to dodge raindrops while they drive their SUVs), Mom is staying with us another couple of days. I’m glad, too. We’ve had a very pleasant visit. Yesterday while R. did a class project at a classmate’s house, Mom & S & I went out to brunch at a great little place downtown. Then I took her to the Toyota dealership to check out the Prius, since I’m hoping to get one in the next couple of months. They had a model available, but the wrong color & with leather seats, so I didn’t bite.

Then it was a quick trip to the Dr. for mom to get a few more antibiotics for a sinus infection that she’s fighting off. We followed that with a trip to rent a car for her for a couple of days, and finally dinner out at steakhouse (I had chicken) where we filled up on appetizers and hardly had room for any dinner!

Back home only long enough to work on my annual jigsaw puzzle a bit more, then off to the gym to run. Thus ends my week off work. And thus begins my back-to-work, back-to-posting routines.

The Long Christmas

I've had an extended Christmas this year. Mom got into town Thursday, we shopped on the way home from the airport, and then Friday I was out with the rest of the town's procrastinators getting the last few things, as well as groceries. Friday night we went way up north to a wine country town to be treated to a very fancy restaurant dinner by D's mom and stepdad, and then we went back to their place to open presents and have some Buche de Noel. D. and my mom won the bet that it would be a late night.

I stayed up until 2am Christmas eve wrapping & cleaning & prepping a little for the next day's cooking, and then was up at around 7am Christmas morning reminding the girls to be excited about Christmas quietly so that Grandma could sleep in a little.

My sister and her new boyfriend got here not long after 8am. They'd been staying in the city at the home of one of my sister's many friends. We had brunch: popovers, bacon, turkey sausage, fruit, coffee, scrambled eggs (with or without feta), and champagne. D's dad came and then his sister arrived not long after that. D's mom played a common card and called and kept him on the phone for about an hour just as his dad and sister were arriving - and yes, it was because she knew that they would be there. That's just how it is.

Everyone got along famously here, however, and spent the morning catching up or getting to know one another and opening presents and exclaiming over them. I stayed in the kitchen - first making brunch, then cleaning up after it, then making dinner. So I'm a little fuzzy on who gave my kids which fantastic presents. I've already started the motherly interrogation process with them. "And what did Aunt T. give you, honey? Sweetie, who gave you the a-bomb kit? And where did this shark egg come from?" That kind of thing. But fortunately, they're very clear on what's what on this score.

Although we didn't have our Writer's meeting Thursday due to S's cold and my over-committed, non-writing self bowing out, I've felt a growing desire to get back to blogging and finishing stories and doing writerly things. The New Year helps. It may be an artificial starting point - just a date, after all - but it's a convenient time to re-commit to being more who I am , really, and less who I think other people think I should probably be.

It helped to have Suzanne asking where my blogs had gone, and Julia doing the same & also encouraging me to WRITE. And then last night, when we were at Clare's house, having her say that she looks at my blog when she first gets online was also a great motivator. I so appreciate the support.

Today, my brother and his family may again stop by. But I'll have to write about that later, because I've already stolen as much time from the girls and mom as I can get away with. I hear the natives getting very restless in the other room....

Returning from beyond

....climbing...back...up...from the edge of the world. You thought I'd slipped off for good, didn't you?

Well, ha! Fooled you! I'm here. Just after 3 weeks of not blogging - does that mean I've developed the habit of not blogging? I'd rather call it a serious lapse than a change of lifestyle. Sound okay? Okay.

So what have I been doing with myself? What do I have to show for this incommunicado-ness?

Work has been especially demanding, meaning no time for any kind of break or lull to toss off a blog post. So good, but damn busy, on the work front.

The kids had lots of December school and after school stuff. 2 days a week, we take one of R's classmates for the afternoon. Another classmate comes every other Wednesday. Tuesday, R has had "acting camp," a project completely started and managed by another classmate of hers. He'd written a script for a play production of A Series of Unfortunate Events (and this is before the film was released, mind you), and R and other classmates were practicing for 2 hrs every Tuesday. It's that kind of class, I tell you. Thursdays, R. has gymnastics now. S. has gymnastics Fridays, then R. has riding lessons Saturdays which take up from 10:30am to 1pm. (Have I mentioned this before. Sorry if I'm repeating myself, but this is the sort of babbling journaling that I do for my own later reference. Here is where my life is at right now, e.g.)

I have written little. I have jogged about 4 times a week, and when each run takes anywhere from 45 minutes to 90 minutes, I think this has wiped out what little free time I'd had. I feel like I've been too busy making sure the dishes get washed and the kids' lunches get made and my half-marathon training happens to just sit my butt down and write. Another argument for the writer's group BIC (butt-in-chair) meetings.

Another thing that I think has somehow wiped me out and kept me from writing, ironically, is a new insight that came last week when I went to visit the counselor whom R. had seen 3 times for ADD issues.

This was the first time I'd seen a therapist since I was a post-breakup suicidal twenty year old. And even then, I think I only saw someone three times. I'm just too stingy to spend money talking to someone about myself when I already have the bad habit of doing it far too much for free. If that makes sense. Anyway, that last therapist's last comment to me 18 years ago had been, "You know, someday, you're going to want to talk to someone about your father." I remember at the time, I'd thought something like, "That's weird! I wonder why she thought that? All I ever talked about was me and my ex boyfriend and stuff. I didn't even talk about my dad!"

Uh. Hem. You can see what an insightful twenty year old I was.

Anyway, darned if after my dad's call the other night and his "Actually, I was dead," letter, I didn't find myself thinking, "I want to talk to someone about my father."

Those of you who don't care about digging this deep into my brain and emotions, feel free to stop reading this blog and enjoy something else instead. Like How to Build an Igloo or Hello Kitty Horoscopes or something. And because I know my birth mom and birth dad read this blog (hi guys!), this is the part of the entry where I tell you that I still think you did the RIGHT thing by putting me up for adoption and that I do not want you to feel ANY remorse or concern or whatever. IT'S OH-KAY. Okay? Got it? Really got it? Good. Thanks. No, really.

Anyway, after a chat with this very nice, very competent therapist (let's call her Dr. X), I've learned the following things:

**Warning. Angst-ridden self-absorption follows. Warning.**

1) My father (and by this, I mean my adoptive father, of course) falls neatly into the DSM-IV definition for Antisocial Personality Disorder. As Dr. X gently pointed out, "Your father is a sociopath." I demurred a little, until she read to me from the DSM-IV and I said, "Oh, yeah. That's him."

2) I've survived this remarkably well. She said she was fascinated by how it was that I got out of my childhood so healthy. I told her I suspected genetics had a lot to do with it. The birth relatives I've met are all strong, strong people. Phew. Thank God for that! And I also give God credit for helping me. I may have mixed feelings about who Jesus was right now, but I'm very clear on God.

3) My very handy ability to be detached when it comes to my dad's illness is no reason for me to think that it's not really affecting me at some level. Case in point: I cried in the office. When Dr. X said, "Maybe you've never let yourself cry about this," and I said, "Cry about what? I'm fine. I don't think I really need to cry about it. Much. And besides, even if I did, I wouldn't know how to cry about it. I wouldn't know how to make a catharsis happen." (Besides, I thought, I'm kinda busy...)

4) Saying to Dr. X, "I guess I'll stop in the restroom to blow my nose," doesn't mean that I won't find myself in said restroom choking down sobs and feeling suddenly like I could cry for two hours straight and not be done.

So there you have it.

Plus I've been making Christmas cookies. And, you know, mailing out cards and dragging the kids around shopping. That kind of thing.

(Dr. X suggested I might want to see her one more time. I guess I will.)

Thanksgiving report

Yeah, so I haven't posted in ages. Which is not to say that I haven't been writing, at least.
Much has happened, most significantly the birth of Lillian Monroe!
Congratulations to the family!

Thanksgiving was the tradition two-meal affair for us. Thursday we went to D's dad's new place, about an hour away. D's sister joined us. I brought homemade popovers, broccoli casserole and stuffing, and a store-bought pie. It was a nice afternoon & evening. Before I collapsed into bed that night, I double-checked my ambitious recipes to see what needed to be prepared in advance for the next day's feast. As a result, I was up until about 1:40am making herb maple butter and the beginning of pumpkin soup.

The next day, I got up early and started the cooking/cleaning thing. By 11, the turkey had been in the oven for 2 hours, and I had made half of the dishes for the day. My oldest brother and his wife and two boys (14 & 11 yrs old) came over for the first time in many years. They'd been staying at her brother's place in the Wine Country with his family. Around 1, D's mother and her husband arrived. Around that same time, I was called by my work to give a quote to someone at at a big production studio who had lost about 100GB of data.

Here's what I made for Friday: popovers, broccoli casserole, pumpkin soup, turkey with maple herb butter, stuffing, mashed potatoes with buttermilk, bacon bits & chives, sweet potatoes with brown sugar, almonds and marshmallows, green beans with walnuts and walnut oil, and pecan pie. I did not make the pie crust. If you've ever seen a pie crust made by me, you'd understand why.

Here's what happened with the work quote: we could save their data, but to do it as quickly as they needed would run tens of thousands of dollars, and was outside the budget for this particular project.

It's quite an interesting experience going straight from navigating the four cousins who are wrestling in the hallway, to explaining to an update So. Cal. producer why our service will cost 40K to do ASAP, to chopping yams and offering drinks to the adult guests. If I'd gotten mixed up with what I was doing, it could have been really ugly.

A letter from Dad

I got a letter on Sunday from my father. You don’t normally receive mail on Sundays, unless it’s been mis-addressed and a neighbor has had to bring it to you, as was the case here. Dad says his call to me two weeks ago had been from the ER. He says (and this is where I remind readers that unfortunately you cannot believe anything he says) that he’d had a stroke and his doctor told him he’d flat-lined for four minutes and was dead. Before the call, that is.

Dad’s an atheist, and he made a point to say there were no bright lights, no relatives waiting for him. “Dead is dead,” he writes. Then he says he checked himself out of the hospital and went home. Okay. Right.

When I relayed this story to my mother, she said – uncharacteristically for her - that it was no surprise that no one was waiting to meet him on the other side.

So I’m writing a new short story about my father. I started it before I got the letter. The letter just gives me that much more incentive. I’m inspired by a combination of subject matter I know and find interesting, and the thought that maybe this will be therapeutic for me.

On a different front, a couple of days ago, I had an interesting conversation with my five year old after I picked her up from daycare. It went something like this (with an acknowledgement to Kate, whose dialogs with her son are so nicely recorded in her blog).

“Mom, who did you vote for?”

“For President?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, hon, I voted for Kerry this time.”

“Oh. Well. I just want President Bush to make some castles. Because there are ZERO castles in the world.”

“In America, or in the world?”

“In the world.”

“Hmm. Yeah, I wonder why he hasn’t made any castles.”

“I don’t know, but I need a castle for when I grow up because I’m going to live in a castle, and only poor people can come visit me there. And I’ll give them some of my gold.”

“How much gold will you give them?”

“Well, for one person, I’ll give six gold pieces. And then for another person, I’ll give six gold pieces, and for another person, I’ll give him six gold pieces.”

“So you’ll give everyone six gold pieces?”

“Yeah. Unless if they already have some money, then I’ll only give them one.”

“How many gold pieces will you have?”

“Oh, about five thousand.”

“That’s pretty good.”

“Yeah.”


I think about how we all just want someone to build us a castle to live in. I think about how my dad has been telling me his whole life all about the castle that is being built for him.

A phone call from Dad

My father called me around 10:15 Saturday night. We spoke for about half an hour. It was the longest conversation we’ve had since two years ago, when I went out to visit relatives in Colorado and saw him for about 45 minutes. It was really good to talk to him.

He said he was calling to tell me that he loved me. I waited with some anxiety for the next sentence, but it wasn’t anything about suicide or my grandmother (his mother) dying – the only reasons I could think of for him to call with such a message.

He said that he’d sold the property where he’d had his pawnshop and they were going to tear it down and make a dialysis center there. He said he wanted to call all his kids just to let them know that he loved them and he wasn’t sure what had gone wrong with his life and everything but that he’d sold the property and were going to use it to make a dialysis center. And they’d sold the property. And they were going to tear down the building and make a dialysis center.

Did I mention that he was four sheets to the wind?

After we spoke, I typed furiously on a keyboard at great length about the conversation and about my feelings for my father. The next night, I wrote more about it. In fact, I’m thinking that this is as good a spark as any for me to work on that collection of stories (or even – dare I say it? – a novel) I’d been toying with doing about Dad.

It’s funny that I should get this call now, only a couple of weeks after my birth father had sent me an email checking in to see how I was doing. What a contrast between the two men. My birth father, whom I first met two years ago, is very humble and careful about his relationship with me. He’s never done anything to harm me, and yet he almost acts like he doesn’t deserve to get to close to me. (“Pshaw!” I say to that.)

My father, on the other hand, has done an amazing amount of damage to the health and well being of the people around him, and yet the closest he comes to remorse is a whiny self-pitying litany of drunken excuses.

Hmm. That sounded a little harsh, didn’t it? Yes, it did. And I’m probably the person in my family who was least hurt by him.

I know that alcoholism has a lot to do with Dad’s inability to face reality. In fact, one of the many interesting parts of our conversation Saturday night was when I suggested that he shouldn’t call my sister until he was actually sober, and he said, “You may be right. But I don’t have a problem with alcohol.”

And I said, “Dad, you are the epitome of an alcoholic. I can’t remember the last time I saw you when you hadn’t been drinking.”

Damn, that felt good. He’s been drinking my whole life and that was the first time I’d confronted him about it.

He denied that he drank I pointed out that denial was all part of the disease, too, but I don’t think he heard me.

He said, “I don’t drink. I’m on medication.”

“That’s probably a good thing,” I said.

He said, “Well, I just wanted to call and tell you that I love you."

"I love you too, Dad, " I said. Because of course, in spite of everything else, I do.

"Well, okay," he said. "And I just wanted to let you know that they sold the building you saw when you came out, and they’re going to tear it down and build a dialysis center there.”

“So I hear.” I told him.

It's November

Okay, so it's been November, but I have a time management / denial issue, which is another blog entry unto itself.

November means NaNoWriMo month, when tens of thousands of insane...uh, I mean motivated...people aspire to, and in many cases actually successfully write, a 50,000 word novel in 30 days.

As they say on their web site, "It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly. Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down."

For the second year in a row, my neighbor will be participating and I will probablynot be participating.

That's to say that it's one of those things I'd like to do (sort of) and think I should do (sort of) but in all reality, I believe the world is better served by me concentrating on living in the moment and working on things like poetry, short stories, my grandmother's oral history and feeding my family.

Maybe next year.

Or maybe this year.

But probably not until next year. At the soonest.

Could you do this? Would you?

Tomorrow I'll figure out what psychic void I'm trying to fill with Halloween Candy. And I'll talk about the Candy Fairy.

But for now, I have this goal of > 6 hrs of sleep a night, and my pillow calls.

Voted

I voted. Did you?

My 10 year old asked me yesterday whom I was going to vote for. I was reminded of a satirical comment I heard on the radio last week. I think it's actually a bumper sticker, and that it goes something like: "John Kerry: He'll Do."

We talked about how it's important to respect the President, and that he'd been faced with some very difficult circumstances. I told her that I didn't agree with his choices, but that he'd done the best he could.

She said, "The best he could? Are you kidding me?"

As liberal as her school is, only one kid in her 4th grade class admitted that his parent were going to vote for President Bush. Everyone else has had nothing but severe criticism of him - criticism that I'm sure they'd overheard from their parents.

My first political memory was when Nixon resigned. I was a little younger than R. My father made sure I watched the broadcast. Otherwise, my first political memory would have been the Iran hostage crisis, many years later.

I'm amazed that my kids are aware of who the President is, and who's running against him today.

My five year old expresses her political awareness a little more subtly, though.

What exactly was she was trying to convey by making two yellow jelly beans stand up on the table (one in each hand), and saying, "This is Bush." (holding up the right one briefly) and "This is Mrs. Bush" (hold up the left one briefly), and then making them "walk" up to either side of an Applebee's plastic cup, followed by a sly giggle. Hmmmmm....very profound, I'm sure.

Where There's Smoke

One brief observation about Japan before bed:

* Many people smoke. I mean, sure, more people smoke there than smoke in my little cul-de-sac of the world, but even compared to the average amount of smokers in, say, Europe, these days (200 million plus), I'd say more people smoke per capita in Japan than outside of it. (And a quick Google search backed me up.)

Some restaurants have little "No Smoking" sections, but since they're not really divided in any way (except by a few feet of distance) from the rest of the nicotine-breathing diners, this really means, "Slightly Less Smoking." Did D. & I care? Not really. We were so happy to be there, on vacation, away from it all and (after the business part of the trip) alone together, I think we could have lost a finger and would have said, "Oh well, who cares?! We're in Japan!"

Except, on second thought, that's not entirely true - as a missing finger is a sign that you're with the Yukuza.

Although there's apparently a way to work around that, too.

What a world we live in.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig

Blade Runner fans, you know the rest.

We are here: well and safe and sound. The girls are also here, and well and safe and mostly sound. Yesterday, S. had to be taken to the Dr. because of a puffy red eye, which it turns out was slightly scratched somehow - possibly she scratched it in her sleep. We are grateful that eyes heal so quickly. She'll go back for a checkup tomorrow, but today she was the "Pirate Princess" with a patch over the eye.

She was so happy to see me when I picked her up from daycare that she was "almost going to POP!" Daughter number 1 was also thrilled to see me, and gave a running jump into a hug that nearly broke me, followed immediately by her running off to play with a friend. It's all right. I'll get over it.

There is SO MUCH to tell about the trip. I suppose it's best done in installments, and best done after more than the 3 or 4 hours of sleep I've had in the last 2 days. Let's see - it's now 2:30pm in Tokyo Thursday, and we got up to leave around 7:30am in Tokyo Wednesday. I slept about 30 minutes on the plane, about 20 minutes in the airporter, and about 3 hours since I got home. Time for a full night's sleep!

Great to be home. Wonderful to be away, mind you, but great to be home.

Oct. 20, 2004

Dateline Tokyo.
The 23rd typhoon of the season has pretty much passed through the city. The southern parts of Japan, where we will visit next, were hit fairly hard. Here in the city, it just rained on us the whooe time we were sight seeing yesterday, and then while we safely had dinner at the hotel restaurant, the worst of it passed through.

This morning it is raining but not socked in. We'll have a few hours of sight seeing and then I'll be off to another meeting followed by a trade show visit followed by dinner. Tuesday afternoon and evening and even part of the night was business meetings and dinner with the other company's CEO and Manager too. We're learning a lot about how they do business, and more importantly, they're learning a lot about how we run our company. The CEO and Director of Business Developement (our outside sales manager) are really showing me how it's done.

The hotel we are staying at is the one used for the film "Lost in Translations." If you've seen the movie, you know what this place is like. And it's not just a movie star that gets treated royally here. Everyone does.

I want to write more - there's a lot to write! But I have only a little time to see more sights before business, and I don't want to lose that chance. So this is all for now.

Pre-Trip Count Down: 36 hours

I'm 36 hours away from getting on the airporter and going to Japan.

My to-do list is long - but finite. My energy is low but steady - amazing, especially since I've had 5 hrs sleep per night for the last 4 or 5 nights, now. I've lost count. It's a little like having a baby in the house, but instead of losing shut eye for the sake of a crying newborn, I'm up at all hours to appease my own sense of needing to be prepared for a journey.

When we go on long car trips, my husband packs flares and spare gasoline and whatever manly tools he thinks one might need in the event of a problem. I don't think in those concrete terms, but really, I do same thing before a big trip in terms of mental preparation.

One of the symptoms of the difference between us, though, is that he seems unconcerned by what is being left behind. He doesn't worry about letters to teachers, permission slips and paperwork that needs to be put in order, while I can't be bothered to think about how much air is in the tires or what the turbulence might be like over the Pacific.

I've cleaned out most of the drawers and closets in the house. I still need to complete the list of contact names and numbers, the how-to-use the funky dishwasher instructions, to clean out the dog's pen, pay the bills, yadda yadda yadda. There are a few business details still to sort out too: a list the contacts we'll be meeting and their titles (I have their cards from previous trips), a map out their offices and facilities and the trade show we'll be visiting.

The young woman who is watching our kids (with help from her fiance) will have copious lists of instructions and directions. I warned her about this, and she was actually grateful. (Or at least, she said she was.) With her last gig like this, the parents went to Jamaica for a week, and she ended up having to rely on the 4 year old (the oldest of the 3 kids she was watching) to tell her where Mommy kept everything.

Anyway, I'll probably be up until midnight again, but maybe in some twisted way, that's good. I think I'm getting used to the change in the time zone. Right now it's noon in Tokyo.

I will do what I can to post to this blog while traveling. Maybe I'll even figure out a way to post pictures.

But I guess know about as much Japanese as I'm going to know by Sunday.

Some lessons are repeated

Here's what I'd like to do: sit in front of a movie and vegetate for about thirty minutes and then go to bed and get almost full night's sleep.

Here's what I'm going to do: put on a mud face mask, write something for tomorrow's workshop, make the girls' lunches, do the dishes, drink more water, check my Japan trip to-do list, and then maybe fold laundry while watching a few more minutes of Lost in Translation. I've seen it once, but watching it feels like more trip preparation, so I can be entertained and feel like I'm accomplishing something at the same time.

Sick, isn't it?

At least - as my mom pointed out tonight - at least I can laugh at myself about it. "When are you going to learn?" she asked. Apparently not yet.

But please note that I WILL relax on my trip.

Ships and the Sea

We spent the day on the S.S. Jeremiah O'Brien today. We left before sunrise to make it to Pier 45 on time. There was a horribly nerve-wracking hour or so, while I tried to figure out if I was supposed to bring tickets and/or whether they would let us onboard without them, and while D's sister broke the speed of sound getting from her home to the ship before it left.

But we made it, we were all onboard when the tugboats started doing their work, and it was a long but enjoyable day. They served good food, there was a big band playing all day, and we saw the Snowbirds do their stuff. I'm still rocking from being on sea from 8 to 4:30, but it could also be that I'm swaying with exhaustion.

We had dinner out (my request) and after the kids got to bed, I went through a drawer of my grandmother's papers to pull out letters from the kids. I've been doing that for hours now.

A funny thing happened, too. Before I got to the drawer of things, I was cleaning up one of the ubiquitous piles of paper on the office floor, and I found an offer to join or contribute to the Nature Conservancy. Well, I do sometimes send checks to various causes and non-profit organizations. But every once in a while, you just have to release yourself of the false sense of obligation brought on by unsolicited mailing. And I said to D., "I'm not going to give to these guys right now," and I threw away the paper. (Ah! Liberation!)

Forty-five minutes later, going through my grandmother's things, I found an envelope from the Nature Conservancy asking her to renew her membership. She'd hung on to the request (for who knows how long), and when she died, it went with all her other paperwork to me.

Yeah, okay. But she died over 8 years ago.

So I threw it out on her behalf.

I think we all feel better. Except maybe the Nature Conservancy. But they'll get over it. Heck, they not only have the domain www.nature.org, but they got a plug in my blog. Twice, if you think about it.

To bed. Tomorrow will be another big day, followed by only big days until we leave for Japan. It's the last big push to get myself and my family ready for our 10 day adventure apart, the last few days during which I can organize my things, clean the house, pack, and find a cure for cancer.

Makes me tired just thinking about it. I've done my duty for the day. I've written. To bed.

Choices

I have made an enlightened decision. I won't be able to complete my grandmother's transcription AND sleep between now and my trip (let alone before the 13th), so I'm going to set it aside and complete it for Christmas.

I'm on page 45, which represents about one and a half of five or six tapes. It takes me about an hour to transcribe about 5 minutes of speaking, because I'm doing it verbatim, and keep pausing and rewinding to get every "but...uh.." and cut off or mumbled sentence she said. So I think there are about 270 minutes more to go. That's nearly 24 hours, realistically. It can't happen as quickly as I'd like.

I can be proud of what I've done so far, and send out a note to my family in time for her birthday, maybe with a picture and excerpt and an announcement that more will come. I have a great shot of her and two friends in front of a little plane they flew in in the 1920's. That should do. I don't want to send just some of the transcript. I'll back up the tapes, back up the file, and put it all in our fire safe.

And then I can focus on other things.

The older I get, the better I can think through things and prioritize, but I'm still fighting this weird idea I have that I can and should do everything I think I can and should do.

Right now I can and should go to bed, but see, now, that's an example of a reasonable goal.

16 tons of concrete

Hello Gentle Readers. I am here, and all is well.

R's 10th birthday party was a quiet affair, with dinner out and a sleepover with two of her friends. She invited the sweetest, most polite girls in her class, which made my job easy. One of the girls is diabetic, and so we had to stay on top of checking her blood and dosing out the insulin after consulting with her mom every few hours. It was educational, because I now understand carbs and blood sugar in a whole new way, but also educational to see that a 9 year old girl can jab herself in the stomach with a needle and just say a quiet, "Ow" when she's done. It's all about attitude; how we handle hardships, how we get through this life.

We had about 16 tons of concrete poured in our front yard today. That's right: 33,000+ pounds have gone into the making of a courtyard just outside the front door. D. was very worried thinking about it last night, and I don't blame him. That's a lot of material to deal with if something goes wrong. Which it didn't. We'll have a walkway to the front door cured in another week or so instead of the rebar and dobie obstacle course we'd had. (I tried and tried to find a visual for a dobie but I couldn't!) It feels like things are getting done in a timely manner, but that's probably because I'm not the one doing all the hard work & I'm not as aware as D. is of what must still be done.

I'm working on poems to send to the contest, and I think I have 2 or 3 candidates so far, but they'll need more work. I love the process of working on poetry so much.

Tonight is D's night out. I got the girls to bed before 9pm and am still awake a half hour later - unheard of for a Monday night! I'm trying to talk myself into doing a few more things before bed so I can sleep well all night instead of my usual Monday night routine: collapse into bed, set the alarm for 10pm, hit the snooze button for two hours, get up and work for an hour or two, go back to bed. That's just so wrong in so many ways.

The pet rat is keeping me company. We named her Beatrice. I suppose if I'd had a male too I would have named him Dante, but it somehow seems appropriate that Beatrice is here and Dante is somewhere else, distant from her.

Moolar loss

The rat still doesn't have a name. We're working on it.

The Tooth Fairy, however, goes by the name "Gwen" in our house. This comes from a long series of letters back and forth between R. and said fairy. I may have blogged about this. Maybe it's a good sign that I can't remember if I've written about this in the blog - it means I've written enough that I can't keep track of it and don't really care to search the history to find out. Okay, so maybe it's just a sign that I'm lazy.

R. lost her first "moolar" (as she called it in her note to Gwen) yesterday, and the Tooth Fairy, witty correspondent that she is (Illustrator, French Script font) said she'd add it to her collection. She said other things too. The kind of inane things a fairy says when it's 1:30am and she is sleep deprived and annoyed by the buzz of an iMac. I get so cynical after 10pm. Sorry.

Current pre-trip goals:

* Learn Japanese. My most recently learned phrase is, "Big is the opposite of small." It's oh-so-handy what a CD can teach you!

* Finish the oral history transcription. I worked on it from 2:00am-2:45 am this morning and had to force myself to stop and go to bed and get that extra 2 hours before the alarm went off. But I'm only about a fourth of the way through it and don't have a dictation machine so it's slow slow going.

* Create or polish my best 5 poems ever & submit them to the James Hearst Poetry Prize competition. Deadline: October 31st. Judge: Billy Collins. I can't count on Japan to inspire me to write the perfect submissions, so I should try to finish this before I go.

Meanwhile, I'm very happy. Busy and happy. Thank God for coffee - among all the other real profound blessings in my life.

The Newest Addition

It was another good weekend of getting things done around the house. Saturday morning, I took the dog on a long early walk, got my hair done, took R. to riding lessons, took the girls to a birthday party, and then worked on the yard. I convinced the family that dinner out at a Chinese restaurant would be good, and it was. Sunday I worked on cleaning the house, ran to the store, and came home long enough to grab my things and go (late as usual!) to my writer's group BIC ("butt-in-chair") time at the Apple Box. Had about an hour of writing, got home to do more chores, R. had a friend over & I ended up staying up too late to squeeze every bit of the weekend out of the weekend that I could.

I've started again transcribing my maternal grandmother's oral history. Not sure how I'll finish in 2 weeks, but I'm going to try to mark the centennial of her birth by completing this project & sending the written work (approximately 120 estimated pages!) to my siblings and mother.

And the really big news - especially if you are my children - is that this evening, we added a new pet to our family. My husband has had understandable concerns about not contributing more chaos to our lives and so is adamant that another pet such as a cat or dog would be a bad, bad idea. However, some time ago, he agreed that if I were to get myself a small pet that could be contained in a cage, he would be okay with that.

So here's how it went down.

We were out of dog food.

I think I've mentioned before that a trip to the pet store with children is a dangerous thing. I prepared my kids by saying, "Now, we're going to the pet store, and we can look at the little pets, but we are NOT going to get anything."

We looked at the birds. Very nice. And then either because I was heeding the small quiet cry of Destiny or because I'm an idiot, I said, "Let's look at the rats!" And you know what? Neither of my kids said, "Gee, Mom, maybe we shouldn't. We're not going to get any new pets anyway, and looking at them will just make us want one."

Anyway, there was a little gate barricading us from the room with the rats in it, so either because I am intimately in tune with Fate or because I'm insane, I said to one of the sales clerks, "Could we please look at the rats?"

And the whole time, I'm telling myself, "You're just looking."

This is how people end up driving fully loaded Lincoln Towncars off the lot. I'm sure of it.

The little VOICE OF TEMPTATION AND THE CAPITALIST PIG AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE devil on my shoulder was whispering, "Well, maybe if they have a female and she's young, and not the curly hair variety, and if she looks like she has a good disposition... D. did say you could get a rat. And you haven't had one for about 15 years and you deserve to have a rat if you want to. You're a good human being. You're responsible. You'll take care of it. It can be a Writer's Rat and sit on your shoulder while you compose poems that Billy Collins will read! It will keep you company while you stay up late learning Japanese or transcribing those tapes!"

And at the same time, the VOICE OF REASON, ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY, AND STRENGTH OF WILL was quietly saying, "But you can't anyway because it would be stupid and you told the kids you wouldn't and you shouldn't do anything to make you look like a liar or be inconsistent with them. Besides, it's bad timing to get a pet because you're going out of town so it would be one more thing to have to organize with the babysitter. And what if the dog wants to eat it? It'll cost a lot of money. And didn't you say you'd get a pet from a shelter? How can you get a baby rat from an overpriced pet store while meanwhile perfectly sweet adult rats are being put to sleep at shelters because no one will take them? What kind of message are you giving your daughters? What kind of impulsive person are you? Are you crazy? What if D. only says he doesn't care, but a month from now he moves to Tahiti with a cute little brunette named Bambi and in his parting note to you he says, "I would have stuck it out with you if it weren't for that rat." ?

There was one female in the litter. She was very sweet. She had been handled by people since her eyes opened, and you could tell she'd been handled gently.

We put her back. We bought our dog food. We left the store.

S. was saying, "I want a rat! Please can I have a rat? Please?" and R., bless her heart, said, "Maybe when Mom gets back from her trip, okay?" and then she did a silly pratfall to make S. laugh - even though I knew that R. wanted that rat as much as I did, and that I did as much as S. did. The devil on my shoulder was having the same tantrum S. was having, and the little voice of reason angel was being so damn self-righteous and smug it made me hate myself.

We drove home. The pet store closed in 25 minutes. I knew this because I'd asked what time they closed. I called D. He stayed neutral, but when I said it seemed like a silly expense, he pointed out that we already had containers to house the rat & that money shouldn't be the thing that decided it for me. But he let me decide. I paced, talking to him out of earshot of the kids, who had already let it go. I checked out the acrylic tank we had to put the rat in. I looked at where it might go in the office. Metaphorically speaking, a scuffle broke out on my shoulders between the warring factions. Then, 15 minutes before the store closed, I gagged the angel of reason and said to the girls, "Well, you'd better get your shoes on and get to the car if you want to get that rat!"

They didn't really need their shoes on. Their feet didn't touch the ground between when we left the house and when they went to bed.

Winey post

Brutal, brutal day at work, followed by a couple of hours with the kids and then a party for a coworker who just got married. I'm home and it's not yet 10pm but feels like midnight.

I have a couple of glasses of red wine in me, so I'm relaxed and a little dopey (but not, of course, too dopey to have driven home from the party). I should think of it as the weekend starting early, although I have plenty more on my to-do list to do before Saturday morning really comes. Danged to-do list.

It's probably dangerous to post anything that I think is important at the moment, because it's likely to be highly influenced by the wine.

I'm not a mean drunk. I am a garrulous gluttonous drunk. I have a very low tolerance for alcohol. One glass of wine gets me a little dizzy and unable to move my eyes fast enough to keep up with my head when I turn it. But I talk. And eat. Two glasses of wine makes me downright silly while I talk and eat more. (But I drove home okay. Really.) I don't drink often. Also, if I drink alone, I'm a very paranoid drunk. The world seems a hostile place; alcohol opens doors in the fences in my brain where I keep the demons at bay. I'm not talking about some sort of metaphoric guilty conscience or bad memories. Or wait. Maybe I am. But mostly, I'm talking about drinking wine or a hard cider alone at night and then having the conviction that there are local hooligans or drugged-out neighbors or kitchen knives possessed by the force of evil, and whatever goodness and light I harbor may not be enough to fight them off.

This is where I say that:
A) I'm part of that generation of 30-something who saw Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist and Amyteville Horror and The Omen at way, way too impressionable an age. It would have been better if I hadn't seen such things until I was older - somewhere around two or three years after NEVER.

and

B) Here are 10 things I would rather think about (and perhaps therefore give power to) than the above bad stuff:

1) finding what's been lost (two 8mm video tapes D. & I had torn up the house looking for, which showed up among my grandmother's oral history tapes, safe & sound)

2) my 10 year old wanting to wear a special hand-made frock from the Czech Republic tomorrow for a field trip to the local "Ag Day" because that's short for "Agricultural Day" and the dress if from another culture. (This after I've tried to trick her into wearing it for 3 family holidays to no avail). I'm glad she'll wear it. She'll probably get cow dung on the Eastern European cross stitch, but she'll be wearing it.

3) my 5 year old's conversations with all her toys in the bathtub

4) the lavender I planted in the front yard

5) red wine :)

6) mnemonics. Here are some of the many I've developed for learning Japanese:
-the word for "not yet" sounds like murder ("mada"), as in "I hope that murder is something that I will always be able to say I have not yet done."
-the word for "good night" ("Oyasumi nasai") starts with "Oh yeah!" as in "oh yeah, that's how it starts. Silly, but it works.
-one of the words for seven is "nana" and my Nana has passed away and is therefore somwhere that rhymes with seven
-"to leave behind" is "nokoshimasu" and when we go to Japan we will leave the kids behind. Kids in Japanese is "kodomo" (I just remember that one), and so I think "no" they're not with us "ko" short for "kodomo" and "shi" which is pronounced like the English "she." Our kids are girls ("she" not "he") so to leave behind is no-ko-shi with the usual "-masu" ending. Long and involved, but it works.

7) good poetry

8) good chemistry

9) Autumn will come every year whether I'm here to see it or not

10) I'm currently here to see it.

Sept. 18, 2004

My goal to write daily has been met so far. Thursday was the blog, of course. Friday I took the day off work in part to go to a workshop led by Ellen Bass. It was a inspiring workshop, and she is a good poet and a good person - gentle and thoughtful, but also with a sharp wit and keen ability as a teacher. She teaches creative writing in Santa Cruz, and apparently has done so since 1974. She spoke about "The Poem of the Moment," and she gave us some examples. She also had each of us try to start such a poem our own, at the end of the workshop. There were so many people in the room, about a dozen of us were sitting on the floor. I had a corner of a table to kneel at while I wrote.

I wrote a poem about telling R. about menstruation (the event itself is recorded in my 7/21/04 blog entry). And I was one of a few people who read their poems to the group. People laughed loudly at the right spots, which was gratifying. And Ellen said "Good work," among other nice things. But better than everyone's reaction was the fact that I wrote something new, and with some more work, I can add it to my collection of poems that are about life in general. (The other poems are about, or inspired by, role-playing games). And Ellen provided me with another look at what happens if you write poetry and send it out into the world and try to improve. I wouldn't mind having the awards and grants and recognition and publications under my belt that she has under hers. I have about twenty years to get there, I figure. "Lord willing and the creeks don't rise."

I also finished reading my neighbor's novel and wrote up a critique and got it all back to her (500+ pages of her double-space manuscript and 4 single-spaced pages of my comments and observations and suggestions). Phew! Glad to have fulfilled that obligation.

And I got a good start on cleaning out the house one corner at a time. Worked on our closet tonight. Threw out such things as the empty jacket for Heart's Little Queen LP and a slew of old AAA travel magazines. If we want to go somewhere, we'll look it up online.

I had thought I would go to bed but got a second wind. This after a day of running errands, horse-back riding lessons for R., a party for 3 hours and digging in the adobe for another 2 hours. I just feel energized. Or maybe the word I'm looking for is "manic."

(But at any rate, Clare, you'll be happy to know that I'm living more and more outside of my mind and in the present, where it's oh-so-nice to be.)

Here's a link to an Ellen Bass poem about praying in everything you do. K & B, please note the reference to riding the bus. You see how riding the bus really is very important in the whole scheme of things. It is not necessary to make fun of certain role-playing characters for liking to take public transportation. Public transportation is cool.

End of random thoughts for the day. I also worked on the new poem, earlier, and updated my "fitness" blog, so I met my goal again today.

Sept. 16, 2004

D's 40th birthday. We went out to dinner - sushi, of course. I just spent the last hour working on a poem. D. is playing Parasite Eve and having a birthday hot chocolate.

I believe 9pm - 10pm will have to be my set writing time, although again (working on the poem) I fell asleep with my fingers on the keyboard. Repeatedly.

Time for some zzzzz's. But here's the poem - rewritten for the 5th time, originally composed around June 1998, and maybe still not quite there!



McClure's Beach

We walked the length of it
until rocks checked our progress, and wind
had crusted our hair with salty grit.
Then we turned and trudged back,
once more past kelp that had been coughed up
in cold tangles by the waves.

Our daughter was tired but too tired to know it.
She kicked when I carried her, went limp
in the sand when I put her down to walk.
I thought the steep hill to the gravel lot
was all we had left to conquer.
But at a stream flowing thinly into the sea,
my husband stopped, announced:
"I've got to do it."

No sticks at hand, he used his boots
to crumble and crush the shallow banks
and smudge lines it had taken gravity and tide
uncounted hours to make. He found rocks,
lay them in the water to displace the hapless stream.
Our child whined and tugged at me;
both of us dismayed
by his need to redefine the land's borders
to change courses to the sea.

Slide

There’s been nothing huge in my life that has kept me from blogging. I just stopped making it a priority for a week. And look what happened. Slide, slide, slide. I’m not beating myself up. I’m making an observation. Writing is long-term important to me, and I don’t want to drop it for other things that are important for the moment. The damn laundry can wait another half hour. The kids’ dinner can’t, but the laundry can. For example.

About two years ago, I went to a sales training seminar through work. It was a frightening experience. It could have been worse, I suppose. But it was bad enough. There was much talk about MOTIVATION!! and SETTING GOALS!! and GETTING THE CUSTOMER TO SAY YES!! - that sort of thing.

What I took away from it – besides a renewed conviction that I’m not a sales person at heart – is the understanding that I could fake it if I have to, and the realization that what I learned could be applied to different areas in my life. So I have set goals and have seen them attained. Being a published poet. Running a marathon (I’ve run 2 half marathons – does that count?). Getting a new car. All have happened since I went to that seminar. I have also become closer to my family – another goal I set at the time.

So I’m going to make a new goal that I feel I can keep. The goal is this:

WRITE EVERY DAY.

Wow! What a unique idea! However, self-mockery aside, 9/15/2004 is as good a day as any to start. In fact, if every day I said, “I’m going to write every day!” and every day I did it, that would work, wouldn’t it? It works for recovering alcoholics to take it one day at a time.

Maybe my daily writing won't be a blog entry, but certainly it will be fiction or poetry or journaling in earnest. Not “today had tea with the Smiths” diary entries. Real journals, like the blog is able to be. I think I’ll add long and well-written letters (not email) to the list of qualifying writing, too.

I’m beating Julia to it and daring myself. And anyone reading this is my witness.

What this means, of course, is that I must honestly MAKE TIME to write. Ideally the same time every day, but I won’t worry too much about that right now.

I bought a beautiful little journal to write in when I’m in Japan next month. I can’t wait to fill it up.

Sept. 7th, 2004

A good, long weekend. The girls and I went to a "soup party" Friday night at a friend's house. She put on a pot of soup and the guests provided bread and wine. All the kids there played like sweaty rabid animals. At one point, another mom and I were watching the pack of them race around screaming, and she said with calm consideration, "You know, it's really like Lord of the Flies." And I nodded and said, "Yes. That's what it reminds me of."

Saturday R. had a riding lesson and then a slumber party and S. and D. and I did some shopping at a Macy's - a real department store - something I haven't done in years. I'm so used to going the cheaper route. But fortunately, no one was playing a piano by the escalator. I have a REAL problem with grand pianos in department stores. They make me laugh uncontrollably. Even though I'm sure it offends the pianist, I can't stop myself. It's just somehow so wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. Am I the only one who feels this way?

I'll try to put into words what's wrong about this. Certainly, part of it is the seriousness with which the businesses take themselves. But beyond that, it's like Nordstroms (or whoever) is saying, "Here. Please spend lots of money at our store. We'll entertain you with classy live music so you can feel like it's a privilege or some kind of culturally enlightening experience to part with your paycheck for clothes that you don't need made for pennies by third-world workers under horrible conditions. You can listen to a little Chopin while you propagate inequality. And by the way, that color looks great on you."

Okay. I'm off that soapbox. Thanks for listening. As I was saying: we made it out of Macy's with the purchases we needed. I had a moderate case of consumerism. But I got better.

Sunday I went for a long run with the dog - well, as long as he could handle it - after 3 miles, the poor thing had to feign a lame back right leg to get me to just walk, for heaven's sake. I guess a fur coat in 120 degree temperature is a little bit of a challenge, even if you're part sled dog.

I got R. from the slumber party, stopped at the grocery store, and got home with just enough time to turn around again and get the babysitter so D. & I could go to a swanky wedding in the Rotunda at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. It was pretty magical: we were early. We found free parking. We were dressed appropriately. We found the reception just fine (at the Golden Gate Club at the Presidio) and the parking was also free there. The bride and groom were as happy as could be. The food was wonderful, the company was pleasant, and the weather was perfect. Scary.

Monday I slept late and spent some writing time downtown with the writer's group, then D. went off to game and the girls and I spent the rest of the afternoon into the night moving S. back to the room that used to be hers and had become the playroom. This meant moving large pieces of furniture in the 120 degree heat, and a thorough re-examination and R&D testing by the girls of every rediscovered toy under said furniture. I finished everything except the dishes, read half of my neighbor's novel copy, and slept.

Must now look at what I'll bring to our writer's group meeting tomorrow. Another very positive bit of news - just got an email from the editor of the American Poetry Journal asking if he could include another one of my poems in the next issue. Golly. This is a good thing. I said yes. I'm more pleased with this one than the last one he published, but I'm really tickled pink that the last one wasn't just a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Hooray!

Sept. 3, 2004

So I missed a couple of days of blogging and reading blogs. I'm still trying to shake strep, and have followed my traditional pattern of doing too much too soon and suffering the consequences. Plus, apparently the penicillin didn't do diddly against the tough little bacteria I'm hosting. Yesterday, I was put on another antibiotic. Should see results soonish. I hope! I look forward to the day when I can swallow without wincing or even noticing I'm swallowing. Once again, I'm in awe of people who go through life with chronic illnesses and maintain a positive attitude.

Please note that I have added a link to Clare's blog. I highly recommend a visit there. Clare is a deep thinker and a great friend – and she manages to write while mothering twin one-year-olds and 5 year old. True, she’s not home-schooling seven children but it’s close. (Thanks to Julia – another blogger you should read – for the link).