The absolutely first thing you must do...

...is read Eloise Takes a Bawth sometime. It's zany, but it's also poetry.

Do you know about the author of the Eloise books, Kay Thompson? What a character. I had no idea. She was wild, eccentric, strong, determined and proud. She was probably very hard to live with, but at the same time she was inspirational. She never stopped, and she never looked back.

I truly admire people like that - artists on fire for life - but sometimes, I have to admire them from afar. Close enough to be warmed and lit up, but not so close that I burn to a crisp. My focus now is on creating my own light, having my own fire.

(And in the meantime, having fun fun fun by doing things like reading Eloise books to my kids.)

Somewhere in the middle of 8 hrs sleep

I fell asleep at 9 when I put the girls to bed, and now I'm doing this habitual "getting up only to post at around 11pm" thing.

What to say about today? Work was busy, as usual, so the day flew by there. After school and before the girls and I had dinner and a trip to the pet store, I was watching 6 kids: my 2, the next-door neighbor, the girl from across the street (who now knocks on our door 3 times an afternoon if we're not out front begging us to come out), and the siblings who had come over to play with my 2 kids to begin with.

It's crazy & impossible not to be completely In The Moment when in charge of that many children. One must abandon the thought of doing anything other than paying attention to the Present.

It is , however, tricky paying attention to the Present in multiple locations.

Julia was asking me to let her play inside with the rat at the same instant that Richie fell off the bike he was borrowing, and while I was distracted by that, S and Kira disappeared from Kira's driveway, where I'd had an eye on them. I saw from afar that Richie was fine (he got up and wasn't crying or limping), I put off Julia's request, and took her with me to find the other 2 five-year-olds. It wasn't too hard to guess where they'd gone because they'd just finished asking if they could go play at Kira's house, and I'd just finished saying, "No," because her mother was gone and there was no one there to watch them.

Sure enough, the front door to Kira's house was unlocked. I didn't feel comfortable going in while the other kids were in the street on bikes - I needed to watch them, too - so I called into the house from the front door for the girls to come out. It took a few tries, and then they finally emerged from a back bedroom. Before they were even close to me, Kira announced, "We're just eating crackers."

Right. That's always convincing.

"Really?" I asked. "You're not maybe eating candy?" (Kira's mother had told me a couple of days ago that they'd just found and raided a hidden stash.)

Oh, no, they weren't eating candy. They were busily chewing on crackers. Apparently the kind of Saltines that coincidently crunch just like hard candy crunches when you bite down on it in a quick the-parent-is-watching-me panic.

I was amazed at how fast they'd thought up a lie and how long they insisted on sticking to it. I asked a couple more times if it wasn't maybe, perhaps, for example, some candy they were eating. I even said boy, I bet it sure would be tempting to find and eat candy in a house when your mom and dad weren't there. I asked to see what they had in their mouths and their eyes got wide and a little wild and they clamped their jaws shut and furiously shook their heads, crunching and swallowing manically.

Meanwhile, Richie had fallen again, or maybe was finally really reacting to having fallen the first time, and he was lying in another neighbor's driveway, shaking his hand and groaning theatrically. And Julia was asking politely but plaintively if her dad was coming soon to pick her up.

Oh yeah, I was living in the moment then. It was so very Zen and peaceful.

I finally had to pull out the, "Gee, I guess we can't let you two play together if you tell stories to adults like this when you do," and that was enough to elicit the confessions. Not that they shouted out, "It's candy! It's candy!" They just nodded and when I finally put the question to them one more time.

I said, "Thank you for telling the truth," without adding, "finally."

I herded the children (except the girl-from-across-the-street) inside.

I got out the rat for Julia.

I got out more paper and pens for the Candy Thieves of Clairmont Court.

I cleaned up Richie's only-slightly torn palm.

I spent some time focusing on the "here and now" instead of the "here-and-there and now."



Actually, it was a good afternoon.

Many a new

Happy May Day!

Thanks for the comments, ladies. It's interesting. I completely believe that Clare could be a writer like her mom was and is, but I realize that I can't (maybe I should say, "can't yet") believe in it for myself. Is that an honest assessment of my lack of ability, or just my lack of belief in myself that's speaking? And if it's the latter, well, dammit, I need to take steps to change that.

Last month, I wrote a couple of new poems & posted one here. Here's what I'll do this month to strengthen/create my vision of myself as a writer. I'll write at least two new poems and will send something out to a magazine or journal. Today, the part of Julia-daring-me will be played by me. Since she's busy with a new baby and all that.

And I think Lisa 's comment to yesterday's post is valid. If such a thing can be done and if I can be thick-skinned/confident enough to stand the unavoidable potentially ugly fallout associated with it, I should try to change where I sit at work from one room to another. As one of Lisa's teachers once told her about Evolution: "Change, Adapt, or Die."

Hmmm. So what have I learned from my forty-five minutes on the internet tonight? That my self-esteem and self-confidence are still too low. That I shouldn't beat myself up over having low self-esteem. (Because for some reason, that just seems counter-productive.) That some people claim to have seen UFO's around the WTC during the attack. (You'll notice no hot link to those web pages. I'm sure you can find them if you're so inclined.) That Suzanne saw an amazing sight today. And (again) that I can sit down hoping I'll come up with something to say and - lo and behold! - the words come. Even if it's self-reflective stuff.

And since I have to get up for work in 5 hours (stop laughing, D), I'm done for now. And yeah, that sleeping 8 hrs a night thing didn't last (as some of you knew it wouldn't). But I remember it fondly, and it's something to try again soon.

Saturday night

I am so grateful for my husband's ability to listen to me and for his support.

D caught me looking at job listings and wanted to know how serious that was. So we had a long talk. Actually, as I was saying, I had a long talk and he had a long listen and good advice.

I am not an ambitious person when it comes to work. I have never been. I don't feel the need to push myself ahead in some career path. I do not strive for more and more money. I feel extremely fortunate that I do make a good living, but that's more accident than planning.

I want a job where I know what my duties are and I do them extremely well and am recognized for my competence. Beyond that, what do I need? Health benefits and hours that allow me to pick up my kids from school. But as for the rest? I was happy covering books with plastic at the library, which required next to no brainpower and by most peoples' accounts was hellishly monotonous, but to me was therapeutic and lovely. I was happy doing software troubleshooting which required thinking hard and fast all day long while keeping 20-50 customers and programmers satisfied. If I know my place and can work hard behind the scenes to make the machine function, that's good enough for me.

My unhappiness at jobs has more often than not sprung from personality conflicts. I know I'm not perfect, and I'm sure I'm not easy to work with all the time. But whatever faults I have, I think that I have a positive attitude at work in general. And I only last so long working with people who are chronically angry, or disrespectful of other people who don't share their political views or temperament. My skin is only so thick, and then when I've had enough, I've had enough, and any more of the same negative attitude or unethical behavior from colleagues is fuel for the fire of discontent. Maybe I need to participate in some kind of workshop where I learn to interact more productively with aggressive personalities.

Or maybe not.

Just because my childhood has given me the tools needed to put up with abusive people doesn't mean I should.

Perhaps what I really need is to be a writer. They work alone almost all of the time. Some writers complain about this. At the moment, I think it sounds heavenly.

Fretting about work is not something that one should be doing on a Saturday night.

Is it?

More Spring Cleaning

Happy Birthday to my half-sister Melinda, and to our friend Cheryl! I don't think either read this page, but it's the thought that counts, right?

In other news...
In our livingroom are about 10 boxes and half a dozen bags all packed up and ready to go to the girls' school Rummage Sale. I'd done much of the boxing earlier in the year, but tonight I also went through cupboards and did more purging.

I also have three bags full of items that wouldn't necessarily sell at the garage sale but are still in good enough condition to donate to charity. And then there's the stuff that I've just plain thrown out. It's very nice to think that after I drop those things off tomorrow, I won't have to see them again. Except while working at the rummage sale, when I can pretend they were never mine, anyway, all the while diverting the girls' attention from anything they might recognize and suddenly feel compelled to rescue from my heartless abandonment.

You know how it goes. "But Mom! That's my favorite little-stuffed M&M-in-a-baseball-hat guy! I love that one! How could you get rid of it?!"

I tell you. I'm heartless.

But really, we SO do not need all this stuff. Good riddance to it, I say!

I do have a fear that all these internal & external changes I'm going through will lead to me jettisoning more big things - like my job, for example. There are plenty of reasons to stay where I work. But there are also, I'm increasingly aware, reasons to leave.

I've been feeling dizzy lately, just that slight loss of equilibrium one might get after a glass or two of wine, or the sense of constantly listing a little that comes from having turned around in circles several times like kids do before they lie on the floor and go, "Woooow." And of course I think it could be anemia, or that I'm pregnant (extremely unlikely, but technically not impossible), or that I have a brain tumor. Or it could be, I think, just a physical manifestation of an internal state of being off-balance. I'm listing. I'm drifting. And I don't know what port I'm leaving or what port I'm making for. I'm trying to enjoy the journey, but I'm also a little worried that I've forgotten to look up and take mental note of the position of the stars.


Today makes a year since I started this Blog. Who'd have thought it would be so regular a part of my life? I'm glad. Even though sometimes it feels like nothing more than a combination journal/email to myself, some confidence and writerly habits have come from it.

My first post said, "Thus it starts. No promises. Just a beginning."


And now?


Thus it continues.

No promises.

Just a process.

Another old one

I wrote this poem three years ago, almost to the day, to be part of the "THE WILD POETRY ELIOT HYPERPOEM" project. You can see the original hyperpoem here. The idea is for different writers to use a line from "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock"(in this case)and use it as a jumping off place to create something of their own, or to at least incorporate it into a poem somehow. I suppose you can either think of this as base, low plagiarism, or as another link in a long chain of artists inspiring one another. Or you can think of it however you like, actually. When I wrote it, I was very conscious of the war in Iraq having just started.




Portent

And how to explain that yellow smoke? Is it
signal smoke, the smoke of sacrificial offerings,
prophetic? Born of the burning of unholy things?
The yellow haze of gypsies, soothsayers and bombs.
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window panes
and will not be gone.

What good could come of such a thing? What could it signal
that is clean? See how it lies low and eager to come in?
Yes, you see what I mean. It is Spring again.
The roses reincarnate the yard, and still, outside
the yellow smoke hangs sullen and sulfuric, daring us to breathe.

We try to blow it free like cake candle flames, but the smoke
remains: muzzle pointed at us, the yellow of rotten grass,
of nicotine stained fingers and newspapers in rooms
where we pass time reading the same stale page.

I have measured out smoke in pipes and corridors;
yours are not the only eyes that burn from what presses
at the panes. I have seen the smoke of fires rise
with a full-moon wind, but that smoke rose. Since then,

since then pillars have smoldered low beneath our feet.
And I can only think two ways free: to open the window,
let the patient smoke in, to anoint the room with what follows behind;
or to bide time until it slinks to another street, every tatter of it gone,
and we can wipe the glass clean.

Daily poetry

Tonight I have neither thoughtful musings nor family anecdotes to tell. But I found this on Poetry Daily by Alan Shapiro, and like it. I only have a few more days of National Poetry Month to give me an excuse to post so many poems, but I'll probably continue to do so after April, too.
Who hasn't fallen out of love? Or risen out of it?



Takeoff

We didn't fall out of love,
old love, we rose — we rose
as in a plane, as in the moment
when the wheels lift
and the whole craft
shudders against the gravity
it then forgets as
all at once the runway's
fretful rushing by the window
slows and resolves to field
and tree line, the beaten
metal of a pond
the sun anneals;

we rose the way it all
grows clearer
as it diminishes till
a car drives in place
along a road that winds
and straightens, straightens to wind
again across a widening
landscape in which
nothing at all is moving
except the ever-
smaller sharper
shadow of our
getting clear of it.

Road rash

R took a spill on her bike this afternoon. It was a slow-moving spill, and she's only scraped a knee and her palm, a bit, and now has an arcing bruise in the shape of part of her tire on her inner thigh. I was down the street walking home with S at the time, and I saw that R didn't shed a tear as she got up and hobbled to our driveway. Another mom, who was collecting her daughter from a play-date when R fell, commented on how brave R was. I also praised her for being so calm while I cleaned up the cuts and applied antiseptic and bandages.

"That was quite a spill," I said. "I saw you fall."

"Me too. Up close," she answered.


Later, when we were talking about our best thing/worst thing for the day, R said that her best thing had been the fall. "I know it sounds weird," she said. But then she explained that when she was going down with the bike, it made her get rid of some anger she'd been holding inside about other things in her life. I can only guess that this is the anger and frustration that she catalogued for me yesterday: anger over having to endure the STAR testing at school, over being friends with people who aren't friends with each other, over her little sister getting on her nerves. She said that the fall pushed everything out of her except what was happening at that moment, and she sort of felt better afterwards for it. I wasn't sure whether to be relieved that she had this kind of release (I understand what she means), or whether to be afraid that it's the beginning of some lifelong pattern of self-abuse in the name of catharsis. This is just one example, too, of me extrapolating some little event out to an extreme conclusion.

But then she said that her worst thing was also the fall. So I think we're all right.

Placeholder post

Here's a placeholder post: an I'm-putting-my-quarter-on-the-arcade-game-edge-to-say-I-get-the-next-round post.

It's not that there is nothing to say. There is plenty to say. How the kids on the street spill out from the houses in the long afternoons to play, and how we moms talk in driveways about whether evolutionary theory really contradicts the story of creation from the Bible, and whether the careful phrases required by Positive Discipline are really worth it when one swat on the bottom seems imminently more expedient and effective, and where there's a good deal on groceries, and what we women on the cusp (or just past) of 40 want to be when we grow up. There is plenty to write about the satisfaction of so many blossoms on the orchid in the bathroom, and the simple gratitude that it is still alive, after all these years. About what isn't still alive - the relationships and habits and reactions that have died either tortuous or unnoticed deaths, the stars whose light we are still getting. About the mixed blessing of a rejection letter from a literary magazine. About the rat coming to us when she is loose in the house and we call her. About cheese. About whale cheese. About Wales. About what is inherited and what is learned. About the smell of basil, and the perfect blue-grey color of the BMW driven by the boy in High School I had a crush on.

But today, I'm just writing to record that at least I know, now, that when I sit down to write, there is plenty to say. And the words to say it all are waiting just like those kids to spill out into the world and play.

Backtowork eve

Got the girls to bed later than I wanted to, but still at a - *cough* - somewhat decent hour.

They did so well at the run this morning. R ran on ahead of us and says she did the mile in 15 minutes. The event wasn't formally timed, and I hadn't realized how informal it was until I got to the end and there was no clock, no timer, no nothing. I think S and I did the route in about 20 minutes, but that's just a guess because it started 3:30 min. after the 5k, but the 5k started "sometime" after 9am. At any rate, I'm proud of both girls. R says she didn't walk much, and S ran more than I thought she would. We did most of the route holding hands, except when she did a little sprint now and then. When she did walk, she walked fast, and we only had to stop once, when she insisted on unzipping the legs of her pants to turn them into shorts because she was hot. These pants have a handy design where you can adjust the length by adding or removing zippered sections of them - but since we didn't want to stop as long as it would take to actually pull off her shoes and remove the unneeded sections completely, for the last 1/3 of the mile or so, S had half of her pants fallen around her ankles. The effect was comical, but considering the circumstances (pushing ourselves to finish a run as quickly as we could), S and I cared about how she looked about as much as a woman in labor cares about how she looks.

Both girls ran the last bit of their race all-out. It's hard not to, when the finish has rows of people on both sides cheering you on. S and I were too far back to see R finish, but she said she passed several runners at the end. And S looked so impressive to me (just behind her as I was at the end of the race) pushing her short body for all she was worth, with her little arms and legs pumping. She's become taller and leaner in the last few months, but she still looked something like a determined little bull charging the finish line. (I would never use this description in her presence, and I mean it in the most affectionate way - honest. There's just no other comparison that comes to mind.)


On another note, I got to spend some much-needed time at the Apple Box "writing" mid-day while D took a break from work to watch the girls. I know that technically, talking about writing doesn't count as writing - nor does talking about other things count as writing. But it was still much-needed. I feel like I've had a real weekend.

Butter & Eggs Day Parade

S was in the parade today along with a quarter of the town's population (the rest of us watched). She walked with the girls' school. The theme was "That's Entertainment," and her school was trying to suggest old-fashioned things like jumping rope and music and dance and just plain "doing" instead of "watching" as good forms of entertainment. Very Waldorf of them. S was among the kindergartners in the back of the group, blowing bubbles. She seemed to have a good time. The town is small enough that we saw a dozen or more people we know downtown as we sat among the lighter crowd toward the front of the parade route.

Tomorrow, the girls and I will run that little 1-mile race together in the City.
It's a real family weekend. Except that D worked today & will work again tomorrow. Blech, I say. And he says double-blech.

Looking forward to writing time (BIC!) tomorrow too - if I can find parking while downtown is having an antique festival. (Be warned, SA, the joint may be jumpin')

I kind of dread writing these blog entries at night. It's been suggested that I switch my blogging time to the morning, but I couldn't do it at work, and before work, when it's still dark, I don't have time to get lost in a thought and find my way out through words. But even at night, even when I feel drained of anything but the energy to crawl into bed, once I start writing, my love of the process comes right to the surface, and I feel I could go on for a long time, enjoying what I'm doing. The exact same thing could be said of my running. As I lace up my shoes, I think, "Is this really necessary?" and after about 20 steps, I think, "Yes. Yes, it is."

Julia mentioned that she'd just read a Steve Martin book. I haven't read any of his books, but I found this quote and wanted to share:


"I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper. ~ Steve Martin

It's all OK around here

My friend Laura gave me a copy of the music from Oklahoma yesterday, and we've all been listening to it ever since. In the car, in the livingroom, in R's room. D says he's made a copy for in his truck & at work. I mean, we're such a sappy happy family at the moment, wandering around humming "The Surrey with the Fringe On Top" and "People Will Say We're In Love."

I'm a sucker for lyrics that are clever. Cole Porter does the same thing, and Irving Berlin. Not that I know many of their songs, but those I know I like.

I do know the songs from musicals I was in: The Wizard of Oz in 7th grade, The Sound of Music in 8th grade, Westside Story in college. And yesterday, I Googled the boy I'd acted opposite as a teenager. He was Gregor Von Trapp to my Maria, and I was Mrs. Crachit to his Bob Cratchit in the Christmas Carol. At one point, we figured we'd had about 20 on-stage children together. Oh, the romance. I must say he has grown up nicely since he could sing higher notes than I could, and his career has sure taken off better than mine did. In spite of battling MS for years, he's done off-Broadway and tons of voice-overs and TV (such as CSI: NY). Go, Grant!

Well, I must tuck the little "I Can't Say No" gals into bed, now. As S pointed out about the song, "She says she can't say 'no' but she says 'no' when she says that."

Ah. Can't put anything past my kids, I tell you.

There's no translation for it

D just said he's "deprimé" (pronounced "day-preem-ay" with a French accent)which is apparently untranslatable, because the few words I threw at him - deflated, defeated, drained - didn't do the trick. I guess it's more like "totally without energy and feeling depressed about not having enough energy."

I know how he feels. I'm all daypreemay myself right now. But it could be worse. Apparently, the minimum wage in Cuba is being doubled May first from 100 pesos to 225 pesos - equal in US dollars from about $4.50 to about $9.40 a month. It would be worse to be daypreemay and trying to make ends meet in Cuba. Or plenty of other places in the world.

I'm reading Feed, and it's having a real effect on me. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes YA Science Fiction - a sub-genre, I guess. Highly. Like, way highly. It's all about death? And it's written in like first person, in this teenager's voice, you know? And it's like, totally affecting me so that I'm thinking da da da the world is heading in this direction and da da da we should all pay attention. On and on, as I read it. And I'm not really daypreemay from reading this book, because I get a charge out of a good book, even if it's a totally depressing good book. Or maybe because it's totally depressing.

Damn. I may never get out of therapy. Thank God for a good health plan and a reasonable co-pay.

Anniversary

14 year wedding anniversary today. D had roses delivered to my work: one pale peach rose for every year, and an extra red one in the middle for the years to come. He's a good man. I'm glad we found each other 22 years ago. And I'd say the same even if he hadn't given me roses: a good man.

A little lighter poetry for you

One of my all time favorites, from A.A. Milne:

The Four Friends

Ernest was an elephant, a great big fellow,
Leonard was a lion with a six foot tail,
George was a goat, and his beard was yellow,
And James was a very small snail.

Leonard had a stall, and a great big strong one,
Earnest had a manger, and its walls were thick,
George found a pen, but I think it was the wrong one,
And James sat down on a brick

Earnest started trumpeting, and cracked his manger,
Leonard started roaring, and shivered his stall,
James gave a huffle of a snail in danger
And nobody heard him at all.

Earnest started trumpeting and raised such a rumpus,
Leonard started roaring and trying to kick,
James went on a journey with the goats new compass
And he reached the end of his brick.

Ernest was an elephant and very well intentioned,
Leonard was a lion with a brave new tail,
George was a goat, as I think I have mentioned,
but James was only a snail.





I love the rhyme of "intentioned" and "mentioned." I love the wrong pen. And I love the snail's huffle. This is right up there with Nash's Custard the Dragon in my book. Just plain silly, and fun, and from a time before ours, but still something children today can love. Case in point.

I was deferred from giving blood again yesterday - the second time in a row - because of a low hematocrit count. This in spite of the fact that I take iron daily and was nowhere in my cycle (thank you for asking) that would have caused a lower than usual count. The culprit, I think, is probably coffee. The Blood Bank gave me a second copy of a purple photocopied leaflet entitled, "Hematocrit Levels Handbook" which tells me that, "Coffee taken with meals can reduce iron absorption up to 39%." Since I take coffee with, before, and after breakfast, it doesn't matter how many nuts, beans, apricots or raisins I eat - it's not going to help. One more reason to cut back.

On the other hand, apparently iron or stainless steel cookware helps: "One study found that spaghetti has almost 30 times as much iron when cooked in an iron pot than in a glass one." Who cooks spaghetti in a glass pot these days? And who knows what hematocritic value Calphalon has?

I must be tired. I started out with a darling poem for children and ended up discussing the health benefits of cookware. Heck. Maybe I am anemic. If I ate red meat, I'd have a big old steak to see if that helps me string sentences together any better. As it is, I guess I'll go have a raisin. Or a cup of coffee. Yeah. That always enables me to focus.

When 4 is better than 2

Four is better than two when you're talking about children entertaining each other. R's friend Richie and his little sister, S's friend Julia, have been busy since after 4pm with some elaborate political negotiations.

They currently represent two kingdoms - R & R are the emperors of Japan and China, playing in direct contradiction of actual current events by forming an alliance. Hmm. Do you think we could channel the friendly emperors in my house so that Nobutaka Machimura and Wu Dawei have productive talks?

Anyway, here Japan & China are in a feud against S & J, from the Kingdom of Jasmine & Some Other Princess.

But wait - borders change quickly! Now sooner had I written that than Richie is Merlin & R is King Arthur, and they're holding a unicorn hostage while announcing riddles that S & J must solve in order to gain entry to the kingdom.

Little did they know that the 5-year-olds already know the answer to the riddle of the Sphinx:

"What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three legs at night?"

"A baby, an adult, and..." (this took an minute) "...and an old lady!"

The little girls have been allowed to be part of the kingdom. A proclamation has just been read. The princess is giving Arthur "the most powerfulist jewel" in the kingdom, and has rushed off with her sister the Other Princess to the ball which apparently has already started.

All this, and more, lasting over an hour total now. About as long as it would have taken to sit glassy-eyed in front of a video or two.

And yes, I know that the riddle of the Sphinx also (sometimes) includes "...and is weakest when it walks on 4 legs."

Man may be weakest walking on 4 legs, but when it comes to kids contained in a house, 4 is definately better than 2.

Look out Barbie and Log - it's Bottle & Tape!

So S has a piece of folded up clear tape that she calls "Tape." Tape has adventures. Tape has family (more tape strips and even some little scraps of paper - it's a mixed family). Tape has all of S's attention for extended periods of time while she narrates Tape's dramas.

Then, last night, S discovered Bottle. Bottle is an empty 2 liter Calistoga container, but really, that's stereotyping. He's so much more complex than that. Bottle has a strip of paper across his neck with a face on it. Yesterday, S pointed to the face and said that if Bottle looked a little unhappy, there was a reason. Bottle had been playing at the school playground, and his friend had pushed him, and he fell down on a big, big piece of glass, and it cut his head right off. But then a girl helped him put it back on, so he's better. But he's still mad at the friend who pushed him.

This story has varied little since the first telling. R asked her about 10 minutes later about it, and the only change was that S added, "Oh, and *I* was the girl who helped him."

Tonight at the dinner, we were all being goofy as usual, but R had just done something extra polite. This prompted D to make a joke by tossing another newly empty 2 liter bottle behind his shoulder and saying, "I'm so glad you guys have such great table manners!"

S exclaimed, "Oh good!I can make Bottle's dad!" and R and I busted up.

We could hardly stop laughing, so we had S explain her story again to Papa, and it was the same thing (almost verbatim). Except that she did clarify about the decapitation.

"He had to go to the hospital. It was kind of an emergency."

when saturday night isn't

It really doesn't feel like Saturday night, because it really didn't feel like a day off today, and because I need to be at work tomorrow morning at 6am.

This was my day - by choice! so I'd better not complain, huh? And it is pretty dull reading, so skip to a more interesting site if you'd rather. This one, for example, I found by Googling "interesting web site."

Okay, my day:

7:40 - take Ford to dealership to have airbag-light-staying-on problem checked
(jogged home from dealership -3.3 miles)

9:30 - take S to dance class, bring R. While S has dance class, R & I have hot chocolate and mocha, respectively, and split a chocolate & regular croissant, at the Tea Room, which Lisa, among others, has called her favorite spot for breakfast (see Feb. 21 post).

10:40 - S's dance class gets out 10 minutes late. We go home, grab a few needed items (like helmet and crop) and go to R's riding lesson. S and I hang out while R rides.

12:45 - go from R's lesson to Novato. Get the Prius washed, then go to the dealership across the way to have 5,000 mile maintenance (on the car, not us). We walked from there to the mall across the way, had lunch at Fresh Choice & then window shopped Pier One and shopped for clothes at Target (pronounced "tar-jay," if you'd like).

4:15 - leave Target
4:20 - return to Target, with moaning and groaning kids in tow, to retrace our steps through the store to find a pair of sunglasses I'd dropped. These are the same sunglasses that had gone missing for a couple of days before I'd found them in the car hidden next to the passenger seat, and I was not going to lose them again. Find the glasses on the floor in the kids' clothing section, where we'd been 20 minutes before.

4:30 or so - pick up Prius.

5:00 or so - go home, picked up D, go to the Ford dealership, pick up the Escape, D & I drive back home in the 2 cars. Then D goes back to work (until 8pm) and I try to get yardwork done/make dinner/mind kids at the same time, and am unsuccessful in all but making dinner. Pour myself a glass of wine and have a happy rest-of-the evening. I'd had wine Wed. when S's ex-preschool teacher was over, but apart from that, this was the first time in weeks that I'd had any alcohol. A little goes a long way when you drink so seldom.

8:15 - read a bedtime story to the kids in the big bed. Asleep by 8:20. (I am, that is. The kids might have fallen asleep around 8:30.)

9:30-10:40 - hit snooze button for alarm countless times. Finally get up, convinced that I wouldn't be able to write a thing.

11:06-11:33 - yawn an estimated 26 times while blogging.

11:39 - go back to bed.

happy poetry (formerly, briefly, titled "draft"!)

I know. I'm so chipper and happy in my poetry. But really, if I wanted to write cheerful rhyming verse, I'd apply for a job with a greeting card company.

It's been a really long week, and now that I'm at the end of it (although tomorrow will be busy and I work Sunday), I'm just so relieved.

And I just spent an hour tooling around on the Web looking for a good poem to post here. I read Ezra Pound, ee cummings, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Wislawa Szymborska, Dylan Thomas, Theodore Roethke. I must say, none of it was very cheerful. So I thought I would check out "humorous poetry," which led me to limericks.


Um....I reviewed several of those.

Um.

There were none that were appropriate to post here.

To the Ants

I also have a poem about a spider. And about scarabs. But this is neither my first or last poem about ants. Nor is it finished, so constructive criticism and suggestions are appreciated, for those of you inclined. (Thanks to Josh & Julie for your comments last week. You may note some changes.)


To The Ants

If you stay, no good can come of it.
It will end in a way neither of us wants.
I know, you are just doing your job. You scout
for new ground, a place to raise a family,
the next home for a cluster of eggs.
But my task is to keep counters
clean of single-file lines, no matter
how handsome the individual parts
of the moving social whole.

I hope you know I admire you:
your strength, symmetry, absolute
dedication to the cause. How you care
for your dead, how you tidy up.
Even the way you create
chemicals to lay trails and hail nest mates
seems a feat too great for such a tiny creature.

But that’s just me. The next person
who comes along will not be so kind.
You will find a thumb blocking out the light
from the kitchen sun, until there is
only a darkness more absolute
than the deepest tunnels you dig.


c 4/05

Entertaining

Tonight S's past preschool teacher came over for dinner. We had a great time, especially because it was very relaxed.

At the end of the evening, our guest and I took turns reading pages of a story about a leprechaun for S, then the girls were tucked in and probably asleep within about a minute. Now the dishes from the home-cooked meal are done, the dog's been fed, I've (pretty much) blogged, and I'm still awake but ready for bed.

I will post the newly revised Ant poem tomorrow, after a little more feedback from the Yahoo poetry group.

Bright April

I used to like Sara Teasedale's "I Shall Not Care", and I think the sliver of me that is an angst-ridden teenager still has a soft spot for it. But while looking for it online, I ran across this one, which seems more appropriate, in a broader sense, now:


There Will Come Soft Rains

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.


Sara Teasedale



Now, isn't that cheerful?


But I mean, honestly, that you can either look at the way in which the world has gone on fine before us and will do so after us - before and after each of us, individually, myself included, and before and after all of us, collectively - and you can find this to be about the most depressing, ego-deflating, terrifyingly brutal thing, or you see at is as a comfort. It means that the mountains in North Wales that I feel a part of will be just fine without me. Dinas Bran will continue to crumble into ruins, and the gorse will bloom every year. Fortunately, I am not responsible for the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. That's some relief.

I've mentioned my love of ants. I've written a new poem about them. And after I test it out on an online poetry community I belong to, I'll post it here. Because it's April, and I am working on poems before the coming of the soft rains.

Poetry in Sebastopol

Thanks to Suzanne for the hot lead on an evening of poetry. The Western Sonoma County Historical Society hosted "a night of vintage and contemporary poetry" at the Veterans Building. In spite of the fact that Suzanne and I felt a little bit like outsiders crashing the gig (as non-society members), it was great to hear Terry Ehret (the county's poet laureate) read, and to learn more about a little volume of poetry that was published in 1933 - a compilation of about a hundred literary voices in the area. Some of the vintage poetry was full of the emotionally manipulative pathos and forced rhymes you might expect from the era, but some of it was not so syrupy and did really evoke a little something about the local geography and history.

One of the things I found interesting was Terry's mention of William Keith, a painter whose work she had studied while writing poetry for the Oakland Museum. He created very large paintings, but in the end, Terry was inspired to write by a much smaller sketch he'd done. Here's one of the poems she read tonight:


Landscape
Untitled
WILLIAM KEITH
oil painting on a cigar box lid


A landscape might show up anywhere,
say as black and green,
red brushstrokes
on the lid of a cigar box,

inside three small glass bottles,
the dark amber which could be the sky,

an old, hinged palette,

brushes of various widths
and their stiff white hair,

whatever is near, your face perhaps.

Come closer.
You will begin to see how deep the woods are,
how much of night is suggested.
Are you thinking about sleep?
It is easy to imagine.

The tools you might use to invent the world
are everywhere, close at hand.

Sunday at the Zoo with J-

S was treated to a trip to the Zoo with a friend today. I think she must have had a blast. She came back sunburned and tired, with a plush stuffed tiger under her arm.

My car did not sell over the weekend, and even though it's only been "on the market" for a little while, I'm already almost ready to park it somewhere with a "$10 or best offer" sign on it. I guess I could see what the dealership would pay me for it if I'm that desperate. Time to visit the Kelley Blue Book site again, check the loan payoff amount, and weigh patience against instant gratification of being rid the extra car.

Apart from that, it was a good weekend. I even managed to read a little, and laze in the sun a little, and nap. And go for a short run. Plus the usual chores, and a lot of whispering to save my voice, which seems to be mostly gone, although I feel fine.

But it is bedtime, since tomorrow's a "school day."

Kid chatter

Heard today on the court:

Tiffany, one of the little girls across the street whose uncle had died, told me that she was going to go to her grandmother's to pick out one or two of her late uncle's things that she can keep. She's eight years old. She already, she said, has his pocketknife, although she said she didn't use it. "And I had some of his pepperspray," she continued, "But my I had to give it to my dad," then added by way of explanation, "Because he needs some."

About half an hour later, the girl on the corner who's 11, was saying to the boy across the street who's 7, "Did you know that there was a world-famous chess player who had been imprisoned, and he was just released from detention, in Japan?"

All those words.
And the boy asked, "What's chess?"

How silly is this?

I want to sell my Escape this weekend, but of course to sell one's car, one needs a pink slip. So after a long time carefully searching the 2 or 3 places the pink slip might be, I'm guessing it's in the safe deposit box at the bank. Now, to open a safe deposit box, one needs a key. I'm very careful about where I keep our key. Usually. But after looking in the 2 places that it normally would be, I've searched high and low pretty much everywhere else, and it's nowhere to be found.

I think the only thing more frustrating than spending all night looking for something is spending all night looking for something and not finding it. It's also ironic, for a couple of reasons. One is that I have a reputation among friends and family as a "finder" - I can almost always point them to the place they've left or lost an item. It's a gift I'm grateful for and something for which I can't really take credit (because it is, after all, a gift). But I can never seem to track down my own things that I've lost. The other bit of irony is that the key is probably somewhere new that I put so it would be "safe." It's apparently very safe, wherever it is.

On the brighter side, I've gone through a lot of paperwork and have done a lot of cleaning up tonight! But I'm wiped out, and ready to call it a day.

Arrrgh!

This is frustrating! I'd just posted a lovely little late-night post, full of - if not profound wisdom and insight into the human condition - at least complete sentences and links and a touch of humor at the end. But now, alas! it is gone. That fickle web. Something must be up with Blogger's site. Unless this really is the END OF THE INTERNET that I mentioned to Josh earlier in the evening. Too late to recreate it tonight. Bon nuit.

A "stay home" day

S calls weekends "stay home" days, but today I had to take one of those mid-week. I was feeling cold-y yesterday, and much worse this morning. I can't believe how much this fifths disease thing has beaten down our immune systems around here. I woke up only to call in sick at 6am, and then didn't wake again until 11. That left me only a little time to do nothing more daunting than balance my checkbook (where DOES the money go???) and clean out my purse - not as easy as you might think! - before running to the bank to keep the mortgage check from bouncing, and then getting the kids at school. R had a playdate here with one of the wilder boys in her class, and then I took the girls to his house (he has a 5 year old sister) to play while I went to a dr appointment. The appointment had nothing (on the face of it) to do with my cold: it was something scheduled last month with the same therapist I'd seen a couple of times. Talking with her has been so helpful, coming as it does during this time of re-evaluation of who I am and what I want to do with my life. All these changes I'm going through are very early mid-life, pre-perimenopausal, I know. But I also don't want to belittle this step in my journey by slapping a cultural or hormonal label on it.

But after the dr appointment, and after the stay at home, I feel so much better. Still, I'm sipping fizzy vitamin C drink as a write this, and tomorrow will undoubtedly come earlier than I want it to. Here's a poem that's 5 years old, written when R was S's age. I only tweaked a word or two while posting it here.



What Makes Creation Messy

We plant seeds in a riot of potting soil and peat pots.
My 5-year-old rips into packets, spills geneses:
snapdragon and cantaloupe, corn and beans.
Seeds for lavender and poppy, small as pill bug scat.

She bores holes with her pinky, thumb curving in the air,
I poke the earth with silent commands. To this one: germinate,
to that one: sprout. Grow and astound us, be bountiful, be green.
She writes the future with a laundry marker around the out-
side of the pots: CarrOt. PEPPEr. PumPkIN. BEaN.
CorN. PoPPy. CorN. BeaN.

Her fingers slip and leave hieroglyphs on the table, her hand.
They look like nicks, like the lines misused pruning shears make
on a slender apple tree branch.

The ecstasy of beginning behind us, now we'll mind the heat,
drip water to tempt the question-mark curves of green into straightening.
They're ours now, tiny things to tend or neglect at will.
She'll learn how apt seedlings are to shrivel if left alone.

Still in packets, the others are kept safe from either fate:
they await their turn to thrive or die
until the next time we give creation a go.

A Post A Day

gives you quantity but not necessarily quality. I mean, really. What was I thinking saying I'd blog every day? I obviously wasn't thinking of times like this, when the kids are tucked into bed and I want nothing more than to crawl between the sheets myself and put another day's worth of didn't-do-it's to rest.

I was thinking the habit of journaling daily would do me good. And maybe it has, somehow. It's given my consistency while other things that had been habitual in my life shift and drop away. But have I written elsewhere or otherwise, even knowing I'll be seeing my writer's group Thursday? Uh... no. Not really. Not yet.

Here's something from Gerard Manley Hopkins. I think I first read it in High School. Those of you who did not have Mr. Skinner for English may not know it as well:


Spring and Fall: To a Young Child

MARGARET, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie.
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

Close to midnight

The girls and I went to bed early and I only am up to blog and see if the Tooth Fairy came.

I am (still) feeling a huge lack of time and space needed to do some serious meditating and soul searching. I think this feeling was heightened by the weekend away from home. Even though it included a long drive, it's hard to focus on the Meaning of Life while you're dodging semi's on the Grapevine.

Another poem in honor of National Poetry Month. And no, it's not mine. My throat is hurting - is it my body's way of ensuring that I take a day off work, have time and space to think and to write? Protestant Work Ethic vs. Suppressed Existential Crisis. Who will win?!



Caps
People should be open on top like a cup.
A piece of bread should be able to sop
some of us up. We should be milk-like
or like wine. We should not have to be
trying to get our caps off all the time.
The storybook boy attempts the simple gesture
of baring his head for his emperor,
but another hat has appeared.
This happens over and over.
Who does not share his despair of simplicity,
of acting clearly and with dignity?
And what pleasure can we find in the caps,
brightly feathered and infinitely various,
that pile up so high they bury us?

-- Kay Ryan

Home

Only a short entry, here, to say that we have safely arrived home after the long drive. We couldn't resist a little more swimming time this morning, and so didn't start the trip north until after noon. And then it was the frustrating stop-and-go of the megapolis L.A., and once we were north of that madness, the reward of spills of wildflowers on the sharp desert hills. Then the monotony of everything south and north of Buttonwillow, a dicey pit stop or two, and finally, darkness, the girls asleep, and two torrential downpours between Merced and Berkeley. Made it home awake but only for about five minutes more. Always nice to return.

Hemet for a Day

S and I arrived at Grandma's just before noon. Last night, we stayed in a smoking room (all that was left) at the Best Western in Lebec. We lazed around this afternoon, then went for a swim when Aunt J brought R over (she stayed at her house last night. It was amazing swimming in a huge pool in beautiful weather, and then lounging in a huge hot tub, looking up to see snow-covered mountains in the not-so-distant distance. My mom lives in a great little place, here.

In the early evening, I couldn't keep from napping a little while the girls played under Grandma's supervision. Then we had a simple dinner - pizza for the girls, an omelet for me. And now I'm going to round them up and get them to bed because they're going to have a hard time adjusting to getting up at what will feel like an hour earlier than school on Monday, and I figure we might as well start the earlier bedtime today. Besides, I have an ulterior motive. I'm still sleepy, and I know that an 8+ hour drive will require some energy.

I've been dared to post a poem of my own here. I will. And I'll make it a new one. But it won't be today, I'm afraid, as I don't have the time and space to write anything but this at the moment. But maybe the long drive home will give me something, if the girls sleep. There's only so many times you can sing every song from every Dar Williams CD, after all.

National Poetry Month is here again

Last night there was a poetry reading in the city: S.W. Merwin and Adrienne Rich. I couldn't make it, but to honor the event, here's a poem by Merwin and the beginning of one by Rich (with a link to the full poem). I'll be on the road all afternoon and probably until midnight, on my way south again with one daughter to pick up the other at Grandma's. This means the time to post is now!


Term

At the last minute a word is waiting
not heard that way before and not to be
repeated or ever be remembered
one that always had been a household word
used in speaking of the ordinary
everyday recurrences of living
not newly chosen or long considered
or a matter for comment afterward
who would ever have thought it was the one
saying itself from the beginning through
all its uses and circumstances to
utter at last that meaning of its own
for which it had long been the only word
though it seems now that any word would do

W.S. Merwin


Stepping Backward
 
Good-by to you whom I shall see tomorrow,
Next year and when I'm fifty; still good-by.
This is the leave we never really take.
If you were dead or gone to live in China
The event might draw your stature in my mind.
I should be forced to look upon you whole
The way we look upon the things we lose.
We see each other daily and in segments;
Parting might make us meet anew, entire.

... (Adrienne Rich. Read the rest of the poem here.)

Changes

I feel like I'm sloughing off more and more unwanted things in my life: guilt, an unhealthy sense of obligation, certain religious beliefs, old clothes, sleepless nights, low self esteem, relationships that are harmful. That's a lot, and yet, I feel an almost urgent sense that it's not enough, that I need to purge more of the *stuff* that's held me down and held me back for decades.

I want to get to a space that's even clearer of this emotional detritus. I want to throw out the internal and external clutter and live life for a time as though it were a walk through an open meadow - leaving the noisy city, leaving the looming buildings, on the path toward the hills. Always the hills: the oak, the promise of enough stars and moon to walk by night if needed. Through the meadow, to the hills.

Body Image Stuff

Uh, okay. The kind and encouraging comments to my post yesterday were a good reminder that I (still) seem to have an inaccurate sense of how I look. I appreciate the compliments. I just have to at the same time hush up the rationalizing (unhealthy) part of my mind that says I get compliments because either people are just nice that way, or because they don't have an accurate sense themselves of *other* people's body image. It gets so tangled up, doesn't it?

Anyway, the bottom line (whether or not it's an aging sagging bottom on me or anyone else) is that exercise does much for my self-esteem and general emotional state, and it encourages me to eat more healthy food - always a challenge after the Easter Bunny has visited. And I am SO glad to be exercising again, now that my knee is better. Spent a good long stretch of time on the treadmill today. Feel much, much better. I will stop making self-degrading comments on this blog, and will stop thinking them too, as much as I am able, more and more as time goes on.

Experiment results

Now that Lent is over, I'm looking at how well I stuck to my 30 minutes of meditation, getting rid of one thing per day & (later) sleeping 8 hours a night.

Not terribly well.

However. I did meditate more than I had been, and I devoted at least *some* of every day to contemplative thought or spiritual reading. The habit has been started, and it's more natural to think of meditation as a part of everyday life. I did get rid of tons of stuff. Because I put aside so much for the charter school rummage sale (clothes, books, etc.), it probably averaged out to more than 40 things a day. But it was not one thing a day. I also, unfortunately, gave up running. Not something I expected to do. But a good test, all the same. I've learned that although my goal is to become more and more fit and to lose all the excess fat I'm carrying around, I now know that I can go 3 weeks without really running or even walking briskly and it doesn't mean that 3 years of slow and gradual work is completely gone. It shouldn't take much to get back on track physically. But the lack of running has affected my emotional state. If I don't run tomorrow, even a little, I'll go insane.

The sleeping 8 hours a night, which I only stopped doing 3 nights ago, was helpful. I feel it especially now that I've had too little for 3 nights. I'll try to make 7 consecutive hours my minimum requirement. I wish the same sometime soon to those of you nursing newborns all night or lying awake working on wedding details, or those of you who just plain suffer from insomnia.

Whispers of poetry nipping at my heels in the last 24 hours. Maybe something will come of it soon.

The shipment has arrived

R. has safely made it flying as a "UM" (unaccompanied minor) to down south. She apparently told my sister that everyone on the plane had been screaming during the flight except for her. This was because the flight was bumped by a lot of wind. My sister thinks there were small children screaming on the flight but that was probably all.

Before R. left, she and S. and I stopped off at an airport restroom just prior to checking in at the gate for the mandatory pre-flight potty break. We'd already heard several rounds of standard announcements over the airport PA system: "Due to heightened security measures, please keep all baggage and personal belonging with you at all times...Please report any suspicious behavior immediately to airport personnel..." Etc.

As S. dried her hands, R. confided quietly to me, "I don't know - I'd call S. wanting clean hands pretty suspicious behavior."

Easter Night

It was a low-key holiday. We didn't have guests over, because we're trying to make sure R is completely over her flu thing so she can go down to Grandma's a few days later than originally scheduled. D and S went up north to Grandmere's for a late lunch, so R and I lazed about the house, which was lovely.

Because D was home Friday afternoon with us, and because I've done very little running around, it has felt like a long weekend. It also helps that I haven't been to work since Wednesday. I'm really kind of dreading going back tomorrow, mostly because I feel some ridiculous sense of guilt for having not been there for two days - but I'm telling myself that it'll be all right. And it will.

We've started working on the front yard again. Or at least, we had started, right up until it the rain returned. More reason to post photos, maybe. The before, during and after shots. D is re-enthused about the project, and so am I. When we're finished, we should have a very unique and beautifully landscaped area in front of our house, and a gorgeous courtyard where we can relax, even if it's raining.

Easter Eve

There are dozens of men gathered in the street in front of our house. They've been there for hours, talking non-stop and chain smoking. The street is littered with cigarette butts and there are trucks parked all along our cul-de-sac and out into the next street.

Technically, the men belong to the house across the street and one down, which is occupied by a woman whom I have seen perhaps 3 times in the last 2 years and her three daughters, who are between the ages of 7 and 13. The girls we see often, playing in front of their garage or riding bikes out into our street without looking and without being looked after. When the girls were younger, this unsupervised behavior bothered me a great deal. I used to be angry at their parents for their blatant neglect. Now, my anger has settled into a mild irritation, tempered by curiosity about what their mother does all day, sequestered in the house 24/7. Is she mentally or physically ill? Is she agoraphobic? Or a drug addict, unable to function normally because she is a slave to one addiction or another? Or is she somehow forced to stay home by the girls' father? The father is an angry-looking man of Middle Eastern decent who now and then pulls up in a big shiny black truck, gets out, smokes a cigarette, and squares his shoulders before going into the house with all the enthusiasm of a death row inmate.

But what about the men, you're wondering. Why are there dozens of men outside their house, and our house, and several other houses around us?

As two of the strangers took the time to tell me (apologizing for the crowd), there has been a death in the family. It seems that the girls' uncle dropped dead of a heart attack yesterday while working. He was 40. Ten days earlier, the dead mans' mother's sister had buried her 35 year old son, also dead from a heart attack. There will be an autopsy and then a service on Wednesday for the uncle. I haven't been able to piece together whether it was the girls' mother's brother or their father's brother, but since I don't think the father really lives here, I suspect it was the mother's brother. People are flying in from "down south" to meet up here and talk and talk and smoke and talk. As one man explained, "He had a lot of buddies."

I was washing my car and the Escape (so I could take photos of it to sell it)when the men came over to speak to me. It felt strange, washing a car and playing with my five-year-old while all these men got together to try to make sense of someone dying so young. I was grateful to be well enough to do what I was doing, but the men lounging on our fence and leaning up against their cars a few yards away were a constant reminder that you never can tell. As the second man said to me, "You can be hiding in your house, sitting in your chair guarding yourself with a gun, but when it's your time, it's your time."

"Yeah," I said. It was food for thought while I rinsed the soap off my car. You may not always be able to control how or when you die, but you certainly have some say in how well, and with what dignity, you live.

Tag-team plague

We left for the field trip with D sick and S not feeling too hot either, and when we arrived back this afternoon, R immediately succumbed to whatever new development she'd been fighting off, and I'm apparently not too far behind her. Thank God she didn't have a 100 degree fever and all the glorious aches and chills that go with it while we slept on wooden floors at the fort.

So where I would have been posting lively, entertaining stories about night watch and firing the cannon, instead I can only post this brief "we're back and all is (kinda) well," entry, and then lie down and wait for the fever and queasiness to pass. We've postponed the flight to Grandma's rather than have her and Aunt J experience Typhoid-Mary-On-Spring-Break.

You know, I like to think that if terrorists attacked us using biological weapons, or if the next version of the Spanish Flu hit, somehow my family and I would be just fine. We're strong. We'd fight it off, or not get it at all. We'd be spared. We would be among the statistics of the survivors. But when we're sick like this (and have been sick off and on for a while, now), I realize that my "it won't happen to me" logic is what keeps data recovery companies in business. Really, you never can tell. Gotta watch out for that hubris. Consider me humbled. Nauseous, and humbled.

Ha! Fooled you.

You thought maybe I'd forget that I wouldn't be home tonight to blog and that I'd miss a day? Well, ha!

In half an hour, we'll be at the elementary school grounds, in costume, with 15 other children and 10 other adults in costume. You gotta love that ratio of parents to kids. It may be the only thing that'll keep us from going crazy. Sure, there is such a thing as too many chiefs, but I knowing the lively bunch of 4th graders we're taking with us, I think it's better this way.

I'll report back on the trip tomorrow. До свидания! (Dosvidanya!)

Signing out -"Pavel"

For the record...

I was in bed and asleep more than two hours ago, and I got up to blog and to do a few more things to prepare for tomorrow's trip. I'll get up early, finish the last of the packing, and we'll be ready to go. Looks like I won't have to drive the new car since they already have so many drivers, and that suits me just fine.

Next item in the social calendar, please...

So I survived another business tour/lunch/meeting with representatives from a Japanese company. I'm learning a lot and am gaining confidence by observing the more experienced sales execs in the company and the company owners, but I still don't feel like a natural, and I don't think I'll ever be the CEO of a corporation.

Now it's all about gearing up for the 4th grade historical reenactment field trip to Fort Ross. We leave the day after tomorrow, come back the following day, and in less than 24 hours after we get back, R will be on a plane (her first time flying without a family member) on her way to Grandma's for Spring Break.

And in the middle of it all, as much as I hate to complain, my joints are so stiff and sore that I can hardly go up or down stairs or do a shoulder check while driving. According to the CDC web site, joint pain in the knees and hands is a common symptom for adults who get Slapped Cheek Disease (aka Fifths Disease). Yes, that's right. It's not just for kids anymore. I noticed the tell-tale rashes the other day, and now I'm showing the rest of the symptoms. I'm just grateful to have an explanation for it. I mean, when you wake up in the morning and your elbows hurt, you want it to be something like a passing virus instead of, say, a brain tumor or an alien setting up shop in your vital organs.

It's officially Spring but the end of the rain is nowhere sight. The 4th graders will likely get a big dose of what-it-was-like for the Russians, Creoles, Alaskans and Kashaya Pomo Indians who lived at or near the Fort in the early 19th century. No space heaters or hot running water for them. And even if there was vodka to keep the original inhabitants toasty, our kids will have to settle for hot chocolate while they're on night watch. Or, more likely, lukewarm chocolate with a shot of rain water for added flavor.

More visits from Japan

Tomorrow a 3-person contingent of American and Japanese businessmen will be visiting work, and I'll join them for the tour, lunch out at the golf course restaurant, and a meeting to discuss working together. I wish I hadn't forgotten so much of the Japanese I'd learned - but at least I've bought gifts that I can wrap up for them, and at least one of my suits fits me without looking too dowdy.

I can't wait to start running again. Last night I dreamt that I was running a half marathon, and when I reached the 13 mile mark, I just kept going. I decided I felt so good, I might as well try for a full marathon. I reached 20 miles and still felt great, then found out or remembered that there was no finish line for a marathon distance. And so I turned around and headed back, believing it was better to have an official way to mark what I had done, a recorded time, and to enjoy the recognition of the crowd, than to have run far and well alone and have no public way to measure what I'd accomplished. As I write this, I realize how telling it sounds.

I think of myself as a loner daring to be different (see previous self-confessed geek posts). And yet, I am bound by a sense of doing things decently and in order, following the Presbyterian tradition. Does my dream mean that I am afraid to go it alone in life, even when I have the strength, potentially, to do so? Or does it mean that I recognize that no man is an island and that I am after all a part of society, of a larger organism? Probably the former, although there wasn't so much a sense of fear in my dream as there was a light sprinkling of both anxiety and dread.

I must remember how strong I felt leaving the official race course behind and finding my own trail.

And I must remember how to say, "Nice to meet you," in Japanese.

Palm Sunday, nowhere near Jerusalem

I've reached another not-going-to-church milestone: Palm Sunday, and the kids were not there parading around the congregation at First Presbyterian, and I was not contemplating Jesus coming to Jerusalem. Not until I saw the calendar - checking to see when my 2 weeks of 8-hours-a-night dare is up - and I noticed the label for today. "Palm Sunday / Vernal Equinox."

I took a "Which Religion is Right for You" quiz yesterday - not to find any real answers, just out of curiosity. I took it twice, tweaking my answers to be a little less middle-of-the-road for a few questions the second time, and it only strengthened the results. Apparently, I am by my nature or by my current beliefs, anyway, most attuned with the teachings of Buddhism. Interesting.

I realize that yesterday's post was just skipping across the surface of things like a light stone. I have so much more I could say, but I've been stopping myself for fear of offending or worrying some of my (very limited) audience. Which is again me putting social norms or politeness ahead of what I need to do for my own spiritual health. I really process things through the act of writing, whether it's indirectly with metaphor and poetry, or in a rambling philosophical journal entry like some of these blog posts have been. When I don't express the truths I'm reaching for and finding, I don't fully understand them or make them my own.

More to come on this, I'm sure. I now have 2 minutes to be in bed & asleep & still get the full night's rest that I've committed myself to. Bon nuit!

Date night

While the girls were at the Parents' Night Out function, D and I went out for sushi, shopped at Trader Joe's together, watched a couple of episodes of The Simpsons, then picked up the girls. Maybe not everyone's idea of a nice evening together, but we also talked, uninterrupted, and giggled when only two sips into our drinks I couldn't say "Frank Lloyd Wright" correctly.


Earlier today, S and I had this theological dialog, started with a comment she made completely out of the blue.

S: Mommy, Jesus didn't make the world. God made the world.

Me: God did make the world. Do you think Jesus is also part of God?

S: Yes.

Me: And what about us? Are we also part of God?

S: Yeah. Everyone's part of God. We're in God's head.

Me: [excited by the concept] Are we? Like, we're God's thoughts? Or we exist in the mind of God?

S: Well, our house is really one of those little bumps in God's mouth.

Me: Oh. Like the little bumps on the top of your tongue?

S: Yeah. And Kira's house [next door] is the bump next to us.

Me: Oh. And the whole world fits in God's head?

S: Yeah. And the whales fit too. Now that God is grown up.

Me: [taking advantage of the prophet] And who were God's mommy and daddy?

S: Huh. Let me think about that. Uh.... Moses. And...Mary. Mary and Moses.

She then launched into, "Mary and Moses sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage."

Dining room table theology with a five year old.

Rainy Friday

Just as I was worrying that the new plants in the garden had gone a day too long without being watered, here came the rain again.

So you see, things do have a way of working themselves out.

Today the girls and I bought a new parakeet. And a new cage, and mineral block, and water bottle, and grit, and grit bowl...the animal itself is always just a fraction of the cost, and the cost, the financial cost, is just a fraction of what we pay out with our hearts when we become responsible for these other lives, isn't it?

She is blue, and her name is Houdini. Now, to my 10 year old daughter, Houdini was a marvelous escape artist, the namesake of a friend's late parakeet and of the hamster in Lynn Reid Banks, I, Houdini. But to me, and perhaps to other people of my generation and the one before it, Houdini will always be Tony Curtis in the 1953 film version of the man's life. I'll have to add it to my Netflicks account and see what I think of it as an adult.

On the way home from gymnastics tonight, I caught the middle of a Fresh Air interview with Karen Armstrong, and even though S said, "Pleeeeease turn this off, Mommy. This is so bo-ring," for once I didn't reward her for remembering to ask politely (if somewhat desperately) but instead hushed her violently and said that even if she whined and cried, I was going to listen to it. I would just turn it up louder than she could be. Does this mean that I love NPR more than my own children? Wait a minute. What kind of question is that? I'm striking it from the record.

I do remember being bored STIFF by my maternal grandmother's insistence that whatever else we were doing came to a grinding stop for the MacNeil/Lehrer Hour. But I knew that she still loved me. She just, for those 60 minutes, needed me to be very, very quiet.

Back to the Karen Armstrong interview, though. I find myself fascinated by religious scholars, many of whom are themselves seekers as well. And besides, she has an accent. I'm a sucker for an accent. I have mentioned that, haven't I?


Going to bed now (again - I'd been there for an hour before I got up to blog). Sleeping in tomorrow - hooray for the weekend!

The funny things kids say

So when I took R to the Dr. to get her the official notice that she had been seen and had Slapped Cheek Disease and not some other plague that would infect the school, the Dr. agreed that she had a classic case.

"Yes, yes, you have very red cheeks," he said to R. "And I see this rash here on your legs."

"I call it a 'lacey rash,'" R said.

"What, have you been reading the textbook?" he asked her.

"Well, no, I heard my parents talking about it," she explained. Then she added, "But once I did read the textbook, all about bloody noses. And back problems."

The Dr (who was not our regular physician but was very nice) said he thought we didn't really need him. He also suggested that R give a lecture on Slapped Cheek Disease some time, because she knew her stuff.

Then tonight after dinner, R said something about scurvy (it's a Spelling Word. Of course.), and D said, "You don't even know what scurvy is." Without missing a beat, R said, "Yes I do. It's a disease you get if you haven't eaten enough Vitamin C and your arms turn black and your legs turn black and your body swells up and you float away."

All D had left to say (after we'd stopped laughing) was, "Well okay.
But you forgot the part about your teeth falling out."


All for now...I'm being summoned for a quick round of the PowerPuff Girls board game before bed.

Resorting to poetry again

I don't know what else to say, right now. I'm sleeping 8 hours a night. I'm spending time in quiet reading of spiritual books and/or quiet thought during the day, although not the 30 minutes straight I'd want. But I do try for it. Daily. And so I am physically rested but still mentally stressed, mostly because the to-do list isn't getting to-done. Josh was right in his comment on my previous post, I guess. It's the great trade off. But my full-night's-sleep experiment isn't quite done yet!

One of my old favorites:



On Having Misidentified a Wild Flower


A thrush, because I'd been wrong,
Burst rightly into song
In a world not vague, not lonely,
Not governed by me only.


-Richard Wilbur

Late blog

You know it's a good sign on the sleep front when posting after 8:30 is "late."

What I haven't written about yet:

Taking care of other people's kids from 3-8pm Friday

Going to the redwoods Sunday, and how beautiful it was.

R getting two baby teeth pulled yesterday.

R getting sent home from school today for having slapped cheek disease - although for some reason, S, with the same symptoms and the same disease last week (and with the school knowing about it) was allowed to stay at school. Grrrr. This is me, frustrated. There. I'm over it. Thanks for listening.

The Dr appointment for R this afternoon.

Donald calling from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and how D and I are both suckers for someone with an accent...

Time's up!

Must write earlier tomorrow.

Ah, how we sacrifice quality for the sake of daily dare-driven drivel!

The big challenge - going to bed ontime Monday!

Monday nights are D's night out, and so I'm facing getting to bed ontime & getting the girls to bed ontime without a backup, apart from the lights out in all the house so you'd better be in bed! plan.

I work for a company that depends on people either not having a backup or having a backup blow up in their faces. It's what keeps us busy. In my personal life, how often have I not allowed myself the luxury of a backup? Ha! In fact, I've caught myself just now calling it a "luxury" instead of a necessity. Hmmm.

WELCOME TO THE WORLD BABY ISAAC!! Julia's brought her second son into the world - congratulations to her, to Josh and to Eli!!! No new updates to her blog as of right now...uh, she may be a geek, but she's been a little busy... But I'm sure there will be updates there soon. Or check out Joshua's Journals for news.

R has just asked me whether she can have an online journal. Hey! Why not? I'll let you know when it comes into existence.

Sunny Sunday

I wish I could have been home gardening all weekend, but after being gone yesterday, today spent a good chunk of the day taking S to a birthday party in the redwoods (40 minutes from home), and then later, going with D and the girls to get replacement cell phones (30 minutes from home). It was all good stuff, though, and I did manage to get the rest of the vegetables that we'd bought into the ground in between trips.

Am anxiously awaiting news of Julia's baby's arrival. Good luck and lots of blessings, kids!

My children are snuggled up to sleep in the big bed, and I too must go to sleep within about 5 minutes to get my eight hours, so good night all!

lost in Blogworld

I've just spent half an hour reading various beautiful, wonderfully written blogs from all over the world, and am feeling both inspired and inadequate about mine, now. I started at http://lostintransit.org/ and went from there. Really. You could get so lost doing this kind of link-to-a-link thing.

I think the next thing I want to learn to do is post photos.

Writing more interesting, thought-provoking entries would also be nice, but hey, right now I'm just pleased that I've kept up the daily blogging so far this year. You gotta start somewhere. The daily meditative time and getting rid of things proceeds apace.

It was a long Saturday - spent taking the girls from one engagement to another, but all lovely & I got caught up in some errands too. I just wrote out the play-by-play sentence, but it was boring even to me (and it's my life), so I deleted it again.

After over a week of no real exercise and taking ibuprofin to help my knee recover, I'm going to hit the elliptical trainer tomorrow morning. I'm looking forward to running again so much I can practically taste it. But I'm going to go slow rather than end up with an injury that really keeps me away from jogging for longer than 10-14 days.

Up late

But I've tried 3 times to write and post this blog entry only to have it blow away each time because I'm using an unusual browser ver. Grrrr.

At any rate, because I can sleep in until after 5am tomorrow, I'm allowed to stay up this late, or even later, and still get my 8 hrs sleep. Hooray!

I'd like to create links to my friend's blogs, but that keeps overwriting everything I write. So look to the border links to Kate, Julia, Clare & Suzanne's blogs. Worth the read, every one!

Sleep and Force Fields

The best thing about having made up my mind that I'd try for a "full" night's sleep, and about having subsequently been DARED to follow through for two weeks by the gravid goddess, Julia, is that now I can feel empowered (okay...maybe "justified" is a better word) to do something that, really, I love to do anyway.

As a child, I was often happy to go to bed so I could play out adventures in my head, imagining new Robin Hood or King Arthur stories where I was the kid sister/gypsy/peasant girl that everyone accepted/loved/protected/admired. This was pre-Star Wars, but for science fiction stories, I had Star Trek material and, later, the John Christopher books such as The White Mountains series. For fantasy reference, there were the Susan Cooper, Lloyd Alexander and C.S. Lewis volumes.

Yes, I am a geek. It's already been established.

But I'm not alone!

Two nights ago at dinner, our 5-year-old demonstrated that she's reached another rung in the Geek-in-Training ladder. She had already finished her dinner, but R, D and I were still eating, and we were having a mundane but involved conversation about something while S happily scribbled away, working hard on what looked like a rainbow Pegasus. (Although it could also have been a tall dog with a big golden growth on its back, perhaps inspired by Alby's recent tick episode. It's hard to say.)

Anyway, the 3 of us "older" members of the family were all having this amiable discussion about the weather, or school or something, and suddenly S announces with great enthusiasm to no one in particular,

"MY HORSE'S WINGS HAVE A FORCE FIELD AROUND THEM!!"

I laughed so suddenly and so hard that I actually spit tiny projectile pieces of turkey loaf at my husband across the table.

I mean, you know that earnest pencil-protector nerd gusto, the kind that usually comes out of High School Astronomy Club Members or Ant Farm aficionados?

Uh. Well.

Anyway, you know the nasal importance that you hear when someone says something like, "Well, it's a well-known fact that Thorium -233 has a half-life of approximately 22 minutes..."?

S had that kind of intense conviction in her FORCE FIELD statement. And that kind of socially challenged timing.

We all laughed, but you could tell that we all, each of us, was actually very proud of S for putting a force field around her horse's wings. We approved.

The conversation moved to force fields and how COOL they are.

I think D in particular wished he had a personal force field that would deflect turkey-loaf-particles, for example.

Day 1 of sleeping 8 hours at night

You'll notice that it's only a little after 8pm that I'm posting this. This is not me back-dating the time.

My evening chores are finished. Check.
I've gotten rid of TONS of stuff today. Check.
My 30 minutes of meditation/reflection is done. Check.

Just need to read a Golly Sisters book to the girls, and it's bedtime.

It feels like a holiday, somehow.

Here's a poem by Terry Ehret, the Poet Laureate of Sonoma county:


Thirst


This year I've felt the push of antlers
thrusting out of my head.
I've leaned my head many times toward the grass, stretching
my neck to drink. This year
I've awoken from the catacombs of sleep,
my cheeks wet with spring water,
my heart beating like a river
sprung from rock.



Kind of a nice follow-up to the other deer poems, I think.

Did I mention that S has Slapped-Cheek Disease? It's not as bad as it sounds. She's really fine, but boy are her cheeks red!

Sleepiness

I just took the Daytime Sleepiness Test at the Sleep Foundation's site. According to the standard Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS), I should be seen by an expert. The site says if your score is over 10, you should "consider discussing these results with your physician or other health care provider." My score was 15.

So what does this mean? This means I either have a sleep disorder, or I am chronically sleep deprived.

Don't everyone fall over backwards, now.

Although I do (as far as I can tell) spend a huge percentage of the night dreaming, and therefore probably am in a less deep sleep than I should be, I think the real problem is the 5-6 hours of sleep I get from Sunday-Thursday night.

What does this mean?

Well, it means that to find out whether the problem is too little sleep or something else like sleep apnea (which I do have something of a history with), I'm going to rule out the former by seriously trying to get 8hrs a night. This, sadly, means going to bed at 8:30 and being asleep before 9pm. The kids may end up tucking me in! But it will be interesting to see how much more awake & alert it makes me!

Those pesky bugs

When I was a kid, while most little girls of my generation were dreaming of being nurses or teachers or moms or veterinarians (the most daring cross-gender role imaged at the time), I wanted to be an entomologist. It might have helped that my Dad's nick-name for me was "Bug" because of my "spots" (freckles) but also, I liked Daddy Longlegs and beetles and butterflies and snails, and I had a real thing for ants. I still do, actually. I mean, I was a card carrying member of the Uncle Milton Ant Farm Club. I could go on ad infANTitm (get it? ha!) about Formicidae and why they're so COOL.

Also, I'm fortunate enough to be usually left alone by fleas, and often left alone by mosquitoes (must be the garlic). But for some reason, ticks love me. Go figure. I can't tell you how many times I've picked up ticks when camping or hiking or running around in the hills as a kid in Southern California. No Lyme disease, thank God, but plenty of ticks.

Tonight R found a swollen tick the size of Nebraska in our dog, Albion, and so after the girls were tucked into bed, I double-checked my methodology online and discarded the family's traditional Campophenic (we don't have any anyway) and hot needle in exchange for a pair of tweezers and a serious chat with the tick. "Look," I told the tick, "You've taken more than your fair share of this dog's blood. There's no point being greedy. I mean, any more and he'll become anemic. Also, you glutton, there is such a thing as too much. Time to come out. All of you. This means your head, too - don't try to fool me into thinking I don't need all the pieces, here. That's it, back out. Let go. The free lunch is over."

It took friggin' 10 minutes, while the dog lay there like an angel. Probably too weak from blood loss to protest.

I got the whole thing. And because I'm still an entomologist at heart, and am married to the same kind of geek, I kept the tick to show D when he gets home later tonight. I am not trying to gross anyone into going into labor (Julia); just stating the facts, here, ma'am.

And now I have to go outside and rescue the new plants that haven't quite made it into the garden from the slugs and pillbugs and other creatures who are even now making their slow progress toward the tender little leaves....

Rat blog

D selected the title for tonight's post. Because I am all but asleep, he thinks I should let Beatrice our rat blog tonight. I can simulate what should would say by pretending my fingers are four little rat paws running willy-nilly on the keyboard, but I'm afraid of actually letting her create her post because she just might either:

a) type a series of "hidden" Microsoft commands and lock up my keyboard and initiate a head-crash of my hard drives. (You'd be surprised how many customers think that the grinding and screaming of their hard drives is a virus), or

b) write Hamlet. And that would just be too humiliating for the monkeys.


I learned by chance (obsessively googling "Jean Reno") that UPS has put out a commercial that will air outside the U.S. staring old what's-his-face himself. You can watch it by going to the bottom of this page and clicking on the link to "Meeting of the Minds." Be sure to catch the last line.

That's it for today. I'll have to talk about the visit from Bulgaria tomorrow.

Date night

It's been a good day. A long day, but a good day. The mundane rundown follows. Some material-to-fall-asleep-by, if you don't have any long Michener novels to read.

Up early to start some household chores and get breakfast rolling before delivering food and then taking S to ballet, returning the empty food delivery boxes, and then meeting the writer's group to chat and write. D picked up S from dance and took R to riding lesson, where I met him and we did our parental tagteam handoff. He came back home and worked on the 400 gallon Fishtank that he is making for our 2 koi (Lao Tzu and Yosho. I came back after the riding lesson and did some yard work, then took R to a friend's house, bought plants for the garden, gardened more with S's help, washed the car, then fed S dinner. Then D and I took S to the Parent's Night Out babysitting service put on by the local gymnastics club. We went out for sushi and (this is so exciting!) went grocery shopping together. It may not sound fun to you, but after an Asahi and a glass of plum wine, we thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. Get it? Grocery shopping? Sliced bread? I bet you wish you'd been with us, now.

After we picked up S, we did more chores around the house - company is coming tomorrow - and then settled into a companionable computer-using session. He's photoshopping a beautiful shot he took of a local view (from Cardoza's ranch) and I've been surfing the web and, finally, blogging.

Population Growth

Julia is due to have her baby within a week (or so). She has blogged about people being surprised that the baby is officially due in a few days and yet she's still up and about. Imagine that! (They must not know her that well.)

I remember that with S (who was 2 weeks late and would have stayed longer if we hadn't made her come out and meet her fans), I was afraid to go outside after the due date only because my neighbors would express their impatience in accusatory tones. "Where is that baby?" they'd say, as though I were intentionally keeping her for myself. I worked until several days *after* my due date, and still felt fine. Yes, I seem to have the body type and high-pain-threshold that helps with childbearing. I'd have had a half-dozen children if it had been practical and if it weren't for my feelings that what we as American consume in the way of natural resources, energy, etc. makes it particularly crazy to have a huge population growth. Oh. And there is also the fact that D has strongly expressed that no, thank you, we do not need another child. He's only slightly less adamant about it than he is about us not getting a cat, but the chances for either are slim.

That's okay. The two children we have are so wonderful, we might as well quit while we're ahead.

Inspiration

I found these online and find them especially good for me right now:

You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience. - Teilhard de Chardin quotes

In everyone's life at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the human spirit. ~ Albert Schweitzer


Check out this site I found for a huge collection of inspirational biographies and quotes.

I've been feeling decidely flu-ish today; dizzy, headache, nausea. Blech. Left work a little early, rested, then went to a Dr. appointment for my "clicky" knees. Apparently (thankfully), nothing more than the tendons being swollen, the Dr. thinks. Some motrin and resting it (no running, but maybe elliptical training at the gym is ok) until the swelling is better, and I should be okay. I was so grateful that the Dr. understood that I needed to be able to run again as soon as was sensible.

Took S to ballet (a make-up class) and R to gymnastics, made dinner, did the bedtime routine with the girls, then got up just to blog. D is immersed in his latest PS2 game. We'll have to have a date night this weekend so we can catch up with each other's lives!

Early post

It's strange to be writing before 8pm, but I really feel like it's after midnight because I've had about 5 hours sleep 2 or 3 nights in a row. I'll be doing my contemplative reading/meditation/trying-not-to-fall-asleep time next, so best to blog now.

Yesterday, I finished reading The Radioactive Boy Scout. Living with an Eagle Scout who himself as a teenager had a fascination with less-than-safe chemical reactions, and who is to this day quite the scientific autodidact,I found the book fascinating.

The Amazon reviewers all talk about it being a quick read. That may explain why I finished it! In my old age and with my current lifestyle, I have become quite a slow and sporadic reader. Gone are the days when I could bury myself in a good book for hours on end. I seem to have passed that torch on to R., and D. never dropped his version of the same flame.

For her part, S. is just starting to pretend to read along with me and guess at what words are based on the letters she knows and on context, but because she attends a Waldorf-inspired school, she'll have another full year of Kindergarten before she officially starts to learn to read. I'm sure by then, she and I will be reading at home. I wonder if she'll be the bookworm the rest of us are (or in my case, were). If so, I envision really truly lovely evenings in the livingroom where we're all curled up with our respective good books. That, my friends, is my idea of quality family time as much as a pile-on-the-big-bed tickle session is. Better than Disneyland, better than all going to the movies together, better than Christmas.

St. David's Day!

So it's St. David's Day, which most of the few of you who read this blog already knew. I seem to be celebrating the occasion by writing. After weeks of being afraid to read my Yahoo poetry list emails because it might mean I'd get inspired, write something, and reconnect with my old poet friends (and who has the time or energy for that), I actually read some poetry list email, got inspired, wrote something, and sent it out to said friends. What is my world coming too? I'm actually feeling creative. And after 10pm too!

Here's what Dancing Bear had written:


Deer Flowers as Love Poems


Through the forest of Redwoods
the deer have stilted their way
down ravines and gullies, back
to this second place of life

they call their own for half
a year. They feast on our
well-watered lilies, our princess
flowers, our chinese lanterns

and roses. And we wait
happy in the knowledge
that what is tended to by us will
bring these delicate creatures

closer to us. Their wide eyes
carry all the fear we keep so
hidden within ourselves, they
are the caution we caution

against. They trust no one
but themselves, not even our flowers
which are only there so long
as we make an effort of them



And here's what I wrote, just this moment off the press. (Much darker than I feel, but apparently something I needed to say):



There is Nothing Soft About a Deer

Her body is hard lean bone, sheathed
in muscle, little else. The only
excess that takes hold in a deer
are the ticks that mine her blood.
A deer's eyes are liquid but don't
be fooled; they are shallow pools,
easily fathomed.
And if you are able to touch a deer -
say one by the side of a road, at rest
eternally; or in a park
display of the local fauna -
if you caress her stilled flank
with hope for softness blooming
like a rose in your chest,
you will find instead that the fur
is a short
sharp disappointment.