Best Rest Hotel, Lebec

Greetings from the 'internet cafe' at the Best Rest Hotel, Lebec CA. The cafe consists of a keyboard and monitor in the hallway near the lobby and front desk. There is news on the tv in the "continental breakfast" dining area. Hotels always blast the news, in spite of the fact that many families with young kids may not want to watch it. Looks like hurricane Dennis will be a big one.

My mother has warned me that her computer is not working, so this may mean my only chance to post today, even though it also may mean leaving a way for anyone else at the hotel to know my blog url and even (potentially) login and password.

Let 'em have it, I say. If it's that interesting, maybe I'm doing something right.

Uh...nice hotel, guys, by the way...

Traveling

Ran for a couple of hours this morning (10 miles), now packing up and getting ready to hit the road. D will stay here and work, and it'll be a girls' getaway week. I expect to read a lot, write, lie in the sun, swim, and get caught up with friends and family.

I'm so grateful that I can do this--have the job, the car, and my health--to travel, take a break from routine, be with loved ones who live far away.

How is this vacation different from others? I am settling more into understanding and accepting who I am, and being okay with it. Or even better than okay. I did not push myself to get packed and get out the door. We'll go when we go, and get there when we get there. It's all fine. It's the journey.

Vacation!

Tomorrow, S and I are off to the southern part of the state to see my mother and sister and catch up with R, who flew down alone Tuesday. And then after that, to Phoenix to see Clare! And, if it's possible, to get together with my half-sister and her family. I'm late in contacting & confirming all this with folks, so if you're one of the aforementioned people and would like to confirm plans, please call my cell number.

I will finish getting ready and packing in the morning, after a run.

I can't promise that I'll be able to blog from the road. I'll try very hard to do so.

Just finished reading

The Archivist, by Martha Cooley. (Thanks to Lisa for the loan.)

This is a book that combines an archivist (even better than a librarian,in some ways!), poets, and insanity. My kind of read. I highly recommend it to anyone who has an interest in any of these three things. I guess it was a best seller, and too. I like it in spite of that.

I went to the writer's group meeting tonight (hooray! we're back!) thinking and saying that I had nothing to write, let alone nothing important to write. At all. Like, ever again.

But I came home feeling that I do have things to say, and therefore things to write, and it doesn't even matter who reads those things. Just that I record them.

No, wait. It does of course matter to me that someone else read most of what I write, and that they like it. I'm not that far along the path of enlightenment yet.

Or, in the words of Gir from Invader Zim: "Praise me! PRAISE ME!"

Not that I have ever seen a single Invader Zim episode, mind you. I've just heard that's what he says.

The funny thing about habits

They really don't leave easily. Take this, for instance. This is me, sitting at my computer in pj's, blogging before bed. In spite of having lost my will to go on last Monday. I think I've gotten too old and tired to even have a proper emotional meltdown. So I'm back to the blog.

Besides, how many other things does one do daily that start with "bl-" and end in "og"

I mean, if you hike too much, you might get a blisterog on your foot, and if it's bad enough, it could even be bleedogging. But how often do you hike too much? If your friend sneezes, you could say "blessog you," or at night if you're cold, you can get an extra blanketog. But those are not daily occurrences. They're more once in a blueog moon things. Ok. I don't want to be blatantogly silly. You can fill in the blankogs yourself.

Last night D had one of those really good, respectful, productive 4 hour relationship evaluation/conversations that are what keep a marriage intact. This was after I'd worked a full day then driven R to the airport to fly down and see Grandma. Someone asked me today how I had the energy to have that kind of talk. I said, "I just had it. The talk had to happen." He and I both feel soooo much better for it.

Today, I saw the dentist. For a couple of hours afterwards, I could do a pretty good Elvis snarl, and the novocaine also seemed to affect my ability to open my right eye fully. My nostrils were numb, too, so picking my nose was right out. Stop saying, "Ewww." I'm just stating the facts.

In the evening, I saw my counselor. Tomorrow I'll see the eye dr. I feel like all I need now is a pap smear and I'll be living the modern woman's equivalent of Dorothy Gale in the Emerald City getting her manicure-plus-shoe polish.

"Can you even dye my eyes to match my gown? Jolly old town!"

Better, thanks

Sleep helped my state of mind only very slightly.

What helped me much more was listening to a CD of Tolle on the way in to work this morning.
I mean, I had been so full of depression that when I said goodbye to my sleeping kids and husband, I was thinking that something might happen to me (besides a comet hitting earth) and I might not see them again.
And I didn't care.
About myself, mostly. But even, also, about them.
Pretty bad, huh?

Now, I'm just trying to figure out what is triggering all this. I don't think it's so much the post-party letdown as the fact that without the distractions of preparing for the party, finishing D's dad's book, and prepping for the Kenwood 10k, I'm faced with looking at other situations in my life that generate a huge level of fear and resentment and (as Tolle) would put it "awaken the pain body" - or awaken a whole ugly mess of psychological pain in me.

As Homer Simpson would say, "STOOPID psychological pain." (Or maybe he wouldn't say that. But you get my point.)

And once I can get clear on what's triggering all the nastiness, I hope to address it in the most positive, present way possible, or to let it go of it completely. If I can.

Arrrg.

Excuse a bit more of what must sound like psycho-babble mumbo jumbo jargon, but in spite of the level of depression I'm feeling, I'm now (after the drive to work) much more confident in the transformative power of being positive and doing things through love instead of fear.

Doesn't mean any of this is easy, but it means I think I can find a place, here and now, where it will *be* easy. Or where "easy/difficult" will be just two more labels my brain wants to give to situations that don't, in the great cosmic scheme of things, matter at all.

If a comet were to hit the planet

So the Nasa impactor hit the Tempel 1 comet.

D and I were joking that it hit just as planned, except that now the comet is going to collide with the earth in less than 48 hours.

Right now, I feel so depressed and defeated, I don't think it would matter if the comet hit the earth.

I don't care.

I feel like giving up.


***
Ahem.

This little episode of angst and despondency was (probably) brought to you by the post-party let down, exhaustion, sunburn and the after effects of the early morning's 10k race. It might also have been brought to you by a couple other things in my life that are so not okay, I don't know where to begin to fix them.

I don't know whether I'll keep up the blogging daily. Screw the sushi.

Sleep might help much of the above stuff go away and return my usually functional coping skills. Or it may just be that I am developing (or already have?) some bipolar issues.

Whatever.

Like I said, I don't care.

Post-party

People came. They met one another, chatted, ate, drank, chatted some more, then left. I guess that made it a successful party. No one got hurt. No one cried, except at 9pm when one 5 year old girl was sad about having to go home. Of course, maybe my expectations are too low? Maybe one judges the success of the party based on more the above criteria.

Anyway, I want to do fuller justice to the experience, but I also want to sleep more than 7 hours before tomorrow's 10k run. So I'll stop now.

For those of you who are reading this and were here today, thanks.

Transforming the property

Yes, there's nothing like knowing you'll have company to inspire one to work on the house and grounds.

The end result will be far from perfect, but much better than if we'd done nothing and wonderful to enjoy after the get-together.

It did add a twist to the preparations that D brought home another truckload of wood today. But we'll have a very cozy winter!

Only a few [dozen] things to do in the morning, and then we will relax and enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Not that I haven't been enjoying this, actually. Every moment, on its own, has been good.

I plan to release the edited memoir tomorrow and be free to work on MY OWN words on a page instead. I also expect the quality of the blogs to improve as a result, too.

Asleep at the wheel

Actually, just asleep at the keyboard, My productivity has plummeted.
It's taken me 5 minutes to write two sentences, waking myself up between the two.
Plus the DSL is still having problems.

So this is short but short (not even sweet).

All for now.
g'night

Nearly officially Friday

It's close enough to Friday again as makes no difference. Let the weekend mode begin! Still much cleaning and little projects around the house, and shopping, to be done before we have a get together here Sunday. But I have hope that we'll make it.

With the exception of me finishing my father-in-law's book.

Bleak, bleak stuff. How the Communists tortured the Legionnaires like the author after WWII. The author is a nationalist, and anti-Semitic, and given to philosophical rants that last for paragraphs. Changing most (but not all) sentences from present to a real narrative past has been especially difficult.

...back to it!

Sometimes you just need a day

Honoring the thought that no one dies wishing they'd spent more time at work, I took a personal day today. It was sorely needed.

I caught up a tiny bit on my sleep and worked very hard on editing the book.
D generally lets me do whatever I want in life, but he has now instructed me to say "NO!" if asked to copy edit a full manuscript again. Unless it is my own.

Now there's an idea...

Carry wood, chop water

I moved about a cord of split oak and bay to a wood pile behind the house yesterday and today, in between digging in the adobe, supervising kids, editing the book, blah blah blah.

I've looked back on June and it's been a whole month of me doing too much, passive-aggressively complaining or reflecting about it but still doing too much with some kind of "this is just short-term, folks" lip service to any members of the reading audience who are still there but rolling their eyes in exasperation at me.

I could just have written today "more of the same" or "see above" and added to that Ibid. Don't ya love "Ibid"? I remember reading books of quotations and Welsh reference stuff and seeing little ibids all over the place. It's like Anon. I think there's a poem in there, somewhere. Or a children's story - about Ibid and Anon and their trip to the seaside, maybe.

Or even, with their friends (like a gang of super heroes) "The Continuing Adventures of Ibid & Anon, et al."

Or maybe, eg., something even more cryptic, ie. more mysterious: "The Misc. Etc. Ibid, Anon, et. al."

Ok. Enough of that silliness.

Monday night wipe out

Have been editing, folding laundry, doing dishes, editing more, slapping myself awake, etc. for the past 45 minutes. Before that was the hour-long getting the kids to bed thang, and before that, lots of household chores like 3 HOURS cleaning S's room with her "helping."

"Helping" when you're almost six years old usually means saying, "Oh I remember that!" and playing with whatever item has just been pulled out of the dusty under-the-bed lair where it had been hiding until retrieved by a mom who didn't realize, until just then, that it is possible to crawl on one's head under furniture.

Amd a mom who can't even stay awake at the keyboard long enough to edit a web log post!

Pathetic.
Did I spell that right?

Post while you can!

Once again, our router or DHL connection or something (we have yet to troubleshoot & fix) is acting up, and the result is that the web connection is not guaranteed.

So this is a quick post to say "I was here."

The front yard is starting to come together even more, thanks to D's back-breaking dedication to moving the dirt.

I can't take credit for doing much of anything to help him this weekend except emptying his truck bed of about a cord of dried oak (already split) that his coworker's grandfather was getting rid of.

But there was a long run this morning, and wine tasting in a Lima in between the run and the wood moving; so it's been a full day, a full weekend, and a full week to come.

Digging In The Dirt.

Well, I've little all day but drive kids around and run errands while D practically broke himself moving adobe. He did get smart and hire a neighbor teen and his two friends to help.

It was an amazing sight. These boys are not much more than stark white skin and bones, with artificially blackened hair, piercings and an assortment of tattoos. At first I was afraid that they wouldn't be strong enough to lift a shovel, individually or collectively, but apparently they've built up quite a bit of muscle (or at least endurance) by slinking about, playing in their garage band and suffering from profound bouts of angst.

They did a great job nearly filling the dumpster in the driveway, and D worked further on clearing the area that will be a pathway to the courtyard.

R has a friend over, S had a playdate earlier, and tomorrow, I'll get to play for a bit myself. After an 8 mile run and a few chores. I'm concentrating on a delayed pre-race training schedule so I don't have to stop and lie down on the road somewhere between Napa and Sonoma.


And by the way, I just don't know why the posts are doing this great space between title and body. If you have suggestions, I'll welcome them.

And thank God for the Blogspot recover post option. It just saved me from rewriting this little postling!

TGIF

Nine thirty Friday but it feels like midnight.

I just realized that the version of the Romanian memoir I've been painstakingly copy editing is not the full draft. This at least explains what I had thought was a very abrupt ending. But it also means that although I figured I had about 30 more pages to edit, I actually have over 130.

Words fail me.

The Dumpster

We've ordered a dumpster. It will arrive tomorrow.
Into it we will put many, many shovelfulls of adobe dirt from the piles in our front yard.

I am really looking forward to the dumpster. I mean, really. I'm giddy like a schoolgirl. Even though I was never actually giddy as a schoolgirl. The thing is, when that dirt goes away, it's not coming back. It's gone, gone, gone baby! Whoo-eeee!! See, I'm just all a flutter with excitement. Bye-bye nasty dirt that nothing grows in. Ta-ta! See ya...never again!

It makes me think of a poem I've been messing with for years. The latest incarnation goes like this:

***

Rain on Fresh Concrete

The sound draws us to the window like the circus come to town.
All that we had left outside is now initiated by rain. It’s true that much
had been well on the road to molds and rust, anyhow. But the concrete,
newly poured, was not yet set in its ways. We rush the storm:
wheel in the mixer, toss empty bags, fling tarps over the new path.
The rain never pauses for breath. We are alone in our remorse.

We, who celebrate every square inch of adobe we bury with bricks and cement:
that much less mud the next time it pours. Cover it in lining, rebar, gravel, concrete. Planter boxes on top filled with dirt.
Dirt in boxes over concrete over dirt.
The strata we make of our lives.


***


Okay, but that's way to somber for my Getting-a-Dumpster-Eve mood. So how about this:


Adobe is sticky, adobe is dark
Moving adobe ain't a walk in the park
Instead of adobe, I'd rather shovel rocks
but we're putting that adobe in a BIG METAL BOX.

Uh.
Maybe I should go to bed now.

G'night.

Superstitions

When I was a teenager and I wrote little self-critical journal entries in books (as opposed to here, in the blogosphere), I had a short-lived superstition that something very good or very bad would happen to me when I filled up a book. I wanted to write a story about someone who died when they finished a book, but you can see how predictable that idea would be.

So what would happen if I didn't finish my I-will-blog daily goal/dare-response? Would it kill me? No. Would it diminish my view of myself, give me one more reason to believe that I'm a quitter or loser at some deep level? It might, instead, mean that I have finally learned when to gag my pride and be sensible and protective of my time and energy. But that's the rationalization of a lazy person.

Hmm. I think I need to see how much Libra I have in my astrological chart.

Along those lines, here's a brief reading from Astrology.com. (warning: it's nothing but narcissism tonight, folks):

How You Approach Life and How You Appear To Others
Cautious, prudent, and rather self-contained, you are a person who approaches life realistically and who is not inclined to take foolish chances or get carried away by the overly optimistic or idealistic schemes of starry-eyed dreamers. In fact, you frequently have a jaundiced view of such things. You are rather worldly-wise at a fairly young age, even something of a cynic. Often the world doesn't seem like a safe, friendly place to you, and you tend to approach life in a guarded, conservative manner. You are generally calculating and careful, and are rarely spontaneous, fluid, open, and childlike.

The Inner You: Your Real Motivation
At heart you are modest and humble, and you rarely strive to be in the limelight or in a position of power. You have a sharp analytical mind, a keen eye for detail, and you prefer to observe, dissect, and study life from a distance. Conscientious and conservative, you can be relied upon to be careful, efficient, and thorough in your work and you take pride in doing a job well. What you may lack in self-confidence you often make up for in skill - developing expertise, technical knowledge, and competency in some specialized area. You are adept at using your hands to create or fix things, and meticulous attention to detail and careful craftsmanship are your forte. Some would say you are a little TOO meticulous, for you can be extremely critical and petty if everything is not done exactly as you think it should be, and you worry about things that other people consider trivial and unimportant. You like to organize, categorize, and arrange everything into a logical system, and you are often distinctly uncomfortable when something does not fit into a neat category. Disorganization vexes you. You probably wish that you were not such a perfectionist, for besides being a stickler for details, you can be mercilessly self-critical as well. Whether in your environment or in yourself, you tend to focus on the flaws, with a desire to improve, refine, and perfect. You are strictly factual, truthful, and scrupulously honest in your self-estimation, and you often do not give yourself enough praise or credit.

Okay. I think that says enough. (And I'm not going to pay for the "upgrade" that tells me more.)

Hey. I didn't make this stuff up. I'm just reporting it.

Solstice

On my way home from the gym tonight, the moon looked huge, yellow and portentous. I was happy to see it, because it spoke to me of things larger than my life and my niggling problems of when the next dentist appointment is and whether we are out of milk.

The moon draws us all; it draws the sea, and it draws the moths to the midnight sky, a celestial porch light. It pulls and tugs at lovers; it calls babies from wombs and madmen from secret hiding places. As Dar says,

Calling the moon
’cause I know what it’s worth
To tug at the seas and illumine the earth


There are, no doubt, many cultures throughout history that have had with rituals around the summer solstice moon.

Mine, tonight, was just to admire it, and be grateful for its glow.

DSL delays

Whew! It's taken me 45 minutes of DSL troubleshooting to get online and blog. A test of my daily-posting resolve, because technically it's now (*ahem*) long after midnight.

Why We're Always Late:
Simple.
We GROSSLY underestimate how long it will take to do pretty much anything. It's like a version of Name That Tune. "I can paint the house in ninety minutes, Dennis!" "Well, I can pack for our week-long trip in fifteen minutes!" And, as is the case with procrastinators, just because it sometimes pays off in a spectacular way, we keep doing it. It's conditioning where the reinforcement is intermittent and therefore more effective. But it doesn't mean it's the way to go, especially if (like me) you're (ironically) someone who hates to be late. Hmmm. Hates to be late, yet doesn't give herself enough time to prepare.... Food for thought.

Something About Fathers:
It's not an easy job, I don't think. Really. And I'd say some of that has to do with the fact that I don't think boys are (in general) taught to be fathers the way girls are taught to be mothers, to mother. Still. Even today. Except insofar that it's the wives or girlfriends or men themselves doing the teaching. I mean, the verbs "to mother" or "to parent" are still much more common than "to father." There is so much more to say about all this, but with my internet connection as flaky as it is and the morning alarm now four hours away, I'm done.

Except to add that I'm seriously impressed by some of the men who are my contemporaries and fathers. And even more impressed by those who are older than 50 and are there for their kids or are just fatherly role-models. You know who you are. As they would say in Australia, "Good on ya" guys.

Father's Day

Happy end=of-Father's Day to the dads out there who might be reading this!

That's all. Just Happy Father's Day, and thanks for all you have done, do, and will do for your kids.

Another case of so much more to say lost to absolute fatigue.

I dare myself to post tomorrow about The Secret of Why We're Always Late and Something About Fathers. The first one, anyway, is related to today's sparse entry.

Domestic business

D is still painting and the girls are packing for the camping trip. I'm editing the Romanian memoir until I get too sleepy, then switching to another task, then back to the book.

I see that in the midst of so much to do, the blog becomes a repository of "what I did today-ness," but I'd rather write this kind of entry than no entry at all. I was ticking off to-do lists with a friend yesterday and explained (and I believe this to be true) that I was not complaining or even playing the common 'how I'm busier than you" card - I was really just naming items as a way of putting it in order out loud.

I have about another hour before we're due to leave for the camping trip.
The weather may hold. I'm sure the overnight will be a blast for the kids. It'll be a test, for me, of letting go of all the stuff I'll feel that I'd much rather be doing at home in the interest of being present and - God forbid! - enjoying myself.

Sleep is for wimps

And coffee is the nectar of the gods.

Or at least, it's handy in a pre-party pinch. Since tomorrow afternoon, I'm scheduled to take the kids to a camping sleepover birthday party (in the rain! at the KOA!) tomorrow afternoon, my time is limited in which to clean the house & finish copy editing my father-in-law's translation of his friends post-WWII Romanian memoir. Only 100 pages to go!

D has had a once-a-year mocha and is painting the livingroom. Aren't we the crazy kids?

The midnight oil multiple candle-end burning fest should wind down Sunday night. Yes indeedy. It's fun until then, though!

Ah....

I'm giving a big "aaahhhh" sigh for the day, and all that came with it, being behind me.

Ready for what comes next and have a sense that all is well.

Just before Midnight

...on a day that has lasted forever.
visitors tomorrow at work from a major Japanese corporation, and I spent the night(after all of the other work of the day was done) shopping for something appropriate to give them as a gift, and then trying to figure out how to wrap it and present it.

I hate shopping.
I waited until too late to go anywhere except, pretty much, Safeway or the QuickMart.
I suck at gift wrapping.
I bought things that are not shaped to be wrapped easily. How clever of me.
And yet, I want more than anything to please and make a good impression on our Important Corporate Visitors from Japan.

Today has been a character building day.

Taken moment by moment, however, it's all perfectly manageable.

As long as my eyes don't fall out of their sockets, I'll be fine.

D is quarantining the tiger barbs he'd bought out of the Big Tank because they were ganging up like Chihuahuas against Lao Tsu, the English Mastiff of the freshwater sea. Actually, D's got the barbs in a little holding pen like a group of prisoners with their stripes and their vicious habits.

He's wondering WHAT he was thinking, putting 19 nasty little territorial fish in the tank.

Me? I'm sitting here being grateful that I was resourceful enough to avoid Slurpies and jerkey sticks as the gifts for our business guests tomorrow.

A poem, but not the one you thought

So, I told Lisa that I had written a poem (on a dare. Of course.) about using a fire extinguisher as a sex toy. If you really must see a copy (it's more humorous than it sounds), I will email it by request.

But because this is sort of a family-oriented blog, I'm going to censor myself and instead just share the first poem-not-a-poem that I wrote at the retreat, pretty much as I wrote it. (We had an hour to do this). I don't consider it finished, and it may not even be worth finishing. But anyway:


I Have No Poem To Give You

I cannot tell you with a few odd trochees
how many toes a crow has, or divulge
the secret waiting silent in the papyrus' stalk.
I don't have a stanza revealing the answers
that swirl in a chambered nautilus' shell.
Don't ask me to tell you in blank verse or sestina
about the best that mankind has to offer, or the worst
moment of a childhood I once thought fine.
None of that is mine or biddable, none of that is near.
No. Here's the truth:
it's not that the heavens wrapped up
in couplets won't come to my call, and throw themselves
like obedient slaves under the wheels of my ball point,
crushed between lines on the page. The truth is, I don't call.
It seems so like hubris, and besides, I can't pronounce their names.
I cannot offer you anything, let alone poetry.
And it's been that way for years.
I might look under the toppling stacks of paper,
listing sideways like guilt with unread tips
on saving for retirement or pruning roses -
look there for the lines that will make you catch your breath
the way a half-trained trapeze artist's sway
draws your hand to your heart, make you drop your popcorn.
But more paper is in the way. And under the bed, where
I thought I'd placed them, next to the pictures I'll
someday organize, I've lost the words
that would change your life. I apologize.
I did find this while looking at home and through my purse
beside the bills: I found that I am afraid of nothing.
Of being nothing, becoming nil, having been
only a soft body held together by ticks and worries and fear.
I hear you. Ah, you're saying,
there's the heart of the matter. The part excavated
from under the dry, packed dirt, beneath the top
of the earth burned hard by the sun and trampled down
by habit, and laundry and the daily commute.
Here's the little hot detail of a heart
pumping pomegranate red. Oh, let there be a poem
in the blood on the page. Let that, at least flow.
But even this, the ruby from my chest, is on display
behind glass, with a sign giving you a Latinate name and a few
lesser known facts. And you can't touch it, I've labeled it mine.
And I won't give it away, anymore than I'd bequeath you
the quick high quips of the swallows flying over the sea this morning,
the water's pushing murmur, the smell of the dirt here.
What would you do with a poem about all that, anyway?
Watch it lie on a desk, a bird that has fallen from its nest,
lizard-like, bald and blind and flightless, and too young
to put back, destined for the trash with a lie to the children
about what really happened? No, better to confess
that I have nothing to share. I remain poemless.
I have nothing inspired to say, nothing
to put a lit taper to the tallow of your bones,
transmute the crescent moon on the waves.
Nothing to slip the cypress-spotted hillside out
from under your sacred feet, or shatter the glass display.

Full plate

No more, thank you.

I hope to dig out a bit tomorrow - from the heavy work load, the lack of sleep, the father-in-law's book still being edited (slowly). I enjoy the work, but it takes A LOT of time. Then there's the repaint-the-livingroom-before company this weekend deal.

Sigh.

All I have the energy to say right now. Sad but true. Except that I found a whole slew of blog sites in Welsh, like this one. Ydych chi'n gallu darllen e? (Boy, I had to reach for that one, and I'm not even sure it's right for "Are you able to read it?")

Back to the editing of the English translation of the Romanian memoir that the author wants to translate into French. And that's the least of the unusualness of the author, judging from his contents. Only a couple hundred more pages to go!

Home

I highly recommend a weekend at a retreat and conference center overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Highly. For everybody. All of you, one after another or together. Bathing suits optional.

So you know how, in *most* situations, you would have to gather together some wild and reckless rule-breaking friends to work up the nerve to go skinny dipping? I actually found myself in a position this weekend of trying (unsuccessfully, I might add) to find someone who was going to the baths with a suit. Okay. So not all parts of the place are ideal for everyone.

But the food was incredible, and so organic and healthy, it made Whole Foods seem like a junk-food grocer. And the poetry workshop was awesome. Good people, a very encouraging atmosphere, and I wrote 3 (count 'em - 3!) new pieces. The teacher gave me a personal nod regarding the work I was doing, which did wonders for my fragile poet's ego. I came back rested, renewed and feeling a re-birth with my writing.

And my family and home were so nice to return to. Not only did nothing blow up while I was gone, D. made it look easy. The girls had fun, the house was clean, there were new grasses in the front yard and new tiger barbs in the tank - and tonight the BIG fishies were moved to their new BIG home. So much good stuff in one weekend. I can hardly stand it.

Look kids! Tomorrow's post - today!

So by the time this post officially will have been written (that's the Future Perfect tense), I will have been (Future Perfect Continuous) in Big Sur for about 20 hours.

You gotta love the idea of a "Future Perfect" state, especially if you feel you had missed out on the "Past Perfect" or if you are not okay with this, which is the "Simple Present."

Oh, the joys that grammar can bring!

I hope this qualifies for my write-every-day deal. I hadn't planned to be out of the range of pretty much all advanced technology for a full 24-hour period when I agreed to the silly daily blog dare.

And a shout out to D who is holding down the fort (and painting the livingroom, and prepping the fish tank, and caring for the kids) while I am gone. Happy anniversary, dear. Who would have thought, 22 years ago when you asked me to be your girlfriend in the driveway of Clare's family's house, that you'd still be stuck with me now? Ha! That'll learn you to be careful what you wish for!

Pack it up, move it out

I hope to leave town within an hour for the workshop. I just need to run a few micro-errands first, and then it's a 3+ hour drive (alone! listening to whatever music I want!), and a three days of incredibly decadent time writing and workshopping poetry on the California coast. (My blogger spell chedk for "workshopping" prompted me for "worshipping." Hmm.) I know how very fortunate I am to have the funds to pay for this, and a husband who supports whatever I do, even if it means he has to single-parent for days. I don't take any of it for granted. I just hope to relax and go deeper into the moment (whatever the moment brings) and to write. And write. Not just blog, mind you.

Closer to quiet

Another full day. Hard to find space and quiet when activities are one after another: work, dr appointment, work, pick up girls, go home for 2 minutes to grab stuff, out to 4th grade play & potluck, home to do bed-time routine. I have a list of to-do's before I head out of town for the weekend, which means that I'm sleepy and suddenly feel that there's nothing more important than sleep.

So maybe there isn't!

Last push before a weekend away

The last few days of school are hectic, and in this case, more so because I'll be leaving town (just me!) on Friday for a writer's weekend away and I'm trying to get it all together before I go. The girls have parties and performances and potlucks. I have a pre-migraine headache. But the end is in sight! And so is sleep...

Family time

This evening, I spent about 3 hours on the phone with family members, sometimes talking about other family members. This is a unusual, especially the long conversation I had with my brother in Denver and his wife. We typically speak to one another only on holidays and birthdays or if someone is very ill. But he had just watched the video he'd made about 5 years ago from old family slides and Super 8 footage, and it prompted him to think about how, way back when before 1975, we'd been a family that did things together. He called to remind me. This coming from someone who'd once said he had next to no memories of his childhood. It was strange, and sweet too.

My dad had outpatient surgery today - the day after his 69th birthday - & is apparently doing very well. After the surgery (which took place while my brother was watching this family video with my father's mother), my dad took my brother out to lunch. My dad had a hamburger and two beers. What's odd about that is not the post-surgery beers (he'd had a urinary external catheter inserted). That's not odd at all. What's odd about the lunch that he had appetite for hamburgers and that he had (apparently) money to pay for it. After lunch, my dad went back to the van where he now lives with his dog. By choice. How do I feel about this? Detached. Of course. Detachment is my tool of choice around dad. It's one of the skills I honed as a child (along with minimalizing danger and second-guessing everyone) as a coping mechanism for living with him and his skewed way of interacting with people.

My sister called between calls from my brother to talk to me about summer plans, and my father-in-law called after that to talk about a get-together with D's aunt from Bulgaria and D's sister and her fiance. (A fiance we haven't even met yet!)


* warning - neurotic Rambling follows. Feel free to cut & run now. *

It's family time. I'm not sure how that feels. Which is, itself, a strange feeling.

I am comfortable with these people, but again, a large percentage of me is very detached. I hold back. I say the right words. I even know what a healthy response to them might be, but I seldom reveal all or even represent most of my truest self to anyone - among my siblings especially - for fear that they'll only use that integrity against me. How sad is that? They're not even manipulative or cruel people. I just feel like they might be. After all, we were all four shown examples of cruelty and manipulation on a regular basis by the same father. They might have picked up some of his tricks. I might have. One can't be sure.


Bleh.

Stoopid coping mechanism.

The hours I keep

Last night at around 1am, S came to the bed crying but not, apparently, from a nightmare. She was soon comforted and sleeping in bed again, but she'd reminded me that I'd completely forgotten (for 2 days) the project I'd agreed to do for her Kindergarten teacher - printing about 75 digital pictures for an end-of-year project. So I got up around 4am and worked on it until I had to leave for work. D gave the news that he'd bring the finished photos tomorrow, and tonight, after getting the girls to bed and napping myself, I got up again at around 10:30 and have been working on it since.

This means less than 6 hours of sleep again, followed by what promises to be another challenging day at work. It's the most intentionally I've burned both ends of the candle in a while - I even had a home-made latte earlier in the evening to make this awake-time possible - but it's short term, and I honestly can't see around it right now, so I'll make do!

The advantages to downtime

Today was as close to a perfect day as makes no nevermind.

I slept in - past eight! D. got up before me, which almost never happens.
I got up, lazed around a bit, then went for an hour run. Nice.
Got back, & D. had fed the girls breakfast & was working on setting up the Massive Fish Tank. I'd left them all happy, with the soundtrack to Oklahoma playing. And I returned to them all happy as well.

Puttered around, talked about summer plans, had a very late breakfast with D. while the girls giggled & played make-believe that S was a wild mustang that granted wishes (sometimes "opposite wishes") to people.

D. went to work & I painted one of the walls in the livingroom, which took hours because I was careful with the prep-time and the actual painting. I am notorious for getting paint everywhere when I paint, and for missing spots on the walls (I think the technical term is "holidays"). But this time, I did all right. I cleaned up, D. got home from work, and we headed south for dinner with Julia and family. I think it's safe to say that a good time was had by all. We had to drag the girls and ourselves away.

All Funned Out

The girls had a gymnastics show tonight. They both did their group routines very well. They are at a beginner's level; no backflips or handsprings or anything that would pose a safety issue (now that R has learned to tuck her chin when doing a forward roll). R's teacher and her partner came to the show too, which made R's day. I thought this was above and beyond. This particular teacher doesn't live in town, and has only taught R's class for about 8 weeks. I was grateful for her willingness to be there.

Before the gymnastics show, we had about an hour of rest - which meant a nap for D and S, computer time for R, and gardening for me.

Before that down time, we had all gone to a birthday party at a place that had a room full of giant jumpy slides and a jumpy obstacle course and a jumpy boxing ring. The kids wore themselves out. I showed my car to the birthday boy's grandfather, who had expressed an interest in buying it. He and his wife will think about it this week. I can't tell whether he'll get it. On the one hand, he didn't seem too keen. On the other hand, he mentioned that maybe he'd want to test drive it again next weekend, if that would be possible.

Before the birthday party, R had her riding lesson (and S tagged along), and before that, S had her dance class - only one more class/practice before that recital!

Before the riding & dance lessons, before breakfast in fact, I spent an hour in line at the local pool, signing the girls up for their first session of swim lessons for the summer. The city's Parks & Rec Department still hasn't come up with a better system for residents of the east side of town to register for swim lessons. There are obvious disadvantages of this go-in-person, get-in-line method. But the advantage is that it provides a community tradition. It's like having a Star Wars movie open every year a mile from our house; people wait and wait, with their lawn chairs and coffee - some people even get there an hour or more before the signups open - and there's this great opportunity to meet and greet friends and strangers alike.

If there were more things in life like the swim lesson signups, maybe we'd all slow down and get to know one another better. I think about parts of the world where one must stand in line for food, or water. I think of women washing clothes at a communal water source, or men gathering at a worksite. There isn't much of an equivalent in our society; even at activities where children are doing their thing like sports, the parents are often not there - they're running errands,taking another kid somewhere else. Or if they are there, they're not present.

Is this why I like public transportation, and Laundromats, and airports? Because they are places where one must wait with others who are waiting? Maybe I need places where waiting is forced upon me. What would happen if I thought of meditation as a type of waiting? The type of waiting that is accompanied by listening, watching, paying attention - without thinking. Just being.

The End of a Long Week

Just glad to have made it this far. Am fighting off a very mild depression that I know is sleep deprivation in disguise. Tomorrow will be extremely busy, but I'll feel better after 8 hours of shuteye.

Ever want to know more about Margaritas?
Here's a link that lists a few of the stories behind when/why the drink came into being.

And in the interest of balanced air time, here's a link to California Alcohol Treatment facilities.

Please note that I have not had anything to drink. But I'm considering going just crazy and having a margarita sometime this month. Whoa. Look out, folks.

The circus

The girls and I went to Circus Chimera between rehearsals for their gymnastics show.

I don't like circuses. There it is.

I can admire the incredible skill and training and hard work that goes into a circus. I don't mean to slight the performers and staff.

But I think watching this thing took a year off my life.

I used to think I didn't like circuses because of the bright lights and noise and all the people, and because I felt the pressure of Past Expectations working against me. For my fifth birthday, my mother got tickets for us to go to the Ringling Brothers & Barnam and Bailey circus. I remember completely falling apart there - hating it so much and crying so hard that we had to leave early. Poor mom. The next item on our party agenda was a post-circus trip to Farrell's ice cream parlor - the kind of place where they make the birthday girl or boy stand on a table while a hoard of underpaid, acne-faced waiters and waitresses, armed with drums and whistles, rush the party in a manic parade, singing loudly and in what I, as a five year old, found to be a very threatening manner. By comparison, the circus was a sea of calm.

Poor mom. She tried to plan a few more birthday parties, but there was always something about being the center of attention at a party that literally destroyed me. I couldn't wait for the thing to be over. And so, I often didn't wait. I have vivid memories of ditching my own birthday celebration more than once when I was little. I understand now why I hated it so much. But that's another story.

And about this hating the circus? I think there are a couple of another, more real reasons I feel this way about the circus, reasons that came rushing loudly and clearly back to me as I sat, palms sweating, between the girls. It's two-parted. One part is that so much of many circuses consists of people risking their necks just to entertain us. I mean, these people could die. Yes, they had a few safety nets and harnesses and ropes, and yes, they've practiced this stuff incessantly. But still. When one daredevil asked the audience (from on top of a Wheel of Destiny) if he should do more feats of derring-do, while everyone clapped and cheered him on, I was sitting there thinking "No! No! Stop! Don't encourage him!"

The other reason I think I dislike the circus is the tension that the audience and performers emote. The air is thick with all the feelings, and (not that I'm some magical empath or anything), the emotions around me can be overwhelming.

But hey - we survived, and the clown in this particular show was good, and no one died. So I think my daughters' circus experiences are already better than mine were.

Breaking the cycle, again.

Early to bed

I'm working a 5:30-1:30 shift tomorrow, so am determined to get to bed early.

The poem I worked on last night (a significant revision of / different take on the ants piece) had me concentrating hard enough that I snapped at both the dog and D when they poked their heads into the room. Maybe being irritable while writing isn't the best sign in the world, but where I am now, that's a sign that I'm focusing.

I mean, it's not like I'm writing Kubla Khan or anything, but I am guarding that concentration when I can get it.

There are so many activities with the kids this week and next week that I don't even want to write them all down. It's one thing after another. All good, and manageable (just), but a lot all the same. Not a good time to be sleep deprived. To bed, now.

Reality hits

This evening's realities, harsh & otherwise:

1 - I have not (quite) finished the poems I want to send out. But I am working on them, mid-breakthrough on one now. Even as I write this, I'm in a space, working on something honest. So I did not meet my own challenge/dare/whathaveyou. But this is also me giving myself a break. I'd rather send out better poems a couple of days late than bad poems "on time."

Sunday morning, as I was putting on my tennis shoes for a run, I looked up at the clock and said, "Drat. I'm late."

R. said, "How can you be late? You're just going for a run."

I said, "Well, I wanted to be back at 8:45 but I also wanted to run six miles, and I can't run that far and still get back by 8:45."

"So just run three miles," she said.


2 - See this, which Suzanne led me to from her blog. It's astonishing how many of people's secrets are negative and filled with shame. What happens to happy secrets? Are they not secrets to begin with? Or are they shared in person, more easily?


3 - We're all going to die. I hate that. Even though in my clearer moments, I know that it's really and honestly okay (in the big scheme of things), still it irks me sometimes.

What Day is it?

It was Monday, but it was a holiday, but I worked, but D didn't go to his friend's house, but we both spent the afternoon working hard around the house, but we had dinner together and then a lovely family walk around the block afterwards. It's late for me to be going to bed, but I've already been asleep for half an hour. I'm writing now, but I'm still asleep.

Dang.
Modern living is complicated.

Cleaning house at midnight

Up from bed to blog and do chores. The girls were tucked into the big bed later than usual, D is at his friend's house until the wee hours, and tomorrow I work 6-2 (hard to say "no" to that holiday pay). My mother-in-law is coming for a visit tomorrow, so I guess I should at least do the dishes. Maybe just that, though - for all I feel compelled to do more, based on a series of less-than-charitable comments she's made in the past about the state of our house.

I often think bitterly that she may have run a pristine house and prepared fine, multi-course meals for dinner every night, but she did not work outside of the home, and her children never were allowed to be carefree, messy children - even once, from what I can tell. There's more, but that would be more of me being less-than-charitable, myself.

I still haven't sold the Escape, but I'm trying to be patient and hold out for whatever I can make selling to a private party rather than losing more selling it back to a dealership.

I did have an offer from someone in Las Vegas to take over my payments (which I'm sure would have continued from "I'd like to help take over your payments" to something like, "Please tell me your bank account number, debit card number and PIN, and I can help. And by the way, my uncle in Nigeria needs the account information, too.") And someone named Guido (I am not kidding) with an Italian hotmail account also is interested in the car, and would I please email him to make a date. Sorry, Guido. You'll need to give me more than a form email for me to believe you are a valid customer.

The good news: meeting the writer's group today, writing a little, and walking away knowing I'll write more. I have a self-imposed deadline of Tuesday to send out new poems to *somewhere* for publication.

A good sign

Tonight we went to the house of S's former preschool teacher for a birthday dinner. Other parents of former students were there, and some of the teacher's friends were there too. It was a pot luck. I got a babysitter last minute.

And I did not feel stressed about preparing the steak and catfish I made, or the fact that we arrived late, or the whole concept of a party. This is so unusual for me, it's worth noting. I mean, typically, I am in tears or near it while on my way to a party. I understand why that is, now, I think. But I never reached an "I can't do this" point with tonight's social occasion. And we had a very pleasant evening.

If I can keep this sort of perspective up, I think it'll help prevent me from dying of stress-related illness or disease before my time.

Another entry just under the wire

My husband understands my commitment to daily blogging so well, he woke me up from my "nap" on the couch to make sure I wrote before midnight. What a guy.

Last Wednesday marked the twenty-second anniversary of our first "date." We'd met only a few weeks (was it days?) before at a party, and he'd invited me to join him and a Small Rebel Force - uh, I mean, group of High School friends - for the opening of Return of the Jedi. He'd shown up at my house (in this movie-trip carpool) with a gift for me - a black t-shirt with the original Star Wars logo silkscreened in white on it. He had a matching shirt. He'd made them both himself. Oh. My. Goodness. We were such geeks.

For ten years after we met, we went to Science Fiction conventions at least once a year. The "con" we were guaranteed to attend was BayCon, which takes place every Memorial Day Weekend at the Red Lion Inn in San Jose. To this day, I have residual panic attacks around Memorial Day weekend because I feel like I'm missing something, like I'm really late in packing my suitcase full of costumes and science fiction paperbacks and Pop Tarts and Cokes. It's all so very sordid.

But hey! Time (and children) changes everything. I haven't even seen the new movie yet, and I don't know when I'll see it. I don't really have enough fabric to make any costumes in honor of any characters. I just wrote a long piece about what I miss and what I don't miss about cons, but I don't even feel strongly enough about that to include it in this blog post. And just because D. has already memorized the soundtrack to Revenge of the Sith doesn't mean he'll be pulling out the styrene to hand-craft a half-dollar sized Millennium Falcon. Again. Any time soon.


Happy Anniversary, hon.

In the moment

I've been trying to listen to my very busy mind this evening. It never shuts up. And there's a background anxiety about "ALL THE THINGS I HAVE TO DO" which explains why I feel compelled to fall asleep at 8pm instead of doing "ALL THE THINGS I HAVE TO DO."

Hmm. What is this "have to?" At first, I wrote here "Half of those things I don't really have to do, and most of them (all of them?) I have put upon myself. So silly."

But really, nearly all of those things I don't have to do, and all of them, I have either put on myself or allowed upon myself.

So I am trying to focus on just what is immediately in front of me, the task at hand, whatever it is. For some people - some of you reading these words, probably - this is old hat. Me, I still don't have it down.

But then do I add to my List of things I have to do "Let go of the things you have to do."? You see what I mean. My mind just goes blahblahblahblah all the livelong day.

I am letting go of anything but the task at hand as best I can until it is time to pick up the next thing. I am Martha trying to become Mary. But still, "try" is the wrong verb.

"But the Lord answered and said to her, 'Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.'"
(Luke 10:41-42, New American Standard version.)

What is the one needful thing? Everything, I think. Or Nothing. Or, really, just Now.

Draft

A draft of a poem I first made notes for in February. I'm not sure of the advantage of posting something that is probably not the finished item, but hey - it gives me something to put here besides "had tea with the Smiths" or a link to someone else's creative output. For what it's worth. And here's my KQED-type disclaimer: the views expressed by the speaker are not necessarily those of the writer.




Valentine’s Day

The first step is simple: you fold paper lengthwise.
Next, cut tedious half-hearts, ear-shaped along the edge.
Apply glue liberally. It may seep out from under
the layers of pink on white on red, or red on pink on white.
That’s alright. For easy distribution,
write no names on your valentines.

As though we could parcel out our love in equal measure,
by simple hand-delivery of the sloppy product
of an afternoon at the kitchen table.
As though you would not secretly pick
the prettiest one for the girl you love the most,
the messy one for the boy you barely knew,
the heart that turned out worst
for the child who mattered least,
at least to you.

This is the advantage to store-bought cards: they are equal
in their cookie cutter pop culture colored presentation,
indiscriminate in their insincerity. They are all the same
in ways that we are not
and could never be.

Remind me

Ironically, so much happened today, I'm not recording it. Instead, one of my favorites by Billy Collins:


Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never
even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a
bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

--Billy Collins

www.bigsnap.com

S tries Jedi mind tricks

At the school rummage sale, there were four somewhat muddy, somewhat rusty bicycles going cheap. The bike we currently have for S. is really too small for her; she needs a taller one, even though she still uses training wheels.

So anyway, I was considering these almost-free bikes and called her over to look at them. They were all boys bikes, and two were probably no bigger than her bicycle, so there was not much point in considering those, but of course it was one of the smaller models that interested her most.

We had a brief chat about the pros and cons of the bikes in general, and I went back to staffing the money box, thinking that I shouldn't have shown her the choices and we were better off with something newer anyway.

About fifteen minutes later, a woman came to the front table and asked those of us working behind it, "Is it true that the bikes aren't for sale?"

"Oh no, they're for sale," the hostess assured her.

"Well, I just thought I'd ask you because someone said they're not for sale."

"Who told you that?"

"One of the girls here," the woman answered.

Call it mother's intuition. I saw S. playing with a large bird cage in the corner of the lawn. "Was it that little girl over there?" I asked, pointing to her.

"Yes, that's the one" the woman said.

Right.

(Imagine Obi Wan saying: "You don't need to see those bikes. Those bikes aren't for sale.")

I laughed. "Don't believe her!" I said. "She just said that because she wanted to get one of them. They're really for sale."

Ha ha. I laughed again. We all laughed. Those crazy kids.

It was less humorous a minute later when the woman's young son wheeled his purchase down the hill. S. happened to be looking up from playing at the moment that the boy walked by. Her head turned slowly to the left as she watched him go out the gate with his father to the parked cars. Then she frowned a little, and her head turned slowly all the way to the right as she leaned forward to peer past the battered tables and broken desks to the top of the hill and the pile of bikes for sale.

Her head whipped back toward the boy again, and you could practically hear a "click."

Her face changed: her eyes narrowed, her mouth tightened into an angry frown. She glared across the lawn at me. I had just taken the woman's money for the purchase, and S. knew it. The look she shot me would have slain me on the spot if it weren't for the fact that her Jedi Powers haven't yet reached their full awesome potential.

The other parents staffing the sale table saw the look too. They gave a collective sharp intake of breath.

"Maybe I'd better go talk to her," I said.

"Maybe you'd better," they all quickly agreed.

So I approached S., who appeared to be above speaking to the likes of me. After all, I was the person who had foiled her anti-sales tactics and allowed the bike she wanted to get away.

"We could think about getting you a new pink and purple bike," I started.

"I don't want a new pink and purple bike," she said, indignant.

"Well, uh..." I floundered.

Fortunately, she helped me out.

"What I want is a new Spiderman bike."

"Oh," I heard myself say. "We can get you a new Spiderman bike."

I also think I said something like, "We don't need to see his identification," and "These aren't the droids we're looking for."

Doomed, I tell you.
My husband and I, and anyone who ever dates my daughter.
Doomed.

Post rummage sale, pre-migraine

Must sleep now before head explodes. As Homer Simpson might say, "Stoopid headache!"

The school rummage sale was huge, and it was a success - but I wouldn't call it a huge success.

I spent hours and hours schlepping stuff around afterwards in the cleanup effort. Even with today's half off everything and then final hour of "a dollar a bag," we ended up with 3 truckloads and two vanloads full of stuff. And then some. About a dozen boxes of clothes and boxes of kitchenware, toys, stuffed animals, the usual one lonely Nordic track.

Assuming my head does not explode, tomorrow I will tell the story of daughter number two's efforts to control the sale's inventory.

A silly link

Just this today. Very silly, but fun.

Enjoy!

Marathon Day

Well, alrighty. The banana nut loaves have just been put in the oven. That sounds like a cryptic top-secret code phrase, doesn't it? I mean, especially this late at night, when one has been up for about, give or take, three years.

"The banana nut breads loaves are in the oven."
"Roger that. We have confirmation of a Bake Sale at oh-seven-hundred, sir."
"Over. I want a positive read on the Kids Sleeping before we commence with Blog exercise."
"Affirmative, sir."

*Sigh*. I don't write that kind of thing as well as Kate Bachus, but this late at night, my judgment is screwy enough that I try, anyway.


Before the baking of the loaves, there was the trip to the grocery store at 10:30pm for vanilla extract. And let me just say that if we all thought gasoline prices were bad, we should take a look at how truly impoverished we would be if our tanks required vanilla extract to run. Even the cashier did a sharp intake of breath when she rang up the bottle. Very nice.

Before the vanilla extract trip, there was the performance of Coppelia that S's dance school put on. I think she's about 10 years from being able to dance in a show like that. See this link for the story, if you'd like. It's a little twisted, but they did an innocent-enough production.

Before the dance show was gymnastics, before/during that, two trips to the Rummage Sale site to help set up, a quick trip home, a trip to Hospice to drop of a check from the Human Race, picking up the girls from school and a playdate, and a full and busy day at work. For the first time I can remember in a long time, I had no real "meal" at all today - just snacks grabbed here and there, mostly junky stuff.

I am not complaining. I am recording. I'd like to just write: "had a busy day," but if I ever look back and read this blog entry years from now, I'll be thinking, "What? Busy doing what? Where are the details? Where is the reflection and writerly focus? What really happened? Was there vanilla extract involved?"

Thus I am forced to expand the basic "busy day" plot.

Did I forget to Post today?

I sometimes think I will just plum forget to write here some day this year, but after the .34 seconds of panic wears off, I realize that it isn't likely. It's more likely that I'll write two sleepy posts in a fog of bloggines than that my brain would allow me to reach midnight without having done this at all.

Here's what I'm not writing about tonight
Star Wars
Three people I know who have birthdays today
The genocide in Rwanda

As has happened so often before, I'm literally falling asleep at the keyboard and couldn't even do the first of these topics justice right now.

Note to self:
blog early and blog often, and actually write something, for goodness' sake.

Mixed bag

What a day. There were small upheavals and long meetings at work, and the afternoon plans were set aside for a last-minute playdate at our house. I baked a pumpkin pie for the school's Farmer's Market and for probably the first time in my life, did not burn the crust. It's after 10 and now a loaf of banana bread is baking - also for the market.

After the girls and I had dinner, I took them with me to give blood (mine). Finally my levels were high enough for me to donate. R read a book on the Blood Bank's big van, and S told the folks that she wanted to be a nurse when she grows up, and she watched the whole process with real interest and not the slightest bit of squeamishness. Afterwards, one of the phlebotomists gave her gloves and a small bit of bandage for her to practice being a nurse with her stuffed animals. She now has a makeshift clinic in her bedroom. When I tucked her into bed, she said, "Mommy, be very careful of the Tiger. He has Lobo Fever, and that's very dangerous to humans." I assured her I'd be extra careful.

It looks like there are some changes coming at work, and I just gave blood, and in 3 weeks I'm going to a poetry workshop. The last thing I need now is to come down with Lobo Fever - especially if this is a 5 year old nurse's casual way of referring to Lobo Disease.

Here's the scoop on Lobo Disease, from webmd.com. The medical name for the disease is Paracoccidioidomycosis. Say that three times fast.

"Paracoccidioidomycosis (PCM) is a chronic infectious tropical disease caused by the fungus Paracoccidioides brasiliensis. The initial infection usually occurs in the lungs, but may also spread to the skin, mucous membranes, and other parts of the body. Specialized cells that line the walls of blood and lymphatic vessels and dispose of cellular waste (reticuloendothelial system) may also be affected by Paracoccidioidomycosis. If left untreated, life-threatening complications can occur. Most cases of this disease occur in South and Central America."

Yep. Not on my list of "Diseases I'd Like To Have."

It is, admittedly, a pretty short list anyway.

But still.

Educating the Federal Judge

So the story goes like this; when R. was about 6 1/2 months old, and I was back at work (but pumping milk 3 times a day at work so she would have that in her bottle), I was summoned for Jury Duty at the Federal Court in San Francisco.

It was for a racial discrimination suit that had been brought against the utility giant PG & E. I didn't try to get out of serving. However, just as I was realizing that I had pretty much been selected for the jury, I asked to have a word with the Clerk of the Court. The Clerk was a smartly dressed petite woman who obviously knew her stuff and had the respect of everyone in the room, including the judge (who was imposing in his own right). I mentioned to the clerk that I did have this, uh, situation, where I was expressing milk for my baby. And I asked how often breaks might happen, and whether there was a fridge where I could store the, uh, expressed milk.

So she went back to this U.S. District Court Judge and spoke to him at great length in hushed tones. There were whispers back and forth, and then the judge called the attorneys to him, and he requested that I join this little sidebar party they were having.

Please note that I was not feeling heroic at this moment. I was in a grand old courtroom with rows of prospective jurors staring at me, and the judge and lawyers and clerk in a serious legal-person huddle around me. I was feeling decidedly embarrassed. But here's what happened. The judge, a black gentleman who was probably closer to 70 than 60, asked that I explain to him just what my concerns were. So I did. It took some time, because he had never (I am not making this up) heard of such a thing as pumping breastmilk and saving it to give to the baby later. It was, apparently, outside of his realm of experience.

Once he did understand, however, he decided that there was no reason I couldn't serve on the jury. He said he would just make sure we had frequent enough (and long enough) breaks for me to do what I needed to do.

And that's how it played out. On any given day, after an hour or two of testimony, His Honor would say something like, "And I believe we will adjourn...?" with a careful look in my direction. My job would be to slyly signal with a raised eyebrow or slight nod or shake my head (depending on how I was holding up) and he would then finish his sentence with either, "...now for a half hour" or, "..in an hour and a half," etc.

I had educated a Federal Judge regarding the realities of being a working woman in today's world who is, at the same time, trying to do right by her baby. In retrospect, I was pretty proud of myself, and that took a little of the edge off of the embarrassment.

The trial lasted more than two weeks. I think we would have ruled in favor of the corporation (the man's case was weak, and every witness for him damned him further), but then, at the beginning of the third week, the corporation settled.

Add to the length of this jury service the distance (40 miles from my home), and the fact that the trial - at the SF Federal Building - started the day before the Oklahoma City bombing. You can imagine the shift in security from the first day to the second.

It was a tense time for all sorts of reasons. But I survived it, and I feel like I personally paved the way in that particular judge's court for any other breastfeeding moms silly enough to report for service instead of opting out as I'm sure (now) I could have done. Live and learn.

Or not

Okay, so the court story will have to wait. I don't mean to be a liar. But I saved blogging until so late in the day that I just don't have it in me to record a story here, or even talk about today's jury duty selection process.

I will record that I wasn't selected, and given the type of trial and expected length of the trial, that's okay with me. In general, though, I never try to get out of serving, and I wouldn't have tried to get out of serving today if it had come down to that. Most of us are asked to do nothing more than pay taxes as citizens of this country; the government requires so little of us, I feel it's important to do this much, and vote, and pay those taxes. I have that much trust in the systems that we have in place. They're not perfect, but they're better than most alternatives.

Although I will also say that I know plenty of people who feel they're sacrificing enough just sticking it out and staying in the U.S. while an administration they find either incompetent or sinister (or both) makes decisions they find abhorrent. And I understand that point of view, too.

2 hours of writing

So I had, theoretically, 2 hours of writing time today at the cafe downtown with Suzanne. And we did actually write, after the usual catch-up time and then me also running all sorts of current worries and inanities in my life by Suzanne, who always has a sympathetic ear and words of wisdom. We did miss the other third of our writer's group, Julia. Next time, Super Mama!

I worked on a poem, and I wrote about my writing, which strikes me as incestuous, somehow. But it did help, and I could have spent even more time writing, so those are good things.

Tomorrow, I report for Jury Duty - always an interesting experience. At least this time, unlike last time I was on a jury, I don't have a baby at home.

I will write the story of how I educated a Federal Court Judge about expressing milk tomorrow. You have been warned.

A little pigment, a whole new world

Our livingroom is in the process of being transformed. It was all so easy! I suggested we needed new paint. D agreed. I went to OSH early this morning and brought home a couple of quarts to try out. Neither color was right (in fact, one was very not right), but after I'd run around handling the Food for Families delivery and transportation for ballet class and riding lessons, all four of us went together to the hardware store & D & I picked the colors that would be right.

And voila!

With D doing 98% of the work (because my "liquid impaired" problem applies to paint too), the room has suddenly gone from drab and dirty off-off-white to a rich "roasted asparagus" rolled over "tea green" on one wall and vellum on another, with a nice pale neutral color replacing the sickly salmon that had been on the beams in the room.

Actually, "we" have a lot more to do with the velum and beams, but the green is done. It looks better than it sounds, and the gold-framed prints we'd had on the wall are great against the deeper color.

I am so grateful to have a husband who is willing and able to do this. And I'm glad I'm strong-willed (let's not say "stubborn") and comfortable enough here to insist that we make the change.

I lived in 11 houses the first 15 years of my life, and then in another 3 rental apartments before I was 20. This could have taught me to adapt quickly, to develop the skill of making a place my own in no time at all. I know someone who unpacks her suitcase to put clothes in the drawers in a hotel room even if staying there only one night. She learned from a life of travel that impermanence doesn't mean one can't be civilized.

But instead of teaching me to set up camp under even the worst circumstances, moving so much had the more predictable effect of causing me to avoid investing much emotion or self into the room or building around me. Why bother? Why concentrate on making a place perfect when whatever one did was going to last such a brief period of time? Or when, as a renter, I didn't have permission to paint the walls or nail holes in them for pictures anyway?

It has taken living here for nearly 3 times longer than I've lived in any other single home for me to start to feel safely settled in. But, as I'm discovering about so many things, better late than never.

One Thing Leads to Another

You know how these home improvement projects work. A few years ago, our guest bathroom was gutted from joist to roof (literally) and entirely remodeled because D's mom had given us the gift of a low-flow toilet.

And now that we have moved the old fish tank away from the livingroom wall in preparation for putting the new fish tank in its place, it seems that this is the opportunity we've been waiting for to repaint. Yup. You can only hold yourself back from brightening things up for so long, and apparently, 11 and a half-years is our personal limit.

So last night, even though I said I was going to bed, D. and I ended up staring at the empty corner where the old tank had been, and we realized the Golden Opportunity to turn an already complex and time-consuming project into a Neverending Project From Hell was stretched out before us like a box of upturned carpet tacks at a barefoot belly-dancing party.

And because we are such careful, plan-ahead Virgo types, we figured it would be a good idea to just sort of dash up to Home Depot tonight, after work and gymnastics and dinner, to grab a few gallons of a yet-to-be-decided-upon color and dang-it-all, start that project NOW so that we could finish it tomorrow and have it dry enough Sunday to move the new tank into the room.

The new tank, still in our garage, has 410 gallons of water in it. It has passed the pressure test. Tomorrow, we drain the thing into the neighbor's pool, a plan that was okay'd by the wife five minutes after being nixed by the husband. The upside is that the water doesn't go to waste. The downside is that the husband may end up blaming us for creating friction in any otherwise apparently functional marriage. We are such homewreckers.

Of course, there are minor glitches in every plan. For example, it wasn't until we were all walking out the door to go to Home Depot that we realized that it was 8:40 and the place closes at 9:00 on a Friday and it takes 30 minutes to get there. Math may not be my forte, but even I could see this was problematic.

And, yeah, D still has to make his custom dolly to move the 400 pounds (when empty) tank, and we need to mud part of the wall that was flaky. That kind of thing.

I assure you that it's only the wall that's flaky, not us. Oh, no. We're on it. We're sharp as the proverbial carpet tack.



Here are the fishies that started it all. The Coke can is for size comparison only but the perspective doesn't do the critters justice in spite of that: Lao Tsu, the big fish, is 17" long.

Shutting down, sir

S took a nap on the middle of the floor in the middle of a noisy livingroom today, at the house where she and R spend their Thursdays from 12:30-3:30. I was only half-joking when I asked the hostess, a great woman whom I admire very much & whose son is in R's class, if I could lie down next to sleeping S and take a nap myself.

You know, therapy is great, but it takes a lot out of you. I went to bed at 7:30 and am only up to fulfill this commitment. The rest, like the dishes and the mountain of clean laundry and spending time talking to D about his day and my day, reading that good book, watching that good film - all of that can wait.

I'm giving myself permission to check out and sleep a little extra tonight.
Not sick, just tired and withdrawn, and ok with that.

How are you?

Nothing to say

Nope. Nothing at all. Or, well, not really anything. Pretty much nil with just little suggestions of maybe a bit of a possibility of something that may (or may not) materialize.

Hmmmm.

Still not a lot to add to the above.
Except...

No. Not even that, I guess.




Last night I was pondering why I don't write more and I came up with the very certain (and possibly completely fabricated) realization that it's because I'm afraid I'd end up not sleeping, ignoring my family, & resenting my paying job and any other similarly trivial distractions. And those feelings would be in direct conflict with my equally strong obligation to order, structure, and the lifestyle to which my family and I have become accustomed (ie., one with a roof over our heads).

Shoot. You can see my dilemma, right?

I reckon the next step is to find a creative solution. Like, for example, I could stop thinking in such extreme terms, maybe. I mean, what's to say I can't set up 1 hour writing time 2 nights during the week and another 2 hour chunk guaranteed on Sundays? And what's to say I can't start to wean myself off of the artificial should-do's a bit more?

It apparently is a slow process. I've had this conversation in my head, with friends, and on the internet before now. Kinda like Groundhog Day, huh, D?

The things we do for fish

D has been working hard on the 450 gallon fish tank that will be replacing our two koi's modest (read: too small to turn around in) 60 gallon tank. If you saw our fish, you'd understand why this is necessary. These fish outweigh some housecats. It may take both of the adults in the house to lift the larger of the two out of the present tank and into the temporary tank that will house them while we move the present tank aside to make room for the new! improved! aquarium.

D's been building the new tank in the garage. He said it's a little like building a plane in your garage. I said, "Yeah, but planes have wheels." How will he move the tank from the garage to around the house and in the back door so it can be set up in the livingroom? He'll build a special dolly for it. Of course.

My mother fails to understand why we have to "lose" about an eight of our livingroom to this new tank, even though I explained that these fish are a like family, and we can't just give them away, let them die, or fry them up for dinner (even though they'd serve 12).

Between the saltwater tidepool/reef tank that runs the length of one of the walls of the garage, and now the Big Tank, I say we call this "Monterey Bay Aquarium North" and start to sell admission to classes of small school children. It will off-set the expenses associated with building the "exhibits," anyway.

I'll be sure to announce the Opening Day date and Members-only Early Entry hours as soon as those details become available.

Monday night, turning in early

Well, I don't know what you have left for the day, but I'm about done. I've given the kids 10 minutes more to color, etc. and 10 minutes for me to "scribble" as Jo March might say, and catch up on the internet (as Jo never did), and then we're hitting the hay.

Reading L'Engle's musings on "fundamental" Christianity and "literalism" has been encouraging. She always points back to the importance of Love. I wish I could keep it in mind more often, myself.

I was approached by a past school board member on Saturday with a question about whether I would consider "having a conversation" about me being on the Board. Clearly, she doesn't realize that while I seem responsible and discerning and involved, in fact, I dread responsibility and I am trying very hard to set boundaries in my life and keep it simple. Maybe it's time to practice the mantra that goes:

No. No. No.

Except that's not a very positive mantra, is it? Maybe it should be a question of saying "no" to them, but of saying "yes" to me, to my family, to space & peace. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Speaking of which, I have done a drastic thing and signed up for a 3-day poets' workshop at a retreat center near Monterey. It takes place next month. It's my way of re-affirming that I'm serious about writing. I've heard the workshop leader give a lecture and I think I can learn a lot from her. This afternoon, I was talking to another writer I know who is familiar with some people who go to that particular conference/retreat facility, and she said, "Yeah. That could be really a great experience."

"Or," she added brightly, "it could turn out to be just a bunch of really damaged people putting it all out there for 3 days."

Great.

I also now notice that swimsuits are entirely optional at the hot springs, and are, in fact, used less often than the alternative. This has left D wondering why, exactly, he agreed to giving me the weekend off (while he single-parents).

But honey, it could be such an...um...educational experience. My goal? To write poetry and more poetry, to pick up some more writing tips, and to do it all without myself somehow becoming a really damaged person. Hey. Goals are important to have.

Mother's Day

I was deeply happy for a good long stretch of time today. It made me realize that I only skip over the surface of happiness like a well-thrown stone most of the time. Real contentment, the sense that all is, in fact, right with the world, is a little too rare these days.

When did that change? I don't know. But I do know that it helped greatly to be home for most of the day - after taking R to riding lessons at 8:15. And it helped even more that D did the grocery shopping, made lunch, and did the dishes. His mother and stepdad were here, and we had a good time, considering. There were only a couple of tense moments - once when Larry started to talk about how the streets in Iraq were literally running with blood & I cut him off because the kids were within earshot; and again, after lunch, when the kids weren't around and he told the story of how he'd threatened a registered sex offender who works as a janitor in the same large hospital building where he (Larry) is working as a painter. The conversation got a little too graphic and I interrupted with a story about my dad (always a good conversation stopper) and he dropped what he'd been saying.

In spite of that, though, I felt like I had a good stretch of space to catch up on emails, organize papers, do laundry and tidy, while the kids entertained themselves. That kind of time is just the ticket to allow me to feel caught up so I can in turn settle down and breathe deeply, so I can rest my feet in peaceful waters.

Just finished reading Eve Green by a novelist 10 years younger than me. The nerve. I'd picked it up at random (I kid you not), so of course, it "randomly" takes place in Wales. It never stops in my life, apparently; that connection to Wales is always there in one form or another.

Now I'm reading Penguins & Golden Calves by Madeleine L'Engle. Essays on icons and idols, writing about America and Antarctica, and about her life with her husband and her life after his death. It's a good read. It's good for me to stay connected with this author, who is so much a Christian and yet still so able to allow God to live somewhere bigger than the box some Christians put him in.

Post race night already

It's been a full day. The race went well - I didn't walk at all, and did a pretty good time (for me), considering I hadn't been trainng for the event as much as usual.
I spent the better part of the day after that shuttling kids around and participating in the girls' school's May Faire, complete with maypole dancing from each class, strawberry shortcake, flower planting, garland making, prayer flag painting, and kids running around and being kids.

I've fallen asleep twice now, writing this. No point trying to come up with anything much that's readable, now....make that three times. -out-

Pre Race Night, not ready

Tomorrow is The Human Race, a 5k walk/10k run with about 8,000 participants that annually raises over 1 million dollars for non-profit organizations in the county. A 10k is 6.2 miles - and haven't run any further than 4.6 miles at a stretch since February. I should probably be worried, but what's the point? It wouldn't change anything. I have to hope the half marathon training leading up to February is still somehow in my system.

Besides, thanks to amazing generosity from co-workers, I've raised quite a bit of money for our city's Hospice, and the pledges will motivate me after the four mile mark, when I'm starting to wonder whose bright idea it was to do the 10k instead of the 5k, anyway.

It's just past 9pm now, and I'm going to bed - about an hour and a half earlier than I have all week. That should help with the run too, I think.

Pre-weekend mode

Let's just call this the beginning of the weekend. There's that one day of work to get through, but hey! that's just one day.

We do Superslow weight training twice a week at work. It's one of the biggest perks there is at the company, one of the reasons *not* to quit. The concept is that you use specially-calibrated machines to move the weights really slowly. It's not the number of reps that counts so much as spending 2 minutes on each machine doing exaggeratedly slow reps, 10 seconds in each direction. That way, within 20 minutes, you've had quite a workout. Sometimes my arms and legs are shaking pretty significantly by the time I wobble back to my desk after a session. My coworker once made fun of me, when just back from the gym, because my triceps and biceps were quivering when I reached out to dial the phone.

I usually don't want to do these workouts. It helps that our 2 trainers are awesome women and fun to spend time with and are, besides that, really good coaches. But still, it's a workout, not a half-hour of lying on a couch. And the weights are, well, heavy.

But the results of the training are great, and as another coworker pointed out once about each machine: "Hey. It's only 2 minutes. I can do just about anything if it's only for 2 minutes."

I may have already told this story. But my real point, now, is this: tomorrow is only 1 workday before the weekend. I can survive 1 workday.

And to Josh: we'll have to decline your generous offer of less-than-domesticated rats. But gee, thanks for asking.

(Is this what you mean by snarkiness, Julia?)

Miscellany

I'm still trying to sell the Escape. You can see it on craigslist.org here until the link expires.

We're also trying to find a home for something like 40 years (no, seriously) of National Geographics. D's father gave the boxes to us, and would like them to go to a school or non-profit organization as a lot. Once I know the exact years, I'll put that on craigslist too, I guess. Unlike many people I know, I have no experience at all with eBay, so I'm sticking to the local listings.

Dang.

I just started another sentence (and it was going to be a good one, honest) but Beatrice the rat walked on the keyboard and it went away. She's a worse critic of my work than I am. But she has turned out to be a great pet (when she isn't playing editor). She probably gets held or runs around the house 45-90 minutes a day by any of the four of us. When she is loose - which is to say, when the dog is not inside - she comes when you call her, even if she's in a distant room. Hmm. That's more than I can say about my daughters, as a matter of fact.

But I digress.

Beatrice and the dog (who is, I must say, a marvelous creature himself) have been introduced. She would climb right up his nose and sit on his head if we let her - she's that fearless and friendly. But Albion, wonderful though he is, would not be blamed for thinking that she is...well, if not an afternoon snack, than at least a fun new toy. And it's just too hard to un-bite the head off of a small animal.

Um. Sorry. Got gross there for a second.


I'm posting a picture from the race we ran last month, too. My first blog photo. Finally! Not the perfect picture of any one of the three of us, but it'll do.

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.