School Starts

For our young "Waldorf-inspired" charter school, the first day of classes means a gathering of wide-eyed little ones in a circle of redwoods, with loving parents and other family and friends surrounding them, while the Executive Director introduces the Educational Director, who introduces the teachers and School Board President, who introduces the School Board. After the introductions, there is the repetitive singing of a simple song that has the words "journey" "sun" and "stars" in it, a group reading of some poetry about strength and the universe, and a story told by the First Grade Teacher about a little flower gnome.

Okay.

So here's where I have to jerk my writing to a stop and remind myself of Suzanne's words of wisdom regarding not putting unkind things in her blog.

Okay.

So, um.

Let's just say that a shorter flower gnome story might have been equally effective.

And that my mother, who had thought I was kidding when I said we would perhaps have to sing Kumbaya, agrees that I'm possibly too "mainstream" to qualify to have my kids at the school. I mean, I wear non-cotton garments, for example. And I don't always shop at Whole Foods.

(Mom also said it's the most cheerful group of parents she's ever seen, and she wants to know what else they're growing in the garden besides sunflowers...)

But the beauty of such a warm, loving, open community, is that they have a grasp on inclusiveness that is strong enough to allow for refined-sugar eating folks like us to participate in their vision of the future.

Thank God (or Mother Earth, or FSM or what have you) for that.

Because, really, the song was kinda nice.

Beach Day Take 2

**THIS REALLY TRULY HONESTLY HAD BEEN WRITTEN YESTERDAY, AND POSTED TO MY BLOG YESTERDAY.**

Really. Truly. Honestly. But unfortunately, I found to my dismay tonight that I'd posted it to my exercise blog (which is not public) instead of this blog. Horrors!!

At any rate, here it is duplicated with the really honest-to-goodness original post date+time.

**



Back to Stinson Beach today, the last day of Summer before SCHOOL starts. Mom & the kids & I had brunch at Hallie's Diner first, then headed out to the coast, not deciding until the last minute whether we'd go to Tomales or Stinson.

Once on the beach, we were under fog all day. But the air was fairly warm and the water tolerable. The girls and I had races up and down the wet sand, got our feet (and in some cases, knees and waist) wet in the Pacific, chased an aggressive gull away from our towels, and generally enjoyed ourselves. Mom watched and read a hardback mystery, walking for a while with us as well.

A stop at the Cheese Factory on the way home for lots of Brie, and then a trip to the grocery store, and the day was pretty much spent. As were we all, especially those of us who *didn't* nap during the drive inland.

Funny how the act of writing even a small blog entry more often than not now gets me awake, even if I'd been asleep, and inspires me to write more.

But I know the morning will feel early to the kids after a summer of sleeping until 8am, and I want to be awake enough to see them through it. So I'm hitting the proverbial hay.

Grandma's in Town

After work today, the girls & I went to Emeryville for a browsing session at Borders & lunch at the Market. This was literally next door to my last employer, III. I was so tempted to stop by and see if anyone was around from when I worked there, 7 years ago. But then I was afraid that I would see someone, but it would be someone who would remember me who I wouldn't remember, and I felt the sort of guilt-in-advance that so often keeps me from doing things. So I chickened out.

Hey. At least I'm consistent in my neurosis.

Then it was off to the airport to pick up Grandma, who is staying with us for a week. We got back around dinner-time and as a result didn't have dinner until much later, when we were all so hungry that everything was funny and the Table Silliness Factor was even higher than usual. I can't accurately describe it, but if you've ever seen me drunk (as some of you have), you can imagine that same goofiness also displayed by a 6 year old, a 10 year old, and Grandma, who is old enough for the senior fare with Southwest but young enough to giggle as uncontrollably as the rest of us.

We'll see if she can stand a whole week of "fun" with the clan, though...

New Backyard Fence

D completed the new fence for the back of the backyard, and it is gorgeous. It's amazing how it completely changes the feel of the whole yard.

He also moved about 3/4ths of a ton of rocks from the backyard to the front. I helped, but only very little, and tonight D is nearly a broken man. But the yard is looking amazing.

Hard to practice any kind of detachment when I'm feeling so attached to where I live now.

Time has slipped by and I'm late to bed, again. Out for now...

Saturday at the Beach with Writers

Today my colleagues and I in the PWG (Petaluma Writer's Group) had what I hope will be the only the first of many writers' retreats. There was coffee and chatting and writing and chatting and writing (and, for me, a short nap in the sun) and a walk on the beach, and more writing, and dinner out. I managed to get down a good section of a brand new short story (a ghost story, even!) before we had to wrap it up. Thanks to Julia for arranging the space, and to her parents for the loan of it.

I can't say why I feel compelled to write a ghost story right now, but there it is. It could be a need I have to give voice to some fear or another in my life. But I think even this, as with many ghost stories, is really a tale of letting go. And I'm working a lot on "letting go" lately.

I don't yet know the resolution of the story - or whether there will be a resolution. I don't know that all ghost stories need to be resolved. I think that often, the whole point is that there is some unfinished business, and that's why the ghost sticks around. But we'll see what comes of this particular yarn...

The End of a Long Week

Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster this 6-day work week is over. (And thanks to Suzanne, and M., for the FSM introduction.)

I resorted to letting the girls do computer games for an hour this afternoon while I napped, in between various cleaning projects around the house. I don't know that the nap it helped much, but it certainly didn't hurt.

Tomorrow, I go to the coast for a Writer's Retreat with the Writer's Group gals. I'm looking forward to it, although I regret, a little, not having a better plan for what I hope to write tomorrow (I had written the word "accomplish" but that sounds so driven...)

Hope springs eternal, however - especially after a full night's sleep. And tomorrow presents first chance in a week to sleep past 5:15am -whoo-hoo!

Counting Blessings

I was going to write down a list of blessings tonight, and when I started to bring them to mind, I realized I didn't have room for that kind of list.

So.

Blessings?

Almost everything.

If I pause long enough to think about it.

Heart Sutra

gate, gate gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi svaha

(roughly: gone, gone gone, gone beyond, gone beyond beyond, hail the goer.)

I'd read an English translation of this in the beginning of The Years of Rice and Salt, a book given to me by Clare for Christmas. I only (finally) started the novel at the beginning of the month, and within a week, on the Food for Families delivery, the Buddhist on my route (with whom I've had several wonderful conversations) spontaneously taught the Sanskrit version to me. He didn't know I'd just encountered the mantra for the first time. "Isn't that a coincidence?" he asked me, when I told him. "Not really," said I.

Compassion

Given time, I would verify the validity of the below quotes by trying to find more reliable sources for them than the Web. But (fellow scholars reading this forgive me!) whether or not they are exact and authentic is secondary to their message for the purpose of this blog entry.

"A human being is part of a whole, called by us the 'Universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest--a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty." (Albert Einstein)


"As human beings we all want to be happy and free from misery...we have learned that the key to happiness is inner peace. The greatest obstacles to inner peace are disturbing emotions such as anger, attachment, fear and suspicion, while love and compassion and a sense of universal responsibility are the sources of peace and happiness." (Dalai Lama)


I'm experiencing compassion in a new way. On a few occasionss recently, different friends have confided in me about some very difficult things that they're each going through. Where once I would have calculated my response at some level, would have had a knee-jerk reaction not to share their emotion but to second-guess my own behavior in response to them, where once I would have been analytical, or at the least, detached in my response to their bad news - I felt (what a verb - felt!) instead an almost immediate and instinctive sense of empathy. My heart went out to them. I cried without thinking, and only later wondered at the change in my behavior.

Maybe I'm starting to get it.

In the meantime, maybe I can practice some compassion on myself.

What I'm listening to

So I'm going to create a sidebar comment (only not tonight) for What I'm Reading & What I'm Listening To

I think it might make the tail wag the dog - might make me reach for new music, anyway - to have those things posted.

But for now, I'm putting it in this late-night, up-to-blog post.

What I'm Listening To: Rent

I saw the show in NY (thanks to half-off same-day tickets). All I knew about it was that it was supposed to be really good. And it was. (I'll have expand on that review tomorrow, though, given the late hour.)

I've got the double-set CD in the car. The girls like the music too, but I do have to turn the volume down in strategic places during the songs because the language is not always appropriate for a 6-year old or even a 10-year old....

Sunday night - or is it Monday?

Working on Sunday when you know you'll be working Monday-Friday too can throw a gal. However, I managed to have a weekend anyway. Actually, it kind of felt like 2 mini-weekends in a row.

We have 4 new sections of fencing up, and D will build the rest sometime in the next week. As it turns out, the neighbor behind us, Luis, is really a pretty nice guy. The pit bulls actually belong to his son and daughter, who are 20 and 16 respectively. I still wouldn't want to be alone in a yard with any of them (the dogs, that is) if they weren't chained up, and it's sad and disturbing. But Luis himself is a nice guy.

It reminds me that the most realistic villains in novels are not purely evil. I mean, here's a person who will work with you all day, sweating to building a nice fence, give you a beer or two, ask how your children are and listen when you answer. A man who loves his wife, a man who wants to grow a beautiful lemon tree, and have a neighborly bbq. He'd loan you a cup of sugar in a heartbeat, but at the same time, he has three big dogs in his backyard that are never allowed in the house and are left alone to fight amongst themselves in a cage all day and whine or bark well into the night. How do you reconcile those facts? Maybe the way they treat the dogs is a cultural thing. That's entirely possible. My father in law, growing up in a farm in Romania, only ever knew dogs as working farm animals. They were not allowed in his rural home in the 40s and 50s, and I think he still has a hard time understanding how people can have larger dogs in the house.

That's probably it. Or (since they don't, after all, live on a farm) maybe Luis' kids are just too lazy to take proper care of their dogs, or aren't around. And maybe Luis is too tired at the end of a hard day's work to deal with dogs that aren't, after all, his. I don't know. But the truth is probably more simple and less dramatic than my "one can smile and smile and be a villain" assumptions. Maybe I am just a tad too quick to make the people I meet into characters whose motivations I have to untangle...

Family Games

R has made a Harry Potter Monopoly game, complete with playing pieces and money. It's a fun version, and well done. There may be an official version out there somewhere, but I haven't researched it, and I don't really care - R's version is more charming than any mass-produced thing they could come up with.

Tonight we were going to have a family game night and play her game, as well as 3 others - one picked by each of the other 3 of us. But S picked first, and picked Simpson's Clue, and it took us over an hour to play that one game.

The highlight of the evening was when R finally made an accusation, and suggested - if I remember correctly - that Miss Scarlet (Lisa Simpson) had done it in the Bowl-o-Rama with the Poisoned Donut. It was only after she checked the cards in the envelope (which reveal the true crime) that she realized - DOH! - that she actually already had all 3 cards in her hand.

We all laughed until we couldn't breathe, including R. That's the kind of silliness that brings a family closer together. We've already started calling her Sherlock.

Saturday night, but I'm working at 6am tomorrow, so I'd best hit the hay. Drat. It would have been fun to stay up and watch a movie, or fold laundry, or both. (Don't chores at 10:30pm sound FUN?). But instead, I hear that nice big horizontal piece of furniture calling my name...

Friday night

If I stay up much longer, I'll be able to watch the Perseid Meteor Showers. Last night I went to bed too early to catch them, but this morning driving to work, I did see a "shooting star." Only one of the many advantages of working the 5-1 shift!

Sleeping until 6am or 7am tomorrow will be downright decadent.
I'm looking forward to it. And I'd better do it while I can, because the Comet Swift-Tuttle (whose debris gives us the Perseid showers) passes closer and closer each year, and will probably in fact collide with our earth.

Apparently, the calculations that went around in 1993 that this could happen in 2026 were off. Now it's thought the comment may not hit us for another thousand years or so. Just enough of me is paranoid that I worry that they're only saying the comet won't hit "soon" because it could affect the economy or even American voting patterns if they told us the truth about our mortality. But what do I know?

The New Teacher

Tonight the four of us went to the girls' school to join with other parents in meeting the new 5th grade teacher. She's a very bright, talented, strong and graceful woman with a what seems to be a rare combination of experience and optimism.



They're going to eat her alive.

Waning Summer

Thanks to Josh for the link to Gas Guy. I've only read his latest post, but it was a very good read. The same message coming to me from another voice. The message that we are not our labels, and that it's sane to chose to love the job you have rather than find a job you love.

Partially as a result of reading that site, and partially because of the last few weeks of emerging from my private blog shell, I've now made this blog available to the general reading public. I've also updated the sidebar with new and renewed links. Don't all rush over and read at the same time, now.


The pre-school (as opposed to preschool) year is starting up, and all that comes with it: meeting with the teachers, making sure the kids have good backpacks and lunch boxes, prepping the classrooms so they're Waldorfly pastel in color, rallying the parental volunteers, stocking up on lots of cheap wine...

The girls, as young as they are, aren't yet pre-programmed to feel pre-school-year butterflies - that laying-out-the-new-clothes-the-night-before anxiety that still hits me (perhaps on their behalf) as August starts to fall away.

But we're trying to get to bed earlier than 9pm (take today, for example!) in anticipation of two weeks from now, when the harsh reality of being out the door with lunches made by 8:00 will hit anew.

And there's this other reason to get to bed earlier, for me. Starting tomorrow, my workday begins at 5am. It's a good thing, and something I wouldn't have changed if it wasn't too my advantage. The challenge will be to get to bed by 9pm myself, nightly, or face the sleep-deprivation consequences.

Lines from 5 years ago:



i'll make this quick

i don't have time to read long poems let alone write them
only i wanted to remind you that the world is rife
with things that poetry could never say
but must

Change is constant

I seem to be in an extended spring-cleaning overhaul of myself and my surroundings. Yesterday, I threw away some papers that I've felt certain I had to keep for the last four or twelve years. Papers that I'd held in my hands many times, and each time put in the same "I should file this somewhere" pile. Why? Why, I ask you? Why keep them?

I've kept them, I think, because they painted some picture I wanted to have about myself and who I am. Like, "I am a clever, prepared person because I've kept this article about sites to see in the Central Valley in case I ever take my family on an extended vacation in Fresno." Clever-schmever. What I am at core has nothing to do with whether I keep these things - things like articles about an artist I once knew but haven't spoken to in 14 years, or email from work that I found humorous (but still have at work in my thoroughly backed up email box), or a comic strip about stress that is still funny but totally not necessary to keep. I mean, other things in life since then have been funny (tonight's dinner conversation, for one), and I'm optimistic that I'll find something else humorous in the future and won't feel a Comic Void without that particular "Life in Hell" panel.

Yes, sir. I'm letting go of so much. Oh boy. I'm on my way. I mean, this was at least a dozen pieces of paper I just ruthlessly put in the recycle bag.

(However, in the interest of full disclosure I must say that I was still compelled to spend 10 minutes just now looking for a link online to the Groening Stress comic strip so I could document here, in my blog, the piece of paper I've thrown away. Somehow, I think I'm still a little unclear on the concept.)

I did, however, find this humorous link on "How to be a Sensitive Poet." It's uncanny how many of the categories apply to me. I think I'm going to write a poem about how despondent I feel about being a poet who only writes about how despondent she feels.

And it won't rhyme, either.

And I'm going to send it to either The New Yorker or Saltwater Fly Fishing Magazine - which ever will publish it first.

Lesson?

If our DSL is always acting up and it's *impossible* to be online between 10pm and midnight, does it mean I should take it as a sign to blog earlier in the day? This is all I'm writing for now. And I figure I'd better post it quick before I lose the DSL connection. AGAIN. Errrgh.

Don't Fence Me In

Last weekend, D bought some of the wood he needed to replace the fence at the back of our yard - the 40-year old one that was most horribly dilapidated, being held up only by a few twigs of ivy and the wire cage that contains one of the neighbor's pit bulls. Yesterday, he bought the rest of the material.

Yesterday he also told the neighbor, Luis, that if Luis and his friends would tear down the old fence and dig the post holes, then he (D) would build the new fence and put it up. Luis had his half-asleep teenage daughter shuffle out of the house to hear the explanation a second time, since Luis' English is not great. Along with the gist of our message, the girl must have translated a sense of urgency we didn't quite have.

Within an hour, the old fence was gone.

It was that rickety, yes - as D pointed out, to tear it down someone probably just had to sneeze in that direction. But we hadn't expected them to move quite so fast, and now we have nothing between us and three unpredictable (mostly neglected, sometimes even teased) pit bulls, except the cyclone fence cage for one (Damian), and chains from collars to trees for the other two (Blue and Kilo).

So D worked like a one-man demolition crew to clear away the big rocks and old cement-and-wire pond bed that had been along the back of the property.

The girls and I, meanwhile, played. R went to the county fair with friends and S and I met other friends for swimming and a picnic. I did move a few rocks before I left, but mostly, D sweated alone. Now he and the girls are crashed, and I'm feeling the panic and stress that is bound to come after 9 days away from the office. This is especially true because I'll be sitting in another department starting tomorrow, and I'm training a new employee, a friend of the company's owner for decades.

This is me acknowledging my anxiety, observing it, and now recognizing it for what it's worth - basically nothing. This too shall pass. And in the meantime, I have several hours of sleep to look forward to.

Snapshots

From New York:

On the second full day of the trip, Tuesday, I stop in a branch of my bank (on 5th Ave.) to see if I can get a temporary book of checks to use, since I'd brought bills to pay but no checks with which to pay them. While I wait my turn in line to talk to a teller (who eventually tells me they could not give me any checks), an interesting thing happens. The man who had been two places ahead of me in line is leaving, having finished his transaction, when the lady one place ahead of me says, "Hey, excuse me mister, but you've got something on your shirt." The man pauses, and looks down at his crisp white collared shirt. "On the back," she specifies. "You've got something on the back of your shirt. I think it's a cucaracha." As he walks past from me, turning like a dog after its tail to see if what she is saying is true, I catch sight of a good sized cockroach hanging out square in the middle of the back of his shirt. Another person in the line behind me flicks it off for him as he walked by, and out the door he goes, no doubt on his way to a high-paying executive-type job. Only in New York? I don't know, but it sets the tone for me, happening as it does my first morning in the Big Apple. (My research suggests it was a male Oriental Cockroach, but that probably doesn't matter to most of my reading audience, and in fact, I may have just lost some of you as an audience entirely by writing this.)

Day Three: I'm in the elevator of the Hilton, where we stayed, and I'm riding to the 17th floor with four construction workers, and I hear one say to the other, "Remember that rat that Johnnie saw, the big one that chased him?" A couple of the guys remember, and for the benefit of the other guy, the first speaker says, "Yeah, you know, that fricken' thing was THIS big," he gestures like a fisherman, and I assume he's including the rat's tail in the length, but even so, he's describing something akin to a ROUS from Princess Bride. The other guys laugh, and one says, "That's the one that went after him, right? Fricken' charged after him out of the room and up the stairs. I never seen him run so fast. That thing was huge." They all laugh. I imagine what kind of beast it would have to be to make one of these dirty, tattooed, muscled tough-guys run for his life. Another man adds, "Yeah, that was down in SOHO, wasn't it?" They all nod, laughing some more. Apparently it was. Within an hour, I'm in SOHO. I never see the rat that chased Johnnie, but I also avoid going into the type of apartment where such a rodent might be King.

In SOHO, my favorite part of New York, there are cafes and art galleries, bargain boutiques, cigar shops, Laundromats. It's a little like Berkeley East, but at the same time unlike anything I've seen. I liked New York very much, and I really liked SOHO (maybe especially because I never saw a rat the size of New Hampshire there). Now whether SOHO liked me is another matter. The high/low point was probably when I walked into the Franklin Bowles Gallery on West Broadway, wearing old tennis shoes and the same clothes I'd worn the day before, having walked in the sweltering heat for miles with sweat trickling down my back. To her credit, the woman managing the gallery at the time let me view the Matisse line drawings and even let me take a business card (which she delivered using the tip of her fingers and a very long extended arm). I didn't feel like I could even afford to ask how much the pieces went for, but I was pleased to have encountered them. It was like that in a couple other SOHO galleries, too. Like being an orphan at Christmas, or a gardener coming across an unexpected iris bloom out of season.

Teaser

I had fallen asleep (first on the floor, then the couch) just before the kids also went to bed. As a result, I'm still asleep. Asleep but blogging.

Do you know what a "yesterday joke" is? I was having it explained to me in a dream when D woke me up to get me to go to actual bed instead of the couch. A yesterday joke is one which has its punchline "delivered" the day before the joke is actually told. In my dream, this had everything to do with a billboard outside a church on a busy street where the minister would take a news headline or hot pop culture topic and find the scripture he needed to force-fit his message either for or against the subject at hand. But in general, I think the "yesterday joke" is something that requires more thought.

Tomorrow, stories from New York: (insert Ira Glass' voice here):
"Mister, there's something on your back," The Giant Rat of SOHO, and Seeing Matisse in Tennis Shoes.

NY Day 4 & home

This morning, instead of jogging, I slept in (until almost 8 - look out!) then walked down Park & Madison Avenues to Grand Central Station & took the subway to Chinatown. Had breakfast at Columbus Park, strolled through Chinatown & Little Italy & SOHO, then took the subway back to West Central Park & made my way back to the hotel from there.

The taxi ride to the airport, the flight home, and the drive home all went smoothly, and it's so nice to be back! It does feel like 12:30am a little bit, but since I stayed up until 2:15 EDT every night while I was in NY, this isn't so bad.

I expect to tell a few little travel tales on the blog tomorrow, when I should have some extra time (as I'm taking the day off work - whoo hoo!)

NY: Day 3.5

Thanks to a coworker (who now has this url so I have to publicly thank him), I now have a second way to access the internet: at the show's Cyber Cafe rather than the hotel's Business Center, where last night they wanted to charge me $10 for every 15 minutes that I was on the machine - but let me go without paying after I only spent 8 minutes writing.

The city: with city smells, city noises, fewer throngs marching along the sidewalks than I'd expected, more cabs then even the movies had prepared me to anticipate, and never a dull (or quiet) moment. The food here is really excellent, and the public transportation (a weakness of mine anyway), especially the subway, is amazingly cheap.

It's hot here, but not so hot and humid that it's not bearable - although I was pretty soaked by the time I finished my walk to the museum yesterday and to the WTC site and Battery Park the day before. Showering in the middle of the day, plus the way the shows events are broken up into multiple sessions, and the fact that I've stayed up to 2:15am for 3 nights in a row, all make it feel like I've been here for longer than I have. But at the same time, I'm already anxious that we'll have to leave tomorrow and I have barely scratched the surface of what there is to see in the way of galleries and museums here.

The shortcut (cheat) I've found is visiting the gift shops of the museums where I don't have time to actually see any exhibits. More on that strategy later...time for lunch and more Expo now!

NY: day 3

So the work part of this trip, the real reason I'm here, is going well. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that it's been very satisfying talking techs who are already savvy in general. It's great to tell them about what we do because they *get* it, and they understand the value of the service we offer. (And I'm not just writing this because of the one or two co-workers who read my blog.)

While I had a break in the Expo today, I walked (quickly) around Manhattan again - North, this time, along the Western side of Central Park to the Museum of Natural History and the Rose space Center, then across the park on 79th to the Guggenheim, which had a number of exhibits including Mapplethorpe. I HATE to keep this such a slap-dash entry again, but again, I'm up against a deadline & need to get back to meet my coworkers for dinner - this time in Little Italy.

I'm making other, off-blog notes about the trip, though. So I can go down memory lane and post in more detail when I have more time/internet access!

New York!

I hate to be brief here, because I have *so much* I want to write about! But the business center is closing at 9 and my colleagues are waiting for me to meet them for dinner now, so I may not make it back before I lose my internet access.

This town is hopping! I walked half the length of Manhattan today, saw: NY Public Library, The Empire State Building, The Flat Iron Building, NYU, some of Greenwich Village, some of SoHo and the edge of China Town, City Hall, the WTC site, and the statue of Liberty (in the distance - plus Ellis Island). Took two subway trains, and started the day with a short jog in part of Central Park.

Ho hum. So dull.

Much more tomorrow, including details! Hello to all from the "right coast."

Pre-trip blog

I'm going to head out to the airport in an hour or so. I'm pretty much packed, and I should be able to take care of the "pretty much" part in the next 30 minutes. Beatrice the rat is crawling around the room, which is not the same as the rat experience Josh recently had.

I should have internet access every day of my trip - I'll be in New York at an IBM Conference, for goodness' sake! So I should be able to blog about the whole experience. I suspect nights will be fine and mornings will be very, very hard. The 7-8am registration time they have at the conference will feel like 4-5am - even earlier than I normally get up. Yikes!

Packing for NY

It's 3am in New York. Or at least, nearly 3am. And even though it's "only" 11:48 here, I'm still up. Usually when I blog late it's after I've already slept an hour or two. Tonight, I've been up the whole time.

After S's very successful (and amazingly quiet and calm) birthday party at the Gymnastics facility, we had a couple of little girls hang out here at home until around 10 while their parents were at a work event. It was perfect - the four friends kept each other very well entertained while I did chores around the house in preparation for the business trip to New York.

I leave tomorrow morning, and I may even get to sleep tonight first! I've gone from being blase to being very excited about this trip. I mean, New York! I've been to big, famous cities all over the world, and New York is one place I never thought I'd visit. I don't know why

I was telling a coworker the other day that it's like how I never thought I'd learn French. Or touch type. Even though I love languages and love to write. Go figure. You never can tell what life will throw your way.

However, I'm trying to avoid the "you never can tell what life will throw your way" philosophy while packing. I'm trying to pack *so* light. Which means packing clever. And it's hard to be clever when it's 3am in the place you'll be within 20 hours.

*yawn*

Maybe I should go to bed now and wake up at 4am, which will be 7am EDT. And then I can sleep on the plane and just snore and drool on the people sitting next to me. Yeah, that should be very attractive.

Spiderman & Maribou

S loves to shop. We bought party favors today, then a bike for her birthday, then went clothes shopping for me (black pants for the NY trip), and then - even though it was so far past dinner time, it was almost bed time - she was very sad that we couldn't shop more.

S is having a Spider Man theme party tomorrow. Well, semi-Spidy, anyway. The invitations were Spiderman. The plates and tablecloth are Spiderman. The cake and decoration on top of the cake are Spiderman. But the party favors are little sheer pink drawstring purses with pink maribou trim, and pink maribou ponytail holders. All her choice.

I love that my kids know what they want and don't care whether it matches any social norm. I might hate that later, but for now, it's mostly harmless.

Tomorrow we pick up R from camp, and the sounds of S talking to herself and singing to herself and otherwise bouncing off the walls will be complimented again by the sounds of R turning the pages of whatever book she is devouring. It'll be nice to have her back.

Here's a Thought

For her birthday dinner, S asked that we go to Applebee's. At the table kitty-corner to us, in my direct line of sight, there was a family of three - mother, father, and son. The son was probably between two and a half and three years old, and very charming. He had a big round face and a very short hair cut, and a squat little body that still had just the right amount of baby fat. Even his slight squirminess was somehow endearing - maybe because he seemed happy, and his parents seemed happy - both with one another and with him. He reminded me of a healthy little English tyke from some other era. His dad was a round-faced man who wore a baseball cap, and his mom was a tidy brunette with a spring green sweater and short nails neatly painted dark pink. While the three of us waited for our food, and then ate, and chatted amiably or teased each other (more gently in a restaurant than we usually do at home, where the dinner-table silliness can be loud), this other little family waited, and then ate and chatted with one another.

Sometimes the cute little boy gave S significant looks, and obviously, I did my share of glancing their way, since they were right in front of me, as it were. But for the most part, we were just two random families having a random meal at the same time in the same restaurant.

Except I thought about how this little boy is only about three years younger than S, and for all I know, sixteen or seventeen years from now, he and she might randomly meet, fall in love, introduce each other to each other's families, marry, and live happily ever after. Or, just as likely, break one another's hearts. And would I remember that I'd seen them somewhere, once? Would the way his mother tilts her head when she laughs ring a distant bell in my memory? Would his father put on a baseball cap at a family barbecue and suddenly transport my mind back to tonight's dinner?

No. Almost certainly, I'd never recognize then this "first sighting," would have absolutely no idea that we'd ever seen one another before. And how often does this happen to all of us? Life is full of this synchronicity, connectivity in the guise of coincidence. And is it happenstance? Or random but not without meaning, as the movie The Happenstance suggests?

I've written this because it will give me a link where memory would not, should we meet these folks again. They were from out of town, staying in a hotel - I know because they saw other folks, also from out of town, at the table behind ours. Here, from what I could gather, for drag racing at the Infineon. The woman introduced herself to someone as "Tara." So I have a name, something besides the other characteristics to go on, if, for example, we see one another again half a lifetime from now. I have a name, and I have this blog entry. And now, you do too.

Private party

Suzanne makes an interesting point about her blogging expectations and about blog rules. I can't say I'm always vague about work, and I can't say that I don't hurt anyone's feelings in my blog. Is that why I don't make this site available to the general public?

No, I actually keep it private for two reasons: one, I don't think anything I have to say is all that interesting to total strangers. And two, I don't know that I want to open up my life and angst and petty or personal triumphs and defeats for the whole world even if some people did find it interesting. Does this make me less of a writer? Or just a more private writer?

For now, I am happy to be linked to by some very fine blogs and leave it at that.

I do have short-term goals for improving the blog. (Blogging daily doesn't necessarily mean blogging well, so I don't consider that an improvement.) I'd like to expand the blog by adding more links to more sites and blogs that are important or interesting to me and possibly to my few readers. And I'd like incorporate some kind of "currently reading" and "just finished reading" column like Suzanne and others have.

And I'd like to post more pictures. It makes a blog more interesting, I think. Beyond that, who knows? There's plenty of room for improvement, though, and that's a good problem to have.

Be Still and Know

I just finished The Five People You Meet in Heaven - a quick read, even for me. It's all about how seemingly insignificant events in our lives have a greater meaning than we can imagine. It is sometimes too preachy for my taste, but it makes you consider the effect of your actions on earth in the same way a good production of A Christmas Carol might.

It isn't necessarily a Christian heaven that Albom describes. There is no mention of Jesus, and apart from a single word, no voice of God clearly spelled out that I recall.

I believe those who say that God can best be heard in silence. And I have not yet started to practice listening to the silence between sounds - a listening that is so crucial to meditation and prayer. ("Crucial," itself, being a word related to that for the "Cross.") But S, who hasn't been to church in almost nine months, told me Sunday that she has heard God speak to her.

She always seems to reveal these big things while I am driving somewhere and she's sitting behind me in her carseat. I'm then forced to pay attention to the road while wondering what it means when she says, "Once, I heard a voice say 'I am God.'"

In this case, after I'd gotten clarification (I'd briefly thought she'd meant the voice was saying she was God), I told my daughter how great it was that she could hear that voice, and that she must have heard it when she was being very quiet. "Oh no," she said. "I hear God talk to me all the time, even when I'm being noisy."

Depending on your point of view, this is either just a kid being a kid, or the coolest thing imaginable, or I should start saving now for one of the better hospitals - something with nicely mown lawns and new card tables in the Day Room.

"What else does God say to you?" I asked.

"Well, once he said, 'You are the beloved child of me.'"

"I agree."

"And another time, he said, 'You are my daughter.'"

"Also true."

The fact that the conversation did not deteriorate into her reporting that God had said, "You parents should get you lots of Spiderman toys for your birthday." gives me hope in the sacred nature of her experience.

Coincidently, after finishing the Albom book, I opened the below poem in my in box. It's by Ellen Bass, who led the retreat I'd attended.



ASKING DIRECTIONS IN PARIS


Où est le Boulevard Saint Michel?
You pronounce the question carefully.
And when the native stops,
shifting her small sack of groceries,
lifting her manicured hand,
you feel a flicker of accomplishment.
But beyond that, all clarity
dissolves, for the woman
in the expensive shoes
and suit exactly the soft gray
of clouds above the cathedral, does not say
to the right, to the left, straight ahead,
phrases you memorized from tapes
as you drove around your home town
or mumbled into a pocket Berlitz on the plane,
but relays something wholly unintelligible,
some version of: On the corner
he is a shop of jewels in a fountain
and the hotel arrives on short feet.
You listen hard, nodding,
as though your pleasant
disposition, your willingness
to go wherever she tells you,
will make her next words pop up
from this ocean of sound, somewhat
the way a dog hears its name
and the coveted syllable walk.
If you’re brave enough, or very nervous,
you may even admit you don’t understand.
And though evening's coming on and
her family’s waiting, her husband lighting
another Gaulois, the children setting the table,
she repeats it all again, with another
gesture of her lovely hand, from which you glean
no more than you did the first time.
And as you thank her profusely
and set off full of doubt and groundless hope,
you think this must be how it is
with destiny—God explaining
and explaining what you must do,
even willing to hold up dinner for it,
and all you can make out is a few
unconnected phrases, a word or two, a wave
in what you pray is the right direction.

Parenting the only child

Since S is without her sister this week, and it's her birthday this week, she's reveling in the attention. And she's so full of energy, I don't know if I can make it until Friday. She is literally bouncing off the wall. (I swear I have not fed her crack, though. Honest.) I've contained her in the tub for a little while, but she's alternately singing to herself, having conversations with rubber duckies and a naked Ariel doll, and shouting, "MOM-MEEEE! When are you going to come PLAY with me?!"

I did just speak to a Kaiser advice nurse, encouraged (but not quite dared) by Josh & Julia to do so. Of course, my throat is finally better today, so I'm left to think it really was viral, and I'm over it -- or it was strep, and I think I've beaten it but really it can and will come back any minute now and wreak havoc on my organs, or it was strep and I really have beaten it without antibiotics, if that's possible. The advice nurse must have thought I was crazy because I had half the symptoms of a cold or allergies and half the symptoms of something worse I'd made up in my spare time. I threw in Fifth's Disease, pink eye, and the half marathon just to confuse her. But then again, she probably couldn't fully concentrate on what I was saying anyway because she was too busy reading the section of my file that's flagged "hypochondriac" She eventually used a clever ploy to get me off the phone and stop my "But I don't know if I'm really sick" whining : she made me an appointment for Dr. I-Will-Shame-You-If-You-Are-Late for tomorrow at noon. If I wake up feeling better (please please) then I'll cancel the appointment. If I wake up still with a sore throat, I'll at least go in for a culture. We could all use a little culture now and then.

Summer Camp

Today R went off to camp for the week. This place isn't the same without her and her energy, but I know she'll have a great time. It's a Christian Camp, full of Presbyterian kids and counselors. The two counselors for her cabin seem nice - one has a rainbow dyed in her hair and many piercings in her ears.

This week, while R is gone, S will turn 6, and I'll have a particularly challenging week at work, with a visit from a drive manufacturer examining our facilities, and preparation for an upcoming trip to NY for a trade show and an upcoming move to sit in another room in the building.

The neighbor that lives behind us has three pit bulls, one of which has been barking non-stop for hours: the same 4-beat bark pattern over and over again. We've opted to wait and call Animal Control in the morning instead of the Police tonight. D is teasing me for blogging this. He says, "Are you going to blog the event number, too?" No.

But I did want to say that the more exposure I have to other people's dogs and other people's marriages, the better mine look by comparison. That sounds petty, but I don't mean it to. I'm just saying that I'm grateful for what I have.

Hot hot hot

I don't know whether it's the heat or the sore throat or both, but I feel like I've been in a stupor all day. D worked hard on the landscaping in the 200 degree weather, and I took S to dance, took R to riding, then napped for a couple of hours while they had play dates in the afternoon. I woke feeling no better for the sleep, picked up the girls, managed dinner, then went to bed early - only to get up and watch some of Obelix and Asterix in French with D. It's a very silly movie, and I just wish my French were good enough that I could catch the quickly-delivered lines.

I think I'll have to give in and call the dr tomorrow about my throat. I have to brace myself to swallow by the end of each day, and this has been going on for a week. My current home remedies haven't done the trick, and frankly, it's very demoralizing not feeling well. How do people with chronic pain or illness do it? I'm amazed by the courage required.

TGIF

It is nice to reach a Friday and be home and know that I don't have to get up and drive for six hours or run 13 miles. The girls have a friend staying overnight and they're just in that giggly pre-sleep stage now (up late!) while I wind down for the day.

No exciting news to report here, apart from the fact that I now suspect I might have strep again, perhaps as a secondary crud after the pink eye. But still! hope springs eternal that I can beat the bug with a good night's sleep instead of anitbiotics. A girl can hope, right?

Gotta check on the kids, now. Good night, all. Or for those of you reading this in the a.m. - good morning!

In the "Could Be Worse" category

Clare has a funny story about how tricky life can be when you're single-parenting a two year old (or, in her case, two) while your husband is in El Salvador with a group of teenagers on an immersion trip.

Why should I complain if my car is dirty? At least I have a car, and a new one at that. Think of all those people who don't!

Sure, I don't agree with the current administration's US Foreign Policy (to put it mildly), but at least I live in a country where I'm allowed to vote. Not every country has elections, and of those that do, women don't always have a voice.

Maybe I grumble about having to clean house, but at least my family has a roof over its head. We could be homeless!

And who am I to gripe about my weight? I have my health. True, my throat has been sore for 5 days straight, but hey! at least I have a throat. Think of all those people who have to make do without.

Uh.

Going back to bed, now....

The importance of finding the right man & mailbox

Around the household, there are some sniffles tonight because R has finished reading the Half-Blood Prince. "It's a good book, but it's so sad," she says. If you've read it, you'll know what I mean.

Earlier today, S told me, "When it's time for me to get married, I'm going to go down the line of boys and I'm going ask each one, 'What do you do for your work?' and if any of them say he kills things for his work, then I'm not going to marry him." I thought this showed a remarkable ability to discriminate for one so young.

Later, at dinner, R said, "As for me, when it comes to getting married, I'm going to draw the line at...at..."

While she searched for the right words, I suggested, "Involuntary manslaughter?"

But it turns out her sticking point was that she would not want to marry anyone who, say, leaves every Saturday for work in Los Angeles and doesn't come back until the next Thursday or something.

Picky, picky, picky.

Below are a couple of shots of the little Shinto temple D built while we were gone last week. I guess the trick now is to wait for the spirits to come live there. I'm woefully behind in my Shinto studies, however, so I could be wrong. But having written that, another thought occurs to me. It's possible that one of our mailmen might mistake the temple for a new mail box and put our "Last Chance!" credit card offers and Discover Magazines there. Then no spirit worth his/her ethereal salt will want to inhabit the little place.

I only worry about this because I bet that a very unusual mailbox at our address wouldn't surprise the postmen. After all, our current mail box is a BRASS SADDLE BAG that says "The Patrascu" on it. Not "The Patrascu's" or just "Patrascu," but "The Patrascu" as though the One and Only Patrascu lives here. This odd naming convention is thanks either to my French mother-in-law's incomplete grasp of English grammar, or a typo at the BRASS SADDLE BAG company that she didn't catch or didn't think mattered. We may never resolve that mystery, nor the mystery of why it is that D's mom insists on giving us the kind of gifts (like blinds or flatware or mailboxes) that are a part of everyday life in a home, and are therefore best left to the very specific tastes of the people who will have to live with them every day.

I am an ungrateful wretch, but not so bad that I can do what someone once suggested, which was to "lose" the saddle bag and then say to my mother-in-law, "Can you believe it? Somebody stole our mailbox!" Admittedly, I did practice the phrase several times, "Somebody stole our mailbox!" but where there should have been a note of incredulity in my voice, even I detected only glee.

The hired help has the night off

The hired help, Responsibility and Creativity, are taking the night off.

That's right, the usual suspects who contribute to the running of the place are nowhere to be found.

(Of course, Creativity keeps herself either scarce or half-baked anyway, but even Responsibility, who is usually so loud, bossy, and uppity, is also MIA.)

The relief staff today are Lassitude for the swing shift and Entropy for the graveyard. And really, neither can be bothered to post more than this brief announcement. And that's only because HR made them do it.

Two by two

I love to see the Canada Geese that pass through this part of California during their migrations. I always look anxiously to see that each has its mate, and am sorry for any that don't. (If three travel together, I wonder about how well that arrangement is working out for them.)

I love the call of the geese, and the way they move once they are in the air, as though they proceed ahead just by the force of the will of their long necks.


The girls' daycare provider spent last week at a workshop about cultivating peace, and part of the curriculum was poetry, including this one. I keep re-reading the first few lines.


By Mary Oliver:

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Cheat

Here's my results from an x-man quiz. Thanks to Josh for the idea. I'm posting it because I'd had it around to post for a while, and I'm plum wiped out from the drive home from Phoenix, too little sleep last night, and the race (which by the way, went well). More details tomorrow, trivial fun today:

You scored as Jean Grey. Jean Grey is likely the most powerful X-Man. She loves Cyclops very much but she has a soft spot for Wolverine. She's psychic so she can sense how others are feeling and tries to help them. She also has to control her amazing powers or the malevolent Phoenix entity could take control of her and wreak havoc. Powers: Telekinetic, Telepathic Jean Grey 85% Rogue 75% Storm 70% Cyclops 55% Wolverine 50% Nightcrawler 50% Beast 45% Emma Frost 40% Colossus 25% Gambit 25% Iceman 5% Most Comprehensive X-Men Personality Quiz created with QuizFarm.com

Back home again

It's so good to be home again, even though Paradise has surprised me again by requiring more attention and upkeep that one would expect should be necessary.

D made an incredibly beautiful Shinto shrine out of redwood while we were out of town. I'll request a photo and post it. But I also think [hint, hint D] that he should start his own blog site and document all his cool projects and creations that way.

I'm off in search of a good late pre-race meal and then a good pre-race sleep before the half marathon tomorrow morning. I have to pick up my registration packet between 5:15-6:00 am, and it takes about 40 minutes to get there.

My focus will be on not walking at all, but just enjoying every step. It's a gorgeous route through Sonoma county vineyards with lots of company and lots of water and Cytomax stops, so I should be able to enjoy it.

And then later in the morning, I expect to be writing with the writer's group gals at the Box.

Have I mentioned that it's good to be home again?

Ready to head home

Well, we're not really ready. I could stay here for a good long time, but I guess if I wait any later, I'll be going straight from Phoenix to the Wine Country Half Marathon Sunday morning.

It's be so nice to enjoy the warm (ha!) weather, and swim, and catch up with friends and family. I may spend time on the road home thinking about resuming day-to-day life, but for now, the time away has been markedly un-meditative in that area.

It's not likely I'll find a hotel to stay in with internet access tonight, so this is the blog entry for the day.

Special thanks to Clare for having us!!

Up too late, but worth it

So Clare and I will be hating life when the kids wake up at 6am and we are forced to grope our exhausted way to the coffee maker or (as C. suggested) just bonk them on the heads to make them go back to sleep.

But what would a good visit with an old friend be without staying up too late chatting about everything under the sun?

I had planned to go for a short run before 7am. That is seeming less likely every passing second. I also will be taking the car to a local shop for an oil change before our (estimated) 800 mile drive home tomorrow. Then my half-sister and the cousins are coming over for a swim. We had really nice dinner together tonight at Applebee's - 3 moms, 6 kids and 2 toddlers. The teenage boy at the front desk said to me, "Wow. You sure are brave, taking so many kids out in public."

I wasn't sure whether to say, "Hey - don't you know who you're talking about? We're super Mammas, here" or, "What? Do you think kids are raised in a box? Ya hafta go out into public with them sometimes, you know..."

Anyway, I'm fuzzy around the edges, and not just from the eye (which is better), so I'm signing out...

Not exactly catching the red-eye out of town....

Instead, I've managed to catch Pink Eye before coming to Phoenix. I no sooner got here and got settled in at Clare's wonderful big house (one hundred thirteen degrees outside, according to my car's thermometer) then I was gone again, leaving her with 5 children between the ages of 2 and 10 so I could go to an urgent care clinic 20 minutes away to get my eye checked - in case (as the California advice nurse had suggested) I had a scratched cornea. So far, it's only one eye that's affected. I'm just hoping no one else gets this.

In the meantime, my right eye is constantly watering, as if its heard a very sad story that my left eye missed out on. And I'm washing my hand after every wipe, and using the drops I got at the clinic.

I hope to see one of my half-sisters and her family at least once while we're here - maybe tomorrow evening and again Friday morning. I mean, "hope to see" as in I-look-forward-to-visiting-with-them. Not "hope to see" as in if-I-still-have-any-vision-left.

Speaking of vision, though, it does always do me SO MUCH GOOD and gives me so much perspective when I spend time with Clare. This would be true even if she didn't have this very blog as her Home Page. (Can you imagine?!) Of course, maybe she always puts her houseguest's blog site as her Home Page, just to make the guest feel like a valued part of society.

(Good strategy, Clare.)

I wrote a pre-poem in the Pizza Hut in Blythe today. Maybe I can shape it together in the next day or so...

Desperate times

Only faced with the prospect of either:

a: breaking my blogging streak, or
b: forcing my mother to lie to the front desk staff at the clubhouse and say that I had to show her something on the internet and therefore could go with her to use the "residents only" computer

would lead me to install a trial version of AOL on my iBook.

Blech. Pttuuueey! This is me spitting the bad taste of AOL out of my mouth. I just don't care for the service. Sorry if that offends any reader. It's just so invasive and busy with intrusive icons and cumbersome, to my thinking.

But this way, I have access via modem and the Mac using Mom's AOL account so I can blog.

The day was beautiful here. It was supposed to be up to 102 degrees, but I don't know that it reached that high. We had breakfast out, we shopped at a huge, loud mall, we came back and had "quiet time" (S and I slept, a bit), then we swam until dusk.

It's getting darker now, but the air outside is the perfect temperature.

S went from being afraid to leave the steps in the pool to throwing herself headlong into the water to swim a few strokes, over and over again. Watching her figure it out made me so proud. I felt like I was watching her learn to walk all over again. There aren't too many of those physical achievement milestones left for either daughter, I think. Learning to ride a bike, for S. Learning to drive, I suppose. But that seems not such a big effort of coordination, somehow. Maybe it's because by then, they're old enough to apply reasoning skills and other learned things to what they're doing.

I'm enjoying watching her go underwater again and again, each time more excited and pleased with herself than the last. What if we all tackled life's challenges that way?

Taken advantage of the opportunities

My mother's computer is dead (corrupt OS, I think, and she doesn't have a Windows disk for me to use to boot or reload). So I'm at my sister's, trying to grab a minute or two to write while everyone is in the other room, not looking. I doubt they'd care much about this blog, but on the other hand, they might be standing over my shoulder, watching me type in a matter of seconds. And that can be intimidating.

It's hot down here, but not as hot as Phoenix will be. We've been just relaxing. Swimming from noon to two (like crazy tourists, spending the hottest part of the day outside). Lots of good food (including the Cosmopolitan I had last night which meant I had my sister's boyfriend drive the girls and me home). We're trying to decide where to eat out tonight; tomorrow, we'll probably shop. Oh yeah, life is hard.

Poetry starting to sneak in around the edges. I'm grateful.

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!