Orlando Day 2

Here I am up past midnight again. Although I did sleep until 8:30 this morning and although theoretically I have a chance to get more than 8 hours of sleep at some point in this trip, it's not looking likely if I also try to fit in jogs.

The trade show stayed constant but not super busy today. It seems like we're making good connections, leading a lot of people our way. I expect there will be a few recoveries out of it, anyway.

Orlando strikes me as a lot like Vegas must be like, although I haven't been to Vegas as an adult, and even when I was there in my pre-adult days, it was only to drive through. There are plenty of amusements here for adults and kids, but that's really all that it's about, apart from the convention center. Without that tourist industry, I highly doubt the city would exist. I could confirm this online somewhere, I'm sure, but for now, it's just based on my Californian observations.

Dinner at a great sushi restaurant tonight (voted 4th best sushi restaurant in the country by Zagat last year, apparently), followed by chocolate - two candy bar-type treats, in fact. So much for low-carb dieting. But at least it will encourage me to run in the morning. I run to eat and eat to run. The day I truly eat fewer calories and exercise more and drink lots of water and get enough sleep is the day I can expect to drop a dress size. Until then, I can only accept where I am in the process, even if it's at the sputtering pre-enlightenment stage.

R feeding the giraffe two days and several hundred years ago.

Orlando day 1

I was wrong about getting only 4 hours of sleep last night.
I actually got 2 hours of sleep.

I went to bed at 1am and got up at 3:15am.
We left Petaluma a little after 4am, and were in Orlando around 4:30pm local time.

But it's been a good day. I do really enjoy flying, and the flights went very smoothly. The skies were clear and the view beautiful for the most pat. I dozed on both legs of the journey (otherwise, I think I would have vomited by now). The hotel room is wonderful, and the show already has impressed me with the crowd, and tonight was just an opening reception. Tomorrow will be a long day of work, I expect.

What I've seen of Orlando so far:
the airport
the convention center
the hotel
the Crab House restaurant, where we had dinner at around 9:45pm, and where we stayed to shut the place down, finally buying ridiculously silly felt crab hats that we all wore on our walk back to the hotel room. Dinner was the first meal of the day, because I do not count the snacks on the plane.

Things are starting to feel a bit surreal. So I'm going to hit the hay now and try to get up early enough for a run and for the complimentary hotel breakfast. I'm hoping I won't feel as dazed after some sound sleep.

Running with Giraffes

The 5k fun run this morning went well. We all managed to get out the door at half past ridiculous and arrived at the race site on time. The race itself actually started a half hour late, but while we waited, we got to see lemurs, a hornbill, giraffes, gazelle, Scimitar horned oryx, and other wildlife.

D & S walked it and R & I ran. Actually, R sprinted then walked then sprinted then walked while I jogged, and we ended up crossing the finish line at about the same time. During the few hours that I sleep tonight (before leaving at 4am for Orlando), I may have nightmares about the horribly steep rocky hill and the narrow trail that we all scrambled up during the first mile of the race. Or maybe instead I'll have happy dreams about the fact that I got to actually touch a giraffe's nose, after the race, when we were feeding leaves to a baby giraffe. Or maybe (and this is looking frighteningly likely) I will only be in bed for 4 hours and so won't have time to dream at all!

Because we'd gone so long without construction

Worker Ant Husband Starts New Project

D has torn down the fence between us and the new (not-yet-moved-in) neighbors. He's also put in the first of 3 fence posts for the new fence, which will be tall and strong and magnificent.

We're not sure when the other neighbors will move in. Allegedly, the deal might have fallen through because they couldn't get the financing. But this is coming from D who heard it from a neighbor who heard it from the wife of the older brother of the previous neighbor. So it is just a rumor at this point.

At any rate, there's now a pile of old fence in the middle of the backyard waiting to go to the dump, and D is wiped out from digging fence post holes in the adobe. Too bad, too, because in just 10 hours, we'll be doing a 5K (as a family!) through a nearby zoo, Safari West. I'll report back on how we all survive it tomorrow, somewhere in the middle of my preparations for going to Orlando for a few days on business.

Roller skating and music

The girls and I went roller skating after school. I'm not a great skater, but I get by. I like the physical movement of about rolling along, getting lost in the beat and tune of the latest music, even though there's something socially depressing about knowing that the songs I'm hearing, which I've never heard before, are songs the kids all know. Does this mean I need to change the radio stations I listen to, to be able to keep up with the world my kids are growing up in? Or should I stick to NPR and the local "alternative" station with its folk and bluegrass and lesser-known artists, so that I can expand their world? I realize that there's a HUGE world of songs out there available to be downloaded, too, but don't own an iPod. More alarming to some people, I'm sure, is the fact that I wouldn't even know what to put on an iPod if I had one. I just don't listen to that much music that often. I love some songs, and like music on car trips or when cleaning the house or as background in a book store, but I don't have music as a constant in my day.

Here are the extremes I compare myself to, however. As far as I can remember, my father flat out never listened to music, and in fact I do remember him saying he didn't like music. I mean, in general. At all. Have you ever met anyone else who didn't like music, at all? Hmm. My husband, on the other hand, listens to music all day and owns hundreds of CDs (mostly sound tracks). He suffers from tinnitus, and finds the music a good distraction from that. But besides that, he's very musical. He has a great ear - so my violin practicing is very painful - and he can whistle songs wonderfully when he wants to. So music is very important to him, and wasn't at all important to my father, and is fairly important to me. It will be interesting to see what happens with the girls. So far, their exposure to D's tastes and my own means they can tell John Williams from Danny Elfman, and the theme from Fresh Air from that of Car Talk. But I'm guessing they'll find their own musical way, and it'll be something completely different.

Back up to speed

Well, after more hours than I care to admit, I've resolved the virus issue on my drive. Part of the problem was that the virus (adware junk that the latest Norton didn't protect against and couldn't remove) so degraded system performance by hijacking resources that it took forever to even download and run the fixit tools I needed (thanks HijackThis!) I also installed SpyWare Blaster & Spybot Search & Destroy. The system is now back up to speed & better protected against spyware and adware. And I got to play with command lines to boot.

I miss DOS.
I miss vi editor.
But I also know there's no stopping the GUI march of Progress.

Noisy hard drive?

As I said in my comment reply to Max, "Where have I heard that story before?"

I did the math.

For 5.5 years, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, I talked to an average of 40 people a day who needed data recovery. About half of them had hard drives that made unusual noises. (Maybe more than that, but I'll be conservative here.)

I took 3 months off when S was born.
I spent another 3 months working half time.

For the last 3 years in my new role at work, I've spoken to an average of 20 people a day who needed recovery (though this number is ramping up daily), and I'd say more than half of them - probably 15 of 20 - had at least one drive (in a RAID/NAS array/device) that made bad noises.

I've taken about 21 weeks of vacation/personal time apart from maternity leave in the last 8.5 years. Add to that another (on average) 7 days of paid holidays per year.

So if I'm doing this right:
(20 people a day x 20 workdays a month x 12 months a year x 5.5 years) + (15 people a day x 20 workdays a month x 12 months a year x 3 years)

less
(20 people a day x 5 days a week x 21 weeks personal time off) + (20 people a day x 7 days a year x 8.5 years holidays) + (20 people a day x 20 workdays a month x 3 months maternity leave) + (10 people a day x 20 workdays a month x 3 months for the half-time)

Which means I've talked to about 32,110 people who have a story about a noisy drive.

And I'm just one person answering the phone at our company, and we're just one company (the best, true, but just one) that does data recovery, and only the people who know about data recovery as an option or who care enough about their data to look into it call us.

Considering all the hard drives out there, it's not as though they're really failing left and right. But a drive is, as I've said one or two (thousand) times, a "man made object with parts that are microns from one another moving very, very fast." And it's subject to failure just like any machine.


Back up your files.

Before you become another part of my crazy middle-of-the night statistics.


(Apologies to those of you who have already had to go through the horrific experience of data loss. I didn't mean to make you revisit your pain.)

Blessings great and small

While I remove a virus from my PC, I'm grateful to have the Mac to post on. I have to admit that the main reason I use the PC anyway is not a love for Windows. Instead, it's that our iMac (the graphite version, which seemed so cool at the time) is friggin' loud. I'm pretty sure it's just the fan, and am also pretty sure I could fix it. So really, I shouldn't complain. But even the keyboard is especially clunky, and liable to awaken children sleeping one room away.

We're hoping to get a new Mac soon (but *don't* tell our current one, or it's bound to crash). Maybe a sexy G5, if we can afford it. For now, though, what had seemed so snazzy is now old faithful, the reliable workhorse.

I really am asking for it, aren't I?

But enough about the small blessing.

The great blessing is my birth mom whose birthday is today. Having to spend it in the hospital is *so* not okay, but I thank God she's still around to celebrate. Here's to continued recovery!

Ghost story

So, as Halloween approaches, I find myself writing a Ghost story.

One of our family "legends" is that when I was young - perhaps as young as three, and certainly no older than five - my parents went to visit friends or relatives and sent me off to play in another part of the house. The adults hadn't been chatting long before they heard a pattern of banging sounds and short shrieks coming from my general direction.

When my mother went to investigate, she found that I had been stepping into a closet, shutting the door behind me, and standing there until a primal fear of the dark or my hyperactive imagination (or both) had built up enough that I was terrified. I would then scream and slam the door of the closet open again. I was doing this over and over again.

When my mother asked, "What on earth are you doing?" my answer had been, "I'm scaring myself."

By the time I was around 10, having suffered plenty of nightmares and anxieties thanks to my imagination, the fear thing had lost most of its glamour, and to this day, I seldom intentionally chose scary movies to watch or books to read (Donnie Darko was an exception).

But I'm enjoying writing this story all the same. We'll see what comes of it. Maybe if it unsettles me, it'll unsettle others. One can only hope.

Time enough to write

But did I write? No. The girls played so well together today, making up games & talking about fairies and generally keeping themselves very entertained. But I did chores - including removing a desk from the office, shifting its contents to a box, then moving a bookshelf and all its contents to the desk's spot. (The desk, which I got when I was 10 but am no longer attached to, was put on the sidewalk with a sign that said "FREE" and disappeared by mid-day.)

I could say that if I'd sat down to work on my story, the spell would have been broken, and the kids would have immediately been asking for me. But that's just based on past history, and is not a known fact.

I did, at least, get a little writing done at the Box with Suzanne. And I have about 20 minutes more tonight that I *could* use to write. So there's hope.

My birth mother is still doing all right, as far as I know. I'm going to try a call again in the morning.

All better with the world

My birth mother is out of ICU and in her own room. Thanks to all for your kind thoughts and well-wishes and prayers - I believe that made a difference! She and I had a great conversation this evening. I was afraid I had worn her out by keeping her on the phone for too long, but my half-sister J. told me that earlier in the day, they'd had her laughing so hard, they were afraid she'd have another brain clot and need another surgery. Actually, the problem was a hematoma that they had to drain. We're so glad she seems to be back on the slow but steady road to recovery. I tell you, I think I come from a line of very tough women, and I'm so glad. Not so much for myself in this case, but for her. So glad.

The difficulty of distance

So my birth mother is in ICU three states away, recovering from surgery. The surgery was for bleeding in her brain she suffered after having been in a car accident on Saturday that she and her husband had thought until a few days ago had left them with only bruises and a totaled SUV. (Thank God they had the new vehicle - it was a semi that hit them.)

And all I can do at this point is pray for her and the family that is there with her, and for the medical staff taking care of her. Half the people who might read this blog (and she is, I think, one of the most constant of my readers) already know all this. My thoughts are with them, with you. Here's a hope that you sleep well tonight and awaken feeling better than you do now. I may not be there in body, but I'm as present as I can be in spirit.

Spider

spider

legs finer than a
newborn's eyelash
you
rap-
pel
on
in-
vis-
ible
silk
backlit by the screen
on which these words appear
your body would fit in a 12-pt Palatino
8
with room to spare
you are gone before I can type my name





August, 2000

Read This!

Inside Job by Connie Willis.

I adore Connie Willis' fiction. I mean, adore it. Her latest book is a quick read novella that is just nothing but completely satisfying. So incredibly fun, especially if you like light but brilliant speculative fiction stories.

In terms of rating, I give it, like, a gazillion hundred million stars.

You may not enjoy it quite as much.

How's your Italian?

I didn't see Life is Beautiful, but I've heard nothing but good things about it.
The same director, Roberto Benigni, has a film coming out next week in Italy. It's La Tigre e la Neve (The Tiger and the Snow).

Why do I care? Not because it's a foreign film from a reputable director and actor who plays a poet in post-war Iraq. It apparently didn't do well in a screening this week, anyway. No, I care, and I'll see this movie, for the same reason I saw Rollerball. Because it also stars Jean Reno. A French actor whose parents were Spanish and who was born in Morocco, here playing an Iraqi poet. In an Italian film.

Why not? I'm pathetic. But at least I admit it.

Blip

Perhaps you missed the fact that I wrote 10/3/2005?

Perhaps your computer has experienced a hiccup or blip of some kind, and just didn't read this post that I posted 10/3/2005? Or...a router was down somewhere and so there was a delay in you seeing an updated setdownthis page.

Yes, that's it.

I'm sure that's all it was.

Amazing what a full night's sleep and a couple of encouraging comments can do for one. Truly amazing.

Why, exactly?

...am I posting every day, when most days I resent or dread doing it?

Strike that.

Make it *every* day I resent or dread doing this.

So either I'm going to change my feelings about this, or intentions, or execution, or *something* - or I'm going to stop doing it, regardless of whether I'm two months away from the pre-determined "one year" goal.

I've whined about this before.

Which is, actually, pretty much my point.

So we'll see what happens.

Old Enough for Hogwarts

R is eleven years old today.
(Kate may recognize the sweater.)












...

SCA

The field across from the girls' school, because it's technically part of the Fairgrounds property, is often the venue for things like dog shoes and smaller circuses that come to town. But yesterday, when I was picking up R from school, and I saw the field of tents that had sprung up like some sort of slap-dash medieval village, I immediately thought, "It must be the SCA."

SCA, for those of you who don't know it, stands for "The Society for Creative Anachronism, Inc." In case you don't want to go to their web site and therefore be either completely converted and HAVE TO JOIN NOW! or be completely dismayed at how people can get TOTALLY LOST IN A FANTASY WORLD, here's the blurb about SCA from their home page:

"The SCA is an international organization dedicated to researching and re-creating the arts and skills of pre-17th-century Europe. Our "Known World" consists of 18 kingdoms, with over 30,000 members residing in countries around the world. Members, dressed in clothing of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, attend events which may feature tournaments, arts exhibits, classes, workshops, dancing, feasts, and more. Our "royalty" hold courts at which they recognize and honor members for their contributions to the group."

The short-hand version of this is that there are over 30,000 people in the world playing dress up who aren't afraid to admit it. These same people are also, many of them, avid history buffs and craftsmen. Some of them couldn't hold down a steady job if their lives depended on it, and others are probably doctors and lawyers and auto mechanics and physicists in their spare time. It's probably not much different from the rest of society as a whole, except for their collective capacity for make-believe.

This is another "road not taken" for me. I could be part of the West Kingdom! I could be participating in the Crown Event this weekend, a tournament to decide the next King and Queen! I'm not being sarcastic. I'm serious, here.

Does this scare you? Or, like me, are you sighing, "Ah! I too, have felt that longing to be fully part of a subculture that lets you talk funny, play a role, sleep outside, and partake of interpersonal melodramas that no one else could possibly understand?"

Yes, I'm completely generalizing and probably missing parts of the big pictures. Still, I wonder how many people work in professions with mysterious work-related vocabulary, or pretend to be what they're not in life, or go camping, or suffer from complicated flawed relationships simply because they're fulfilling the need for Drama in their lives. Ok, maybe not the camping part. But the rest? It could be SCA or it could be life. Or, for 30,000 people at least, it could be both.

A much better day

Today I felt like I was able to work through so much - not only to shake the shame and patch up things at work, even improve the situation there (with only one or two other minor flare ups) - and the rest of the taking-care-of-the-kids afternoon, evening & night has gone fairly smoothly too.

D. is at the girls' school again tonight, finishing the texture on the walls for the Kindergarten classroom's bathrooms. He's worked I don't know how many full days at the machine shop followed by hours and hours at the school, now. Poor broken man. (He also picked the wrong week to stop drinking beer.)

R turns 11 on Saturday & will have a party Sunday. On less than a week's notice, all but two or three of her classmates will be attending her party. Sure, it's a small class, but I told R that I thought that spoke of how well she is liked in the class. I didn't say, "Good for you, you're popular!" but I did point out that they're looking forward to celebrating her special day. Considering she's more than once given the exact same, "I don't have any friends at all, no one likes me," speech that I gave at her age (and maybe still give in a slightly modified form - or live trying to avoid having to give), I figured it wouldn't hurt for her to see that she's not the pariah that on bad days she feels she must be.

And because R loves her teacher ("Miss J"), she invited her as well. And just to encourage the instructress to join in the festivities, R apparently told her, "Miss J, If you don't come to my party, I won't pay attention in class."

As you can imagine, when I heard this story from R (later corroborated by Miss J), startling visions of R's entire future academic career (or lack thereof) flashed before my eyes.

But the flip side is that she not only threatened her teacher, she also bribed her. "Don't worry, Mom," I was told, "I also said, 'If you do go to my party, I'll give you a shoulder massage.'"

So she's got that going for her.

For shame...

Shame defined by Dictionary.com:

A painful emotion caused by a strong sense of guilt, embarrassment, unworthiness, or disgrace.
Capacity for such a feeling: Have you no shame?
One that brings dishonor, disgrace, or condemnation.
A condition of disgrace or dishonor; ignominy.
A great disappointment.

Even though a few of my co-workers have once or twice read SetDownThis, I'm going to throw caution to the nor' easterly and mention something happened at work today that's had more of an impact on me than I want it to. In a day already peppered with challenges (good for personal growth, sure), I completely inadvertently made a co-worker feel betrayed and put on the spot and accused of something he didn't do. And he took great umbrage to it.

Usually, when someone tells me directly, "I'm really angry," I don't expect him or her to mean, "I'm really angry at you." I think he eventually understood that my comment (a note in a service record) was never meant to cause problems, but he was thorough in expressing his feelings of betrayal.

I can understand where he is coming from, and on the surface of it, there was nothing wrong with what he was saying. In fact, it can be a refreshing change when someone tells you how they feel immediately, rather than complaining behind your back or harboring smoldering resentment or (my own undesirable gig) doing the passive aggressive thing. But even though I never meant any harm, and even though I apologized for my part of the misunderstanding, and even though I now know how to avoid such error in the future with him, I'm still feeling such a sense of *shame*. Unwarranted, unwelcome, and certainly unnecessary. All I can surmise is that it's leftover from some other time - times - in my past when I was made to feel, or allowed myself to feel, that I had let someone down. Had terribly, horribly, acted to reveal them in a position of culpability - false or true, deserved or not. What a worthless emotion shame is! And what purpose does it serve here, except to widen the already significantly yawning pit between my inaccurate, defeating self-image and my truer (dare I say "worthier") self?

Stoopid shame. Ptooey!! This is me spitting it out. Guilt? Not so bad a thing.

Dictionary.com suggests:
Remorseful awareness of having done something wrong.
Self-reproach for supposed inadequacy or wrongdoing.

Okay, give me guilt over shame, then. I think guilt is better, insofar as it can lead to self-reflection, correction, compassion and change. But shame? Blech! Ptooey!!

Sorry if I got your monitor wet.

Warm buzz

I don't mind telling you that this yoga thing is addictive.
I'm so spaced-out sleepy and peaceful after class, I probably am not safe to drive home. I can imagine nothing better than going straight from an hour of conscious breathing, stretching, grounding, centering to sleep. Sleep! Before my mind kicks in and tells me everything that's "wrong" or that I didn't "fix" today. Off to that place where we are completely vulnerable but should be completely free.

All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.
Change it to the present tense, and that's Julian of Norwich + Ekhart Tolle, thank you very much. Works for me.

Monterey

We're members of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and yet we didn't go there at all last year, and didn't make it this year until now. But as though to make up for lost time, we spent all of Sunday taking in as much marine life as we could stand before having a giggly dinner at the surreal Monterey Carrows and heading home.


Actually, R and I snuck away for a bit in the early afternoon, so she could get her feet (read: legs) wet in the Pacific and hunt for seashells. I'd also enjoyed a morning jog down along the beach and to the wharf while the family slept in. It somehow felt exotic to run to the sound of seals barking about their breakfast.

Back Chez Nous & Archive Meme

We just pulled into the driveway about 20 minutes ago, and even though I slept practically the whole way home, I'm not up to staying up to detail the weekend or otherwise write a meaningful blog. Pictures and something of more substance tomorrow, then!

But Wait! There is more tonight, thanks to Julia tagging me with this Meme:

1. Go into your archive.

2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).

3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).

4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.


Here's what I got:

"You don’t have to tell me they were taller once."

This makes little sense out of context, even if I tell you it's a line from a poem. But there it is. Maybe it's a suggestion from the universe that I work on that rewrite, though. Hmmm.

Monterey Bound

We're off for a very short stay in Monterey, and I don't know that I'll have internet access while there, so am posting this brief mid-day post now.

It's beautiful outside, and we're all so looking forward to the getaway. I hope everyone else is also having a very, very pleasant weekend.

Sept. 23, 2005

This title is what happens to you when you run out of titles. The date. This date in history.

I watched Donnie Darko tonight. While alone. At night. After a glass of wine (which always makes me paranoid). After telling myself I wouldn't. And the dog isn't even here (at the kennel while we head out of town for a day).

The film is...unsettling. But also it's a film that makes you think. Mostly, it makes you think that you'd better not watch that kind of thing alone at night after a glass of wine.

But I'm ok now, thanks to the Bach I listened to to take off the edge.

Warning: political in nature

I try to stay away from politics in this blog, if only because I know that the four or so people who might read it have a wide range of political leanings, and I'm not interested in ruffling feathers.

For those of you who have not figured it out yet through knowing me, reading this, or other inference, I did not vote for George Bush. Either time. I respect the office of the President, and I am trying to teach my children to respect our country's leaders. Also, I would like to believe that Mr. Bush sincerely thinks he is doing what is best for this country.

However.

I am angry and bitter and ashamed about where he has lead the U.S., and I do not hold him in high regard. To say the least. He is not invited to Thanksgiving at our house. And I will not be sending him a Christmas card. Praying for him, yes. Sending him a Christmas card, no.

I just got an email that began "Sharon Olds has declined to attend the National Book Festival in Washington" and linked to this article from The Nation. Keep in mind that I don't read The Nation, and don't even know where in the Moveon.org<-->American Enterprise Institute spectrum it falls. However, if I were First Lady Bush, I'd be feeling the sting of Ms. Old's open letter. Especially the last four paragraphs.

Happy First Day of Autumn, Washington D.C. and everyone else.

Giving Blood

Just one of the things I did today was give blood. I imagined myself writing a list of the many other things I did today, but then wondered why? To record only? So that when I read this later I can look back with admiration or regret, pride or dismay? To impress or depress other people?

Let's just say that it's the close of the day, and now:
the girls are asleep, both having had a good solid evening cry for different reasons
D is in the garage, building walls for the Kindergarten bathroom
My left arm is bandaged with a green bandage
the dog is sleeping off vaccines

All is as right with the world as I can, at the moment, make it.

Second Yoga Class and Marine Animals

Just home from the second yoga class. I don't think I was snoring during the last pose ("corpse"), but it's hard to say. Ian said he thinks there was someone snoring, but on the other side of the room from where I was.






So I understand that a giant leatherback turtle was just sighted off the coast of Wales. Very cool - but what's even cooler & more critical is the story I'd missed from last month. Apparently mid-August, a super-pod of dolphins was seen off the coast of Wales. Not a dozen dolphins, not a hundred dolphins, but something like two thousand dolphins, including mothers nursing calves, all headed out somewhere together. I'm not sure whether to be flip and say they're probably saying "So long and thanks for all the fish," or to seriously wonder if they know something we don't. Hmmm...

Itty Bitty Kitty has a home

Hmmm...sounds a bit like "fuzzy wuzzy was a bear"

It could be:

Itty Bitty is a cat
Itty bitty is quite fat
Itty bitty itn't very bitty, itty?

but the kitten we took to her new family today is not fat - although she is faring much better than when we first brought her home. She's probably gained several ounces. And when you weigh 1.3 lbs, every ounce counts.

If we lived in Canada, it might go:

Strayeh had a chez
Strayeh had a place to stay
Strayeh wasn't very stray, eh?

You can all stop groaning and go about your regular business now. This was all I was good for tonight.

Petaluma Poetry Walk

Here's to the 10th year of the Petaluma Poetry Walk!

It only took me 7 or so of those years to get someone to join me on the trip. The PWG (Petaluma Writers Group) gals and I saw a few of the poets:
Maria M. Benet, Claudia Chapline, Gerald Fleming, Dorianne Laux, Sharon Doubiago, and Maria Mazziotti Gillan. We took a break while Diana di Prima and Geri Digiorno, Sonoma County's new Poet Laureate, read. Then the other gals called it a day, but I went home very briefly, said hello to my mother-in-law who was visiting, and turned around and went back out to hear David Bromige and Kate Braverman at Copperfields. (As much as I might honor my mother-in-law's ability to hold forth for extended periods of time, these particular poets were more inspiring.)

Also a treat today was getting a ride from one venue to another in a poet acquaintances' KMZ sidecar, a 1980's Kiev Motor Works vehicle. And yes, it was as fun as it looks.

So now? Now it's nearly 10:30 and I have a mountain of clean laundry on the bed to fold (or, more likely, shift), and a barely-written ghost story with the prospect of little free time tomorrow to write further. Ah well. These things happen, don't they? Yes, they do.

The Neighbors Leave

Our next door neighbors are moving. I pulled up to the driveway today and the moving van was finally there.

They put their house on the market about a month ago, around the same time that they bought the new place. They’ve been working on changing a few things in the new home, such as pulling out all carpeting and installing hard wood floors to help them in their battle against some fairly significant allergies. These changes have taken time, so as weekend after weekend went by and I saw no evidence of packing or pickups, I’d been able to fool myself into thinking that they weren’t really leaving. And so seeing that moving van today, and seeing all their friends and family like worker ants carrying things out of their house hit me really hard. Harder than I thought it would.

In particular, I’ll miss my friend Mary. Mary’s been a good sounding board, someone with whom I can talk about science or religion or politics, someone with whom I can laugh at the struggles inherent in being a mother while trying to be an independent adult as well. She has three children 6 and under. She has a PhD in molecular biology that she finished while she was pregnant with her oldest child. She’s active, fit, slender, and good-natured. And a month ago, just as she & her husband were signing papers for their new house, she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

It happened fast. Within a week, she went from having a cyst removed & checked (it was benign) and having a mammogram done, to surgery because of something the mammogram picked up, to the surgeon testing tissue during the procedure and then performing a mastectomy. She has started chemotherapy, and her mother is staying to help her, but she’s going to be fine. She’ll survive this.

What’s amazes me is not just the speed of the diagnosis and sudden thoroughness of the surgery—she said she was not going to mess around, she wanted to take care of it completely—what really amazes me is that it’s really the mammogram that her doctor recommended that has saved her life. Neither she nor her doctor would have found this cancer otherwise. Apparently, the first thing the surgeon did after surgery was ask Mary’s husband for her doctor’s name and call the doctor to say, “Hey, this? This was a good catch. A good one.”

Tomorrow is Mary’s birthday. She’ll be forty.

Next month, I’ve got an appointment for my bi-annual checkup – and even though I’m too young for them to “require” it, I’ll be getting a mammogram. Just, well, you know. Because.

The lights are off in Mary’s house and I think they’re all spending the first night in the new place, a couple of miles away: Mary, her husband, her three children, and her mother. I know I'll still be seeing them around, and we'll probably arrange playdates--and Mary knows that I want to help while she's recovering from treatments, in whatever way I can--but I'll miss having them as neighbors. I hope they’re all sleeping well.

Resolve

Happy Birthday D!!!

If he had a web site, I'd send you there to see it. But he does not.

Okay, I do recall having said that posting this late at night doesn't work for me.
Here's a note for myself for future reference:

POSTING THIS LATE AT NIGHT doesn't do anyone any good.

For example, I have typed the above sentences about 4 times. I keep falling asleep mid-word & typing nonsense each time. I am not making this up. I can't type more than 3 words without literally falling asleep with my fingers poised over the keyboard.

So that's all for tonight.

Thursday as Friday

Since I have tomorrow off, I'm up late. D & I watched I Heart Hucklebees (an existential comedy). A good flick if you're philosophically minded and can stand some irreverence.

That's all. Except to say that the kitten *may* have a home by Monday. We hope.

Calm, calm

Tonight, I went to a lecture at the girls' school about values, Waldorf education in general and our charter school in particular. The speaker is both experienced and insightful, and I've learned a lot from hearing her in the past. She talked about how telling a story in a CALM, SOOTHING way is so much better for small kids than teling it with wild hand gestures and over-the-top yelling or whining. She talked about how there is a link between memory ability in children and limiting media exposure, having good nutrition, and getting lots of sleep. I'll write more about it tomorrow - including the hipocampus stuff! If I remember to. If I get enough sleep.

Kitty is still here, but still only as a foster child, and we're just trying to find a good home for him. Apparently, it's the tail end of kitten season and all the shelters are either full up or have outbreaks of one disease or another. I spoke to one woman on a farm (our best lead so far) who said that she's been helping with strays for 50 years (she started bottle feeding kittens when she was four)and is a third generation animal advocate, and this has been the worst year for deaths from upper respiratory illnesses that she's seen. Swell.

We'll take the kitten to the vet tomorrow, I guess. I'd avoided it because I'd been told by one friend that shelters sometimes cover those expenses. And he's been eating and drinking fine and doesn't act sick. But at this point, since a private "adoption" is looking more likely than a shelter, but isn't in the immediate future, we need to get him officially checked out. The farmer might take him Monday if he is well enough according to the vet.

For those of you who are concerned, we have kept him quarantined in one part of one room away from other pets and have been washing hands thoroughly after every time we handle him. Just in case.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CLARE! I think everyone should visit her blog and wish her a happy birthday.

First night of yoga

Those of you who do not live in California can go ahead and chuckle as I live out the Left Coast stereotype and take a yoga class. I expect, however, that this is going to do me a world of good. Especially since I'm so unaware of my body and my breathing most of the time - too much in my HEAD, too much thinking, figuring, fretting and second guessing. (Take the first sentence of this blog as an example.)

The kitty still does not have a home. But there are a half dozen new shelter names I've been given in the Bay Area, so I can try those. In the meantime, we're all just enjoying his company without becoming *too* attached to him. As a consolation prize (diversion), the girls are switching rooms in the next few days.

And this just in...

For those of you who have been to Wales and are desperately missing the air there, try this. That's right, Wales in a bottle. A breath of air from Cymru proper, sealed for your convenience. The site says you can even specially request the Welsh smell/air that you want to purchase. What will they think of next?!

Finding a Home

Itty-bitty kitty, the kitten that R has dubbed "Yoda" because of its large ears and the shape of its eyes, does not yet have a home. But we're working every angle we can, from vets to shelters to foster homes and rescue programs, and something should pan out by this time tomorrow, I hope. Here's what s/he looks like, for the record.


What's not to love? Unless, like us, "love" is not the issue, but having reached our maximum-amount-of-pets-deemed-reasonable is.

Come on...don't you want a kitten?

Home from Camping

It was a great camping trip - possibly the best I've ever been on, and certainly the best that the girls have experienced. This was in spite of (not because of) the fact that D stayed home. He says he'll join us for the next one, and that's good enough for me.



More details tomorrow, including The Kitten's Tale, or How Bringing Home a Stray is Not Always the Best Idea, Even if it is Deemed Necessary.
PS - Does anyone reading this want a 3-to-4 week old cat?

Pre-emptive Post

Here it is again, folks. Tomorrow’s news, today.

Because we’ll be in the great off-line outdoors all day tomorrow, I won’t be able to blog tomorrow.

Let’s just say we’re having a great time, camping. The weather isn’t as cold as I’d been afraid it would be. The girls are having a blast. Everyone we’re meeting is soooo nice.

And I’m terribly inspired to write and write. The poems are just coming out of my ears.

Yeah.

Let’s just say that.

Making Each Day Count

Yesterday's blog post started out with a title like this one (or maybe it was this one, I just deleted it and am not too worried about figuring it out).

This is because yesterday I was going to write about the "gymnastics mom" who underwent chemotherapy in the Spring for breast cancer. And my neighbor, who is about to undergo chemotherapy for breast cancer. And D's friend Jane, who died after a long denial followed by a bitter fight with cancer a few years ago.

But then I realized I wasn't going to be able to do justice as a witness late last night. I need time to compose what I want to say.

This weekend, we're off camping, and I'm bringing paper and the hope that I can think things through, write things through, make the days count, and come back with something worth setting down here.

Sometimes We don't want to Jump on the Trampoline

(post renamed 9/9/05)

Today S fell apart into little sniffly crocodile tear pieces when it was time to join her gymnastics class, and no amount of tender loving persuasion, firm parenting, positive discipline, bribes or threats could entice her to either explain what was wrong, or join the group--even late, even with me walking her to the floor and sitting with her while the instructor and other kids encouraged her to play with them. Of course I didn't really bribe or threaten her. Don't be silly. I wanted to. But I resisted.

No, the closest I came to poor parental choices, once I gently, lovingly took her away from the building, was that I refused to let her listen to The Vile Village CD in the car because she (and R & I) are enjoying it so much, it felt like it would be rewarding her behavior. Not that her behavior was bad - no, of course it wasn't. Did I say it was bad? No. Rationally, I can see that she was just tired, and/or feeling overwhelmed by the large group of mostly older kids, and/or upset that her favorite teacher didn't happen to be there today. But I was also, myself (around whom my world turns) feeling frustrated and embarrassed and like an utter failure as a human being for not being able to coerce her into acting like a cheerful little group participant. That's all. No baggage, here. Maybe the teeniest overnight bag of spite, but no real
Samsonite.

Besides, after about two minutes, I turned on the CD.

But only once I had a better understanding of why she wouldn't go to class, and had her reassurance that if I let her (read: me) listen to the completely delightful Tim Curry narrated Limony Snicket book, she would not make her six-year-old face dissolve into a dramatic Mask of Tragedy next week just so she could skip gymnastics (which I have PAID FOR) to listen to more of the recording.

Someone else's poem

Today, another poem. Someone else's. I've floundered for something of my own to write, here, but find nothing nada zip zero goose egg. (And it took 1.5 hrs to post *this*, thanks to lack of inspiration and flakey DSL connections. Grr. Grrr grrr grrr.)


You can read more about Jane Hirshfield here, or check out this interview.

Optimism

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another.
A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers, mitochondria, figs--all this resinous, unretractable earth.

-Jane Hirshfield

Making ratatouille

I had some solid ideas for a story I'm writing while making ratatouille this evening. The kids (mine and 3 others that had wandered into our house) were playing in the next room while listening to a book on CD. It was a picture of domestic bliss to an casual observer, but those with keen eyes would recognize that an Artist was at work at the same time.

Ha!

(And I am NOT talking about my cooking. Anyone who has ever had my cooking knows I'm not.)

I figure if I can master this art of chopping onions or eggplant while plotting a story or coming up with a good line for a poem, my work as a writer will have a strong backing.

And as an added bonus, my family will eat a lot more vegetables.

End of the long weekend

It's sad enough when Sunday night rolls around, but holiday night blues can be even worse.

D was at his gaming friend's house, because it's Monday.

The girls are sacked out, after a day spent cleaning (mostly R's room), playing and riding bikes to the local pizza place for dinner and then home again (they rode, I walked).

D's mother dropped by mid-afternoon, and the girls and I stopped our work for a couple of hours while she sat at the table and drank green tea and told me stories, and while I reminded myself that there is a reason for everything, even (maybe especially) those things which frustrate me.

She also gave me a wonderful birthday gift. She was raised in France by a Corsican mother and a Russian father. Every year for her birthday, her father (who had been in the Czar's cavalry) would give her a gold French coin which had been made into a pendant. Today she gave me on of the oldest ones she had, from 1862. It's beautiful, and I feel so honored that she would pass it on to me. Since D's sister and his mother have been estranged for something like 17 years, I may be the closest thing to a daughter she has now, and maybe that has something to do with it.

At any rate, I'm grateful for the gift, and for the gift of time that this whole 3-day weekend has been.

Currently listening to

A while back, before I went out and saw Patty Griffins with Dar Williams, Mary Chafin Carpenter and Shawn Colvin, I decided to buy a CD or two so I could be more "informed" at the show.

Unfortunately, I went out without a list of all their names & by mistake, instead of getting myself a Patty Griffin CD, got Nanci Griffith, Other Voices, Other Rooms.

It was a fortuitous mistake. I'd never heard of her, but the album includes covers of songs by Kate Wolf, Vince Bell, Townes Van Zandt, Frank Christian, Bob Dylan, John Prine, Ralph McTell, Tom Paxton, Woody Guthrie, Janis Ian, Jon Vezner, Buddy Mondlock, Gordon Lightfoot, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Harry Belafonte, among others. It's about the writing. And it's all excellent.

Paperwork

Cutting losses, letting go. I fed to the shredder a stack of rejection letters for poems from 1989-1997 a couple of days ago. After logging when they'd been sent, to whom they'd been sent, what the response had been, etc. Other writers might have had a bonfire and called it done, but I had to record, archive, make one more note before disposing of the artifacts themselves. Typical. I seem to let go in stages. Unlike D, who I've watched cold turkey it with cigarettes, motorcycles, scraps of plastic, and even (upon occasion) people.

Tonight, he and I are cleaning up the garage, closets. We're reveling in tidying up the chaos. It's a Virgo thing.

About two hours ago, I found a box of some cards & letters I'd kept for years. I mean, these things (just a small percentage of my excess paperwork) dated as far back as 1979 or so. Many of them seem to have been important to me to keep because they reminded me of missed potential, of things I should have done, connections I should have made. It's like a friggin' Box Of Guilt, for goodness' sake. Very healthy. Cards and letters from people saying wildly generous, loving, kind, flattering things about me and how important my friendship is to them, and I hardly remember caring about them at all. I must have done a good job *acting* like a good friend for these people without ever *feeling* like one.

I've gone through much of my life careful not to establish any real emotional connection with anyone, for fear that it would either bite me in the end, or cause grief to those around me, who as a result of my happy relationship missed out on some connection of their own. It's a long story, but at least I'm aware of it now. As are you, whether you wanted to be or not.

So I'm getting rid of much (but not all) of the correspondence in this particular box. Rest assured that if you're reading this, I didn't throw away your letters. I did, however toss cards I got for my 16th birthday, congratulations on my college graduation from friends of my grandmother. There are even love letters I'd forgotten I'd received from someone I spoke to maybe twice, in 1987. I don't even remember how I met him or where, (I hardly remembered his name), but apparently, our meeting prompted long emotional missives stating that he hoped I'd always be part of his life, even if as only a friend.

How soon they forget.

I mean, apparently, I also had a pen-pal in Goteborg, Sweden. Do I remember this? Not in the slightest. Yet, I have these letters here, in slightly amusing English. She wrote me at least three times, thanking me for my letters and answering questions I'd apparently asked. This was in 1979. I mean, I have never done drugs, but even if I did, I should have still had a pretty sharp mind in 1979, don't you think?

So what else have I forgotten? I used to be able to label the parts of the heart. I'm sure of that. And I think I used to be able to write pi to the 4th or 5th place. But the tricky thing about this sort of memory loss is that you can't be at all sure of what's missing. It's not like there's a blank place in my brain the shape of Annelie Olsson in Goteborg. What else is gone? Have I ever spoken formally at the White House? Was I, in fact, once an exotic dancer in Newark, NJ? I don't think so, but you can't be too sure. Maybe I did once complete a paint-by-number picture of Citation the racehorse. Perhaps I have driven a Peterbilt truck and just don't recall.

Maybe these things are only temporarily gone, though. Maybe they're what I will re-live during the long solitary confinement hours of my prison stay (when I'm convicted for crimes I've forgotten I committed). Or maybe they'll be the stories I tell my great-grandchildren when they visit me in the Home.

For all the things I once knew and have forgotten, though, there are some things that I never learned at all until now. Those are the lessons I hope stick.

What Will the Neighbors Say?

How does our country's poor response to our own disaster look to the rest of the world? I've actually been avoiding reading the international press coverage of Katrina. I'd hate to think of how amused by this Osama bin Laden must be. My only hope is that the current administration is learning something from all this.

Actually, right now I'm so angry at the President, I can't even write about it. I suspect a lot of that is me wanting to blame someone and him being an easy target for my frustration. I don't anger easily. And usually, I don't stay angry more than a few minutes, at the very most. But what I'm feeling now is a low-level smoldering ire that isn't doing anyone - me or Katrina's victims or the rest of the US - any good.

This weekend, D and I are going to go over our own home's emergency supplies to make sure they're adequate. We're going to do fire and earthquake drills with the girls. We're going to donate to the relief fund.

And I'll continue to pray for the victims of the hurricane: those affected directly, and the rest of us. Because none of us are free of the consequences.

But more importantly

As Julia reminds, me, those of us not in Louisiana or Missouri or Iraq, or Beslan or Kashmir or Gaza - those of us who just by quirky circumstance are, at the moment, safe - must not be immune to empathy, or succumb either to taking for granted the temporarily good conditions of our lives, or to letting petty annoyances become more significant than the true losses that are being suffered.

I pray that I don't find myself thinking that compassion is just too inconvenient, something better left by the wayside than carried on the journey.

Compassion is the journey.

Crabby

Whose idea was it to blog every day, again?
The same genius who agreed to work 5am-1pm, I guess.
Grrrrr.
I do like sleep so very much. And judging by my mood, I need to get a bit more of it.
Nightly.
Like, bedtime at 8:30 instead of 9:30, probably.
For a start.

I can be taught.
No.
Really.
I can.
Stop laughing.

ISS non-sighting

We'd heard from a friend of a friend that the International Space Station might be visible tonight (during a four minute window), and so without really verifying it, D & I stood outside and stared up for a while, hoping that one of the little lights above us would be closer than a star and farther away than an airplane. But we got nothing for our time except slightly stiff necks and a couple of very cool comet sightings.

"I hope that wasn't the space station," I said about the first streak of light across the sky.

"That," D pointed out, "Was probably the size of a speck of dust."



I heard this today on All Things Considered from Daniel Schorr. And it makes me think that so much of what we worry about is trivial - just little specks of dust zipping across our vision - compared to what else is happening in the world.



Last night (actually early morning, around 3:30 or 4am), I had a dream about trying to save a very young child who had drowned. It's much more complicated than that--my dreams usually are--but after I'd spent a long time analyzing what the whole thing meant, and after I thought I'd figured it all out, I heard the news about Baghdad on the radio on the way in to work. After that, all I could think about was how the boy had had dusty brown skin, and had belonged to a small village full of people who were also dusty brown, and very poor.

The dark side of the dream was the death, of course, and my feeling of being responsible for it. But on the other side, later in the dream, the boy's spirit returned to speak through other small village children. We had buried his body, but we hadn't entirely lost him.

Afternoons at home

This change in schedule has been lovely. I'm home early in the afternoon, I see my husband every day during his lunch break, the girls and I have a chance to unwind and do their own thing for at least an hour or two before we venture out to run errands or go to the gym, if we even do that. The days are starting to have a rhythm to them, and I am a creature happy with habit. (I had oatmeal and an old-fashioned non-electric drip coffee for breakfast and a baked potato with melted cheese, bacon and Ranch dressing (!) every day for something like 3 months straight. This was probably 16 years ago, mind you, but still... during that time, I wrote tons. I think the routine freed me to be more creative.)

So I'm hopeful (let's say "cautiously optimistic") that with the longer afternoons, I can tackle the projects around the house I've been wanting to check off my to-do list for years. I've already started (and completed!) a few of them.

Happy happy happy,
joy joy koi.

I think I'll call this my "Feliz Fishies" poem.

The Day After

A good day.

Worked only 5 hours, took Mom to the airport, came home. The girls and I had a mellow afternoon, time in the park then to the gym for a run for me, then home again where R cooked dinner (re-heated left-overs) for us. Time playing outside, bed. An evening where I had ample opportunity to be vigilant and catch myself irritated when the girls themselves got testy - working hard to be the grown-up, the one that breaks the nighttime cycle of crankiness. Up from 3 hours of fitful sleeping to blog only, my last dream having been one of a veritable stranger calling to ask me when my birthday was, because she had a psychic there who wanted to know. In the dream, it was the 3rd such request in a day, and it was spooking me. Hmm. Could it really be the left-over vegetable mu shu, I wonder?

Indulgence

Happy Birthday to Me. :)

What a day of being spoiled! Actually, it started yesterday with the trip to Mendocino County and checking in to the Inn, where a lovely surprise present from a friend was waiting for me in my room. (Thanks, friend!!) We had dinner out, and woke up to fog and the Pacific - so kind and gentle in comparison to what is about to hit Louisiana.

After taking in a little of the beach near the wharf, we enjoyed a tour of the lighthouse, followed by a relaxed ride home along scenic Hwy. 1. (Am I sounding like a travelogue yet?) Then there were presents waiting for me when I got home, including a digital camera from Mom (look out! I'm part of the modern age, now!) and books and hugs and kisses from the kids. We all had a delicious sushi dinner out and chocolate cake for dessert. I tell you what. Such decadence.

Tomorrow it's back to reality - a full work week, and Mom goes home.

But it could be worse. I'm really feeling compassion for the residents of New Orleans right now. Two weeks from today, I was scheduled to fly there for an HP conference. Who knows whether that will still happen, and whether there will be anything left to see when we get there. Maybe we'll just become part of the cleanup operation.

We don't have TV, of course, but I'm reading how people are boarding up their homes and shops, while those same homes and shops may end up under 20 feet of water. And there's nothing that can be done to stop it. It's a little like the inevitable flu pandemic that will come, for which we are not prepared.

Aren't I cheerful for a birthday girl? I guess you could blame it on me crashing from the chocolate cake...

Weekend getaway...

D & I are packing to head north for an overnight stay on the coast. It promises to be a beautiful drive up. The sky is blue, the air is warm but not hot, and Grandma's here to take care of the kids. Whoo-hoo!

My sister wisely advised, "Just throw some things in a bag and get out the door!"

Oh, if only it were that easy. If only I could abandon my desire to fold all the clean laundry first...!

We'll be on the road soon, though. And I will post descriptions and pictures upon our return.

Made it

...to Friday. Once more. It's a relief that as inevitable as Mondays are, Fridays are just as likely to roll around again.

I'm grateful.

It's been nice having Mom here. Quite apart from my comments last night, which were more philosophical whines than complaints (honest!), it's been fun laughing with her over the kids and over how doggone silly we are as a family, in general. Without fail, one of us says something really ridiculous and out of left field 2-3 times every thirty minutes, so we spend a lot of time cracking up, and sometimes even have the lovely experience of giggling about a new joke before we've caught our breaths from giggling at the last one.

After the first day of school, R was describing the "time out" chair her teacher has in the classroom for kids to sit in when they're disrupting the class. Apparently, it stayed occupied (or at least warm) all day. D said that if *he* were the teacher (you, know, one of those "Well, if *I* were the teacher..." pronunciations we parents sometimes make), he'd put tacks on the chair and kids would learn very quickly not to do anything that would make them have to sit in it.

About five minutes later, when we'd already moved on to another topic of conversation, (and even another one after that), S. suddenly raised a finger in the air and declared, "And if the tacks had the pointy sides facing up, then the kids would REALLY not want to sit in the chair!"

Mom's thoughts on Blogs

So we tried again (not the first time) to explain to Mom over dinner what a blog is. We told her it's short for web-log. We told her it's an online journal. A web site where you write things down.

D. said, "You could have one, Mom. You could write down what happens to you, like 'Today the coyotes came down the hills closer to the house.'"

I said, "And other people could read it, if you wanted."

Mom said with (to my hypersensitive ears) Obvious Distaste, "Why would I want to do that?"

She said she'd heard of a newscaster in her part of the state that had a blog, and she didn't see why anyone would write personal stuff down that anyone out there could read.

I changed the subject rather than tell her again that I blog, or invite her again to read the blog. She has conveniently forgotten or not heard me talk about it more than once.

I sound so like a "But You Don't Understand Me" teenager, don't I?

This is a painful fact. My mom supports everything I do, because she's my mom. And I love her, and I know she loves me. But I am sad (and am watching myself be sad) that she may never "get" it - the poetry, the blog, why it's important to me.

Maybe that's part of every human being's experience - having an aspect of oneself that even those closest to one don't understand, can't touch, can't "get." It's probably just as well, for it may be a prime motivator in getting people to form connections with outsiders, with kith rather than kin.

I have this added dimension in my sense of separateness, of course: I wonder how much of the differences between Mom and me (especially when it comes to tastes and sensibilities) are because I was adopted. I like to think it makes no difference whatsoever, but maybe it does. I am blessed to know the good people to whom I am genetically related, and we do share a surprising number of interests and aptitudes. But with any excitement I feel about really connecting with them, I have a sense of guilt about feeling disconnected from my mother.

Again, that's just how it is. Right now. I'm admitting it, observing it, writing it down. For anyone out there to read.

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."