Burrowing

I've been feeling guilty. No one who knows me well will be at all surprised by this. The Guilt du Jour is that I can't seem to rally interest in day-to-day important stuff, like work and thinking up what to do for dinner and staying awake long enough to hang out with my husband after he gets home from work and after the kids are in bed.

But then today at the gym, I ran while listening to my newly-loaded iPod (I've had it a year but just plain haven't ever loaded it up). And while I was stretching and blasting something by Richard Shindell, I realized that it may not be depression or even seasonal overwhelm that's hitting me. It may just be a need to dive deep and delve, get lost somewhere below the surface for a while and see what I can pull up. I felt like I needed to be autistic in a corner. I feel like I need to tune out the world for a while. And guess what? Once I had this epiphany (or "apostrophe" as some would say), the guilt disappeared as quickly those Christmas cookies we made last week. Poof. It's withdrawal for the sake of art. Nothing to feel bad about at all, when it's fallow time, as Julia has pointed out.

Anyway, back to Richard Shindell - a plug for the sake of any folk music lover, here, but in particular: Clare, check out 'The Ballad of Mary Magdalene' and some of his Spanish tunes(here is one), and Kate, you may be interested in the cover he and Dar Williams (of course) and Lucy Kaplansky did in Cry, Cry, Cry of James Keelaghan's Cold Missouri Waters, the story of the Mann Gulch fire in 1949. Amazing stuff. A little write up of him at the Folk Music Society of Huntington site sings his praises, too:

Somewhere between the witty despair of Leonard Cohen's lyrics and the haunted Elysian landscapes of Richard Thompson's guitar, between the deeply ironic writing of Randy Newman and the evocative vocals of Michael Stipe, there lies the work of RICHARD SHINDELL.

~and~

Richard Shindell is at once an unassuming everyman and an enticingly enigmatic presence in contemporary music. The details of his life are hardly a secret ... would-be Episcopalian priest, now self-described agnostic, family man, a father of three; but there exists within his writing and performance something profound, wild, and unknowable.

I like that in a writer.

Okay, end of plug. Back to the burrowing for my own wild...

The New Year from the Central Coast

We're in the hotel room, the rest of the family dozing or just starting to stir before we pack it up and head home from our weekend in Pismo. We had a good visit with my oldest brother and his family (and his wife's large, close-knit clan too), and my sister and her boyfriend also came North from San Diego to spend a couple of days here. My other brother couldn't have come if he wanted too - he's been among those snowed in in Denver.

I've spent some time trying to figure out why I can't seem to blog lately, and since even trying to think about why I don't blog seems too difficult, I've now come to the conclusion that, as often happens around the holiday, I'm really just trying so hard to survive, and get through one more day, and tackle the to-do list, that there is no time left for peripheral luxuries like writing.

This is wrong. I know how wrong it is. I know that writing is as important to me as, say, eating, taking care of my family, sleeping, exercise & breathing (which consume my attention in roughly that order). But because writing anything of worth requires Time and Quiet, it hasn't been happening. Same old saw. But - it's also a new, hopeful year. And already D. and I are talking about the need for separate creative spaces to facilitate our work. We require such different things to create. He likes to be surrounded by the hundreds of small things he's already crafted - little pieces of aluminum and steel and delrin (not delron) and even tantalum that he's machined, models he's built, illustrations he's done - and he likes to hear music. I prefer silence and something closer to a monk's cell, and a space that is entirely my own, without someone else's "energy" there. So we're working on what it will take to have different rooms for what we're doing.

S and R and I went for a walk out to the end of Pismo pier at sunset yesterday (it was D's turn to nap in the hotel room), and we talked about New Year's Resolutions.

S said, "My goal for 2007 is to not die."

"Good plan," I said.

I didn't realize the alternative was even an option, but she reminded me that it's important not to take anything for granted. It's good to start with the basics.

Saturday, short-changing along the way

The problem with trying to do too much in a day is that you often have to do too little of the too much...

So we cut out of R's riding lesson early, to make it to a BBQ late. And I left the BBQ early to pick up S from Nutcracker rehearsal. It was a logistical nightmare juggling the two kids and their 3 activities on top of a food delivery (boxes for the week + frozen turkeys for 7 families) and errand-running. But we survived, and now that I'm writing this (at some unspecified date in the future), it all seems like it is in the distant past.

In fact, I can scarcely remember the details of the day. Thus is the importance of recording these things, I suspect.

Friday, from what I remember

So I know I'm not fooling anyone by posting something 6 days after the fact, but since we all have the ability to use our IM-MAG-IN-A-TION, we can imagine that it's Friday night, and I'm looking back on the day.

I worked until 8:30, so an 11.5 hour shift, which didn't feel bad at all, actually.

R. was home sick, which changed my errand-running plans slightly. I did manage to take a couple of naps, and on the whole, was not too wiped out by the working-the-night-shift experience.

Night owl

Working the night shift tonight. Although I feel perfectly capable of sleeping between incoming phone calls (and have permission from my boss to do so, provided I can be wide awake to give a quote, which I can be), I also may well use this time to catch up on some work.

Time alone, with only the white noise of dozens of PCs and server racks for company, is actually beautiful. I'm loving this so far.

Of course, the night is - relatively - young yet.

Not too late

Tonight I spent time working with my friend Molly in what is probably most conveniently described as a grief counseling session. There was a lot more to it than that. Molly is an extraordinary woman - a henna artist who also does personal growth work (including past life work, which is a whole other blog entry...).

But regardless of what anyone else might say about the methodology, I feel like a good deal of healing took place.

Thanksgiving is coming up. I'll be spending the holiday with my birth mom and family, including close relatives I've never met before (!), and I'm very excited about it, but I also know that it'll be a time when I'll be thinking about my mom a lot. It was important to "process" (what a clinical term for what the heart really is doing!) some of my emotions around my mom's death.

Note to self: it's never too late to have a conversation with someone you've lost.

Tuesday 11/14/06

Hooray!

I've found Radio Cymru.

Now I can have streaming audio IN WELSH while I write the novel.

I only understand about one in ten words, but just hearing it makes me so happy. It's my own home immersion program!

Maybe it's time to check in with the WASNC (Welsh American Society of Northern California) again, too. It's been a while.

Monday, November 13th

Great day in terms of writing - both the novel, and the transcription of the 6th grade class' adaptation of The Little Prince, which they will perform next month.

I now know things about my characters that they won't know for years.

Sunday, November 12th

Thank God our kids let us sleep in. I can't get enough sleep lately. I'm foregoing all sorts of things, like (ahem) writing, in order to sleep more than 5 hours a night. I'm sure it's the dark months that do this too me. When the sun sets at something like 4:30 in the afternoon, it seems like bedtime.

At least I still had time to jog a little between making a big Sunday breakfast and going to a birthday party all afternoon, so I didn't feel like I only hibernated all day. Although if I had, I guess it wouldn't have been so bad. I feel like I'm fighting something off, but whether it's a flu or depression/overwhelm or just the dark days, I couldn't say.

Saturday, Nov. 11th

Another packed Saturday with only about an hour of downtime. Not enough!
Although the daylight hours were literally filled with shuttling kids around from activity to activity (and one of the kids was a guest), at night I got together with some other moms from the school and talked about all sorts of Big things (mostly the stuff that happens before and after life, and what that might mean). I'm not so good at small talk or chit-chat. I don't really care where you bought your shoes. I want to know what you dreamt last night.

Friday Nov. 10th

I was feeling that this blog was really nothing but a recording of the symptoms of my neuroses, way too narcissistic and angst-ridden. And while all that is true, it's *relative*, you know what I mean?

I stumbled across this livespace site for poetry today and thought, "Well, hey, it could be worse."

And this just in from the Welsh news:

The research reveals that among older people in Wales
66 per cent were not looking forward to the winter months

That's crack research, man.
Sorry. Sarcasm running high. Should be better tomorrow.

Lantern Walk

The girls' school does a lantern walk for the youngest grades. The children all make their own lanterns, and then families come on the designated night to walk together by these little bobbing lights, carried by 5-8 year olds, singing songs under the stars.

I found this description of the tradition at the Waldorf School of Atlanta site:

Martinmas/Lantern WalkLantern Walk
November 11 marks Martinmas, in honor of a Roman soldier elevated to sainthood for his selfless kindness. Martin is the patron saint of the poor, beggars, outcasts, and the homeless. He is known for his gentleness, his unassuming nature, and his ability to bring warmth and light to those who were previously in darkness. On the evening of Martinmas, Martin’s deeds of goodness and acts of kindness are remembered with singing and a Festival of Lanterns. Children in kindergarten and the younger grades, together with teachers and families, carry handmade lanterns as they walk into the cold, dark evening. A story recognizing “the light” of another gives the children an experience of caring and sharing as we move toward the darkness of winter. The older grades may do outreach projects in celebration of the spirit of St. Martin.

I've never heard anyone at our school mention St. Martin (in the fields or otherwise), but the kids did hear a story told by their teacher (while the parents stood in the hallway and tried to stay quiet) before the walk. It really was lovely, and a beautiful clear night to boot. S. was a little un-calm and un-quiet, and her light even blew out at one point, but someone kindly re-lit it and we survived singing the same 3 songs about a million times (I think R has been traumatized by this part) in good spirits.

Again, I may sound the slightest bit mocking about this, but it's just to acknowledge tcynicismism of others. The fact is, I love traditions, and this one is very sweet and symbolic, and the poet in me just wants to take it all to another level and cry at all these little kids, bravely holding up their flickering lanterns in the cold air so that we can see our way to walk with one another, singing back the dark.

November, and colder

I know that this part of California has no real clue about what cold is. But there's a chill in the air that makes me think this weekend would be a good one for us to start chopping some of the larger chunks of oak firewood we have in the backyard into stove-side morsels.

And yes, I realize that it's really a dirty trick to disguise a honey-do as a blog post. So no, I'm not doing that. That would be counter-productive. (And we don't need counters. We need shoji screen closets. I'm just saying.)

*ahem*

Anyway, added a few hundred more words to the novel. I think Mair is just about to talk Annie into going to visit Hamza as he convalesces at Griff's uncle's farm. And Idris hasn't confessed yet to knowing the thugs who beat up Hamza. But Annie suspects that he has more information than he told her at dinner. The farm is beautiful, even in the rain. I'm looking forward to getting there.

Placeholder post

To say no new words on the novel, but I've started dreaming about the characters.

Although I realize that doesn't count toward words written, I consider it a good sign.


Went from work to picking up the girls at school to the library, then the gym, then picking up dinner, then voting, then out for a night of girls gaming. Home much too late to do anything but crawl into bed for a few Z's...

Election Eve

And I have not even started to look at the mountain of candidate and initiative literature that has come in the mail over the past many weeks.

I am a below-average citizen in this way. I take the duty to vote, and to serve on a jury for that matter, very seriously. But I am always relatively ill-informed (out of sheer laziness or overwhelm, I suppose) until shortly before I cast my ballot. I could use the excuse that more information on a given measure or candidate might emerge and change everything right before the election anyway, but the truth is, I just follow an old pattern of procrastination and cram. I'm one of those voters you see sitting in her car in a parking lot at the voting station, reading through the paperwork, chewing her nails and deciding whether the League of Women voters is right this time. That's the sad, honest truth.


2016 words toward my 50,000 word count for the month. I can't assume it'll happen, I know, but I'm hoping the weekend will bring a little catch-up time. Meanwhile, I'm shooting for the 1600 or so words a day it'll take to hold steady.

On time for once! and through a glass darkly...

That is to say that this is a legitimate, not retro-dated, post.

I slept, oh, about 14 hours last night. I guess (as they say) I needed it.

I think more than the actual sleep, though, I needed to check out. I mean, completely. I seem to have that reaction to certain stresses.

For example, I slept through three months of high school.

Seriously. I had mononucleosis, but that was just a medical excuse. I slept through those three months. I slept through the home-tutor coming with papers on sex ed., and because of my natural prudishness, it took me *years* to even consider thinking about whatever might have been covered in that class. I slept through family fights. I slept through us moving from one house to another in the same neighborhood. I mean, I woke up in a new room and thought, "Oh. I guess that's that, then."

I do remember a little black-and-white TV in my bedroom, and the horror of waking up in a fog, and seeing that The Dukes of Hazard was somehow on yet again, and being too exhausted to get up and change the channel or even call for someone else to do it.

I remember thinking I was better, and going back to school, only to have a relapse. I remember that it wasn't until I finally felt well that I realized how ill I'd been.

That's one of those things that makes me ponder about heaven, or enlightenment. We may think we're fine as we bumble and knock around with one another in the world, trying to do the right thing. But later, at some point later - then we'll be really fine. And realize how handicapped and tunnel-visioned we are now.

Just a thought.

November novel word count: 1134
Slowly regaining lost ground

If I go to bed RIGHT NOW, I'll get 5 hours and 15 minutes of sleep. Which is not bad at all, considering The Dukes of Hazard won't be on when I wake up.

Nutcracker: the saga begins

What a mix of a day. Here's the "had tea with Mrs. Jones" breakdown, then:
Got up, went to gym for a quick workout.
Fed S. breakfast.
Started a food delivery (4th year delivering weekly boxes on a rotational basis to low-income families).
Picked up R. from the retreat.
Returned cleaned dishes to the other moms.
Met D. at the cafe near S's ballet class, where he was waiting after dropping her off.
D. & R. left so he could take her to horseback riding.
I had breakfast and wrote a few words toward the novel.
Picked up S. from class.
Finished food delivery.
Picked up lunch for S. & while she ate, at home, I braided her hair for Nutcracker pictures.
Took the empty food delivery boxes back on the way back to the ballet school, where I was on duty for make-up for the lambs, Gingerbread cookies, Crystal sprites and Chinese Tea who were getting their pictures done. S. was among the batch of Gingies being photographed.
Five hours later, came home with S.
Was stupid enough to lie down at around 5:30.
Did not wake up except to move from bed to couch and sleep through dinner.
Did not move again except to go back to bed.

Additional novel word count: about 20 words.
Falling behind, but doing so shamelessly.

Survived!

I survived Red Tent day, which started at 3:10am with me blearily creating the rest of the letter, printing it on fancy paper, and putting it, and a poem I wrote in 1997, in a special envelope for R. to receive later in the day.

Work was work. Busy, as usual, but easy compared to the rest of the day.

After work I got the car serviced, and while that was happening, I bought supplies for a special gift for R. & then started to create it - sitting at the dealership service dept. trying to fit inspirational stickers on purple paper inside a frame which R. and I will replace with photos of her grandmothers and their mothers - a tribute to the women from whence she came, as it were.

Came home, got S. from school, spent 1.5 hours chopping vegetables for stir-fry for 15 (while D. valiantly helped put together the gift and generally do everything else that needed doing while I sliced and diced).

Raced to the home of another mom, where she and I and a third mom prepared the rest of the meal.

Got to the yurt location, went for a walk with R. (who was as excited as I have ever seen her, and who did NOT stop talking the whole time we power-walked around the block, in the dark).

Gave her the gift, which she liked (thank goodness!). Had dinner with her and the other moms & girls, and then had a time of sharing what the girls had discussed during the day.

Came home around 9:30 with the dishes from the dinner, washed most of them, called it a day.

New words added to the novel: NONE.
2nd day of goose-egg word count in a row.
Am I daunted or shamed?
Neither.

It's not that I have lower expectations of myself these days & don't even try to rise to the occasion.

It's that I love myself enough to let it go if I don't do it all.
Interesting how being pushed hard enough seems to do that to you.

Day of the Dead, Part 2

I was told not to retro-date blog entries with a tell-tale 11:59pm timestamp. But I don't recall actually promising not to do so.

Confession: I did not work on the novel today (apart from coming up with new names for a couple of minor characters).

Instead, I started work on a letter for R. that will be given to her during a retreat she and the other 6th grade girls in her class are having this weekend. The retreat is a Red Tent event (in this case, actually taking place in a yurt), where she and the other girls will be able to spend time with their teacher and each other learning about the changes that are starting to come for them - some already, some in the next year or two (or five). They'll be in a yurt, as I say, that is decorated in red, with sumptuous pillows and scarves and candles, where they can talk about what happens in adolescence, can look at other examples of changes in nature (I'm sure butterflies will come into this somehow), can discuss their feelings about themselves and about becoming young women (which I trust they're all bound to do eventually). They'll probably look at self-image issues and will do an art project. They'll have their meals made for them and served to them. In the evening, the mothers will come and walk with their respective daughters, and present their daughters with these letters and with a gift. The gift can be opened at a later time. It's a symbol (of whatever we choose it to be a symbol of). It's part of this rite-of-passage we're creating for them.

After the walk, we'll have dinner and a time of sharing together, then the mothers will leave and the girls will have a mom of one of the boys in the class come and do henna for them.

You'd have to have an idea of how Waldorf education works to understand why this is not a surprising sort of thing to happen with our little charter school. To some of my "readers," it all may sound as hippy and airy-fairy as it gets. And I know I sound like I'm poking fun at it. But in reality, I think this is great that the girls will have this experience.

I've much more to say about it, but even when I'm manipulating time (as with the datestamp of the post), I seem to run out of it.

Day of the Dead

One of the classes at the girls' schools made alters for Dia de Los Muertos, and at yesterday's Halloween festivities, I saw them all displayed together.

I have mixed feelings about this holiday. It seems to embrace a darkness that I find disturbing, with all the skeleton and skull imagery and the idea that spirits are either not really gone or that they come back to visit. Even the bright colors seem too carnival for my puritan blood.

But on the other hand, this year, I'm thinking of my mom, and I had half a mind (I have half a mind in general, even on good days) to create an alter for her. I was sorry that the day had passed without me doing this, but then I found on an Iowa State web site that the 2nd day of the festivities is for adults, which the first day is for children:

The traditional observance calls for departed children to be remembered during the first day of the festivity (the Day of the Little Angels, "Dia de los Angelitos"), and for adults to be remembered on the second day.

So there's always tomorrow. Which seems to be my just-get-through-today
motto right now. That, and "Why limit yourself to taking on what you can actually accomplish, when being an overwhelmed martyr has such a long and respected tradition?"

Bleh.

So, for those of you (writer's group gals, this means you) who are "supporting" me (if you call threats, dares, and reverse psychology partnered with soul-deep, unflagging encouragement "supporting"), my Nanowrimo word count to date is 441.

And for those of you who are have asked about the costumes, I finished both of them. In time, even. Will post pictures. And have not lost more weight since the initial 5 lb. drop, but have not gained back any either. Still no progress in that cure-for-cancer thing, though.

There's always tomorrow. One hopes, anyway.

Head Above Water. Just.

I'm working on the novel. A little.

Mostly, I'm working on making from day to day as gracefully as I can. I mean respectfully, optimistically, and with dignity. As opposed to growling, snapping and whining at myself and the nearest target (unfortunately usually my immediate family).

This sounds so pathetic. I mean, I'm not in Iraq. I don't have cancer. Life is in general so good. I have no serious complaints. My problems are petty, middle-class problems.

But here's what seems to have happened. AGAIN. I seem to have bitten off more than I can chew.

I somehow (while sober, mind you) signed up to absolutely accomplish the following, all in the same 2 weeks:
Finish the novel
Lose 10 pounds
Lead training sessions at work (I have finally created my first PowerPoint presentation!)
Make not 1 but 2 costumes

(The last of these necessitated unpacking my mother's sewing machine and then finding the foot pedal - which itself took 3 hours - and experiencing again, more deeply, that loss. Grieving alone seems to still be a full-time background-process job - a unix geek could do a PID of my brain & heart & find all sorts of interesting stuff there.)

This is on top of the usual working fulltime, running the kids to gymnastics & dance & riding, and the meetings for school & the Nutcracker rehearsals, and preparation for an upcoming (and very cool, yet to be blogged) Red Tent retreat for the girls in R's class.

I bit off too much, and I'm paying the price for it. And writing about it exorcises the stress, but still. How many times will I have to learn this lesson?

At least once more, apparently.

What do you mean I haven't blogged?

I can't blog.
I'm too busy finishing the first draft of my novel.
Somebody thinks I can't finish it by Nov. 1st, in time to start another 50,000 words.

Oh, ye of little faith, I say.

Ptttthhh to ye, I say.

What I learned this week

How to sew the strap on ballet slippers.

R has decided to drop gymnastics and take up ballet.

She had 3 words to report back after the first "drop in" night for the beginner teen/adult class (which they said she could attend even though she's 12):

"Sign me up."

So I will. Clearly, both my daughters have an interest in dance that goes beyond what I felt for the art form as a child.

When I was little - maybe 4 or 5 - my mother signed me up for a ballet class. I fought extreme shyness every lesson in order to go, but not because I wanted to dance. Instead, I went back for the brief storytime that was a part of each class, when the instructor would tell an installment of the Nutcracker to all the squirmy little girls gathered in a spill of pink tulle around her on the floor.

What I didn't realize was that the story was just a hook to get us to come back. I didn't expect that it would actually end, and that there would be no Sheherazade-like continuation of the entertainment. Once Clara came home, and I saw that it was going to be all dance and no plot from then on out, I refused to go back.

I think I've learned since then that sometimes life is the story, though. If only you look for it. I mean the students, and the teacher, and the chalky smell of the studio, and the way the mirror was a little warped - all those things were the real story. The Nutcracker was a red herring, nothing more than a plot element that drove this particular character away and into another direction.

Sewing the strap on the ballet slipper while S chatters. Having R grin and say, "Sign me up!" That's the story right now.

Squirrel pox!

It's good to know that someone cares about the Squirrel Nutkin's descendents, the little red squirrels in Britain.

Apparently, they're reintroducing drays of them to Yorkshire from a reserve in the Welsh island of Anglesey (aka Ynys Môn) to boost the population in the face of the evil, potentially pox-ridden American grey squirrels that are the scourge of the trees in Britain.

See the story of the reintroduction here.

And more about the folks who are trying to save them, The Friends of the Anglesey Red Squirrels, here.

You can also read about it in Welsh, if you'd like.

Stolen meme

I'm shamelessly grabbing this from Trey's blog. That's what he gets for commenting on mine.

Two Words:

1. Explain what ended your last relationship.
Ended? Ended?

2. When was the last time you shaved?
This morning

3. What were you doing this morning at 8 a.m.?
Calming customers

4. What were you doing 15 minutes ago?
Reading blogs

5. Are you any good at math?
Balanced checkbook

6. Your prom night?
Didn't go

7. Do you have any famous ancestors?
Mayflower passenger

8. Have you had to take a loan out for school?
Fortunately no

9. Do you know the words to the song on your myspace profile?
Resisting Myspace

10. Last thing received in the mail?
junk mail

11. How many different beverages have you had today?
Only three

12. Do you ever leave messages on people's answering machine?
Of course

13. Who did you lose your CONCERT virginity to?
John Denver

14. Do you draw your name in the sand when you go to the beach?
Prefer anonymity

15. What's the most painful dental procedure you've had?
Deep cleaning

16. What is out your back door?
Best intentions

17. Any plans for Friday night?
Dinner guests

18. Do you like what the ocean does to your hair?
Mostly, yes

19. Have you ever received one of those big tins of 3 different popcorns?
Sadly, yes

20. Have you ever been to a planetarium?
Mais ouis

21. Do you re-use towels after you shower?
Within reason

22. Some things you are excited about?
Sleeping tonight

23. What is your favorite flavor of JELLO?
Prefer dirt

24. Describe your keychain(s)?
Just essentials

25. Where do you keep your change?
Red wallet

26. When was the last time you spoke in front of a large group of people?
Church service

27. What kind of winter coat do you own?
Black pea

28. What was the weather like on your graduation day?
Apparently forgettable

29. Do you sleep with the door to your room open or closed?
Sleep? Sleep?

Still here

Just a post to say I'm here, and although I know better by now than to make promises I can't keep, I'm downright giddy because S's school days are an hour longer starting today. This means an hour of time alone at home 4 days a week (early release Thursday doesn't count). An hour I've never had before!

It will be tempting to sleep, or run, or buy groceries unencumbered by kids during that hour, but instead I plan to use it to write, and that includes blogging.

And there was much rejoicing.

Call me crazy

Today while R went for a long hike with friends at on a Pt. Reyes trail, and D went for his weekly gaming marathon at his friend's house, S and I spent some quality time at the fabric store.

We picked out a bright cheerful green cotton duck for new livingroom curtains. (Well, ok, it's lime, but that beats the drab, musty forest green velvet we've had there, and I need the change.)

We also -thanks to a sale and my second daughter's incredible mind-bending powers - bought the pattern and fabric for her to be a witch this Halloween. Keep in mind that I don't really, actually, sew. Much. Curtains I feel I can do. But the last time I tried to sew a whole Halloween costume was that turtle-thing we made for R when she was one. We were still hot-gluing as she toddled out the door. And all I really got out of the experience was a headache, lots of tears (mine), and, about five years later, a poem. Which, on balance, isn't that bad, but still.

S was so excited about the project that she insisted on carrying the fabric to the car and holding it all the way home. When we had just walked through the door, she said, "Mom? I'm just asking. Are you going to start on my costume now? I'm just asking."

"I'm just asking," is her new tactic for staving off a quick "no" to any number of unreasonable requests. It's the sweet dotted swiss ribbon she ties around her manipulative questions.

"Not tonight," I told her.

I'm just saying.

The end of a long week

When you work Sunday through Saturday, it's like some kind of blessing to live until the end of the week. I'm glad I've arrived.

Because hope springs eternal, this will be the post for Sept. 19th!

This will be the post for Sept. 18th!

Birthday shout out #4

How many Virgos are there in my life?
There can't be too many, apparently.

Today is Suzanne's birthday. And though from the sound of her blog post, it could hardly have been a worse day, I'm wishing her a happy year.

Or, as my grandmother always said, "And many happy returns of the day!"

Birthday shout out #3

Today was D's birthday. So much more to say about that - but it will have to wait.
Sorry about the tease...

What's not to love?

Friday and payday - whoo-hoo!

Birthday shout out #2

Today is Clare's birthday.
Clare is so cool. She is Super-mama, super friend, a true Christian in all the best senses of the word.
And even though she has the nerve to stay in another state and not move closer to where I live, I can forgive her that. Because she's so dang lovable, that's why. Happy Birthday Clare!

Birthday shout out #1

Jen's birthday today. Jen doesn't read blogs as a rule, and for a very good reason. She doesn't quite understand why one would read about what one's friends are doing when one can just have a conversation instead. I sometimes - especially when I'm over a week behind in writing little bits about little nothings - completely understand her point of view.

Happy birthday anyway, Jen!

Patch Tuesday

Those of us who do not use Windows products may not know about this. Even those of us who do use Windows may not be aware that the second Tuesday of any month is the day when Microsoft traditionally releases its security patches.

That would be today.

I didn't know about this fact, and I have a Windows machine at home, and help people with crashed PC drives all day long at work. (Those of you savvy sysadmin types who are reading this blog entry, please excuse my ignorance.)

And while any Wikipedia article is likely to have a bias based on who wrote it, I also found this quote interesting:

Some system administrators have also been known to call this day "Black Tuesday."

Those system administrators. Such kidders.

Of course, one thing leads to another on the internet. Did you know how many things the phrase "Black Tuesday" refers to? See the above Wikipedia entry for more details. Not the luckiest day of the week, apparently.

9/11/06, 5 years on

S wanted to know why I put the US flag up today, and why the neighbors were flying theirs. I wasn't sure what to tell her. I opted for a vague outline: five years ago, some people did some bad things that hurt a lot of other people way over on the other side of the country. I said we were remembering what happened, and thinking about the people who lost loved ones that day. I said it was a show of support.

Part of me wanted to say nothing at all about any of it, because it was so outside her experience, and I didn't want to scare her, or suggest that all was not well with the world. Besides, she was preoccupied by getting ready to go to a new gymnastics class with other people she didn't know. 9/11 was not on her mind.

At the same time, I wanted to stop everything, sit her down, and tell her how violence breeds violence, and that sometimes leaders whose office you respect can make decisions that you don't agree with.

But last night I had a dream about the rapture. S and I found ourselves floating, flying a little above ground while other things - crazy things, like fish and dolphins and ships and planes - fell from the sky. Some people were shooting heavenward, some were running in panic. I was trying to figure out what was happening, and what we should do - pray? find the rest of the family? try to stay? try to leave more quickly? - when I was awoken by S coming into our room out of the blue because she was scared and couldn't sleep.

"I'm sorry," I explained to her, knowing as I got up that my alarm was due to go off any minute anyway. "I had a dream and you were in it, so I bet that kept you from sleeping." At 3:40am, this made perfect sense to me.

"I dreamt we were flying," I told her, tucking her back in after a trip to the bathroom and the obligatory sip of water. What do we tell our children? What do we keep from them?

"We were flying," I said, "and it was really cool."

Sunday in the Park with friends

So, after we returned home from camping, we quickly cleaned up & went to celebrate our friend's 2 year birthday at a new local park. (Everybody say, "ELMO CAKE!!!")

After the party, some of us took a 2 hour nap. I might have been one of the guilty (but eventually well-rested parties).

The day was uneventful apart from that. There's something lovely about late-day puttering Sunday, especially if it wards off the pre-work week blues. It helps me to remember that intense productivity is not the only way to peace of mind.

Camping, finally

It was only one night, but we did manage to pack up all the gear and sleeping bags and more food than we'd normally need for a week - just in case - and take ourselves, said gear, and the tent to China Camp for a camping trip with other families from R's class.

We had a lovely time chatting with other parents & R's teacher while eating a gourmet potluck (including slices of mozzarella with home grown tomatoes and basil, fresh grilled vegetables, and roughy for some of the adults). The campfire skits presented by the 11 year olds (2 boys, 2 girls) were more alarming than entertaining - barnyard humor at it's pre-teen finest. (Now *they* would probably like Better Off Dead, even if they didn't grow up in the 80's.) But the kids had so. much. fun.

I love sleeping under the stars, and slept well - even, reportedly, no snoring! (which is pretty amazing, for me). In the morning, we packed up and came home for our next social engagement. But that's Sunday's post, which I have yet to post-write and pre-date....

Friday

This was Friday; nothing special to report, just preparing for the weekend camping trip and being so glad the work week, even though abbreviated by the holiday, was over.

D. and I, having independently been told by friends that we had to watch Better Off Dead, managed only 5 minutes of it before giving up, apparently immune to the same rip-roaring humor that had our friends laughing until they were crying or spitting out their drinks. It was lost on us, and you know? life is too short to watch a movie that does nothing for you.

Instead, we watched Reign of Fire, a Road Warrior-Dragon Slayer hybrid that, especially compared to Better Off Dead, completely did it for me. I must confess that I really do dig post-apocalyptic survivalist movies. I think they appeal to both my fatalistic inclinations and my admiration for determination in the face of adversity. Besides, Christian Bale follows in the tradition of Richard Burton, Sir Anthony Hopkins, and Ioan Gruffudd of being Welsh born. Cymru Am Byth!

Pick your vice

You know, there are days when a full-time working, dieting, already neurotic writer wannabe mom can feel so completely defeated by it all (and in particular by her seven year old) that she starts to pine for the elegant, if unacceptable, coping mechanism from her teenage years.

I mean, I know it's been a hard afternoon when I'm wondering why it was that I promised God and my best friends when I was 18 that I wouldn't cut myself again. What was I thinking? Obviously, I wasn't figuring that life could get this hard. Chunk of coal into diamond. Heart attack waiting to happen. I ignore the oh-so-tempting idea of release, and transference, and external-manifestation-of-internal pain, that a small cut might bring. It's not like I ever did it a lot back then, and it sure ain't gonna happen again now.

A good sit-down meal with the kids, one bottle of hard apple cider, and a try at "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" on the fiddle, and I now can see that there's nothing all that wrong, really. Blame the struggle on the full moon. Blame it on my less-than-5-hours-a-night sleep habit. Or my daughter not having enough lunch before gymnastics. Blame it on whatever, but don't blame hormones (because I always refuse to do that, and besides, it wouldn't apply right now anyway...).

A good friend recently suggested that although I no longer cut myself, since I do still have the impulse rise up from time to time (I liken it to an addiction, an alcoholic still occasionally craving a drink), it might be important to figure out what it is that gets me to that feeling, so I can address that. Ok. Good point. (Because, you know, I'm not self-reflective enough.)

Me, me. It's all about me. Unless it's about you and you're being about me.

Is that the song that the universe sings, from mitochondria to red giant? Or is the universe singing "You. All. Us. One." ?


Damn. That was a good bottle of cider.

Check, check, check

up before 4am: check
make kids' lunches: check
get to work: check
work: check
home to tidy: check
pick up S from school: check
home visit from S's teacher (the girls' teachers from this charter school come to the homes of each student. I think it's to better understand the environment the child is coming from, to better understand the child, and how they learn, etc. I like the policy, myself. It especially makes sense because these teachers follow their kids from grade to grade for 4 years - so this woman will have S from 1st through 4th grade!) Anyway: check
got R from school: check
fun playdate with friends: check
make dinner: check
go to class meeting while D and girls go to another class meeting: check
come home for online writers group: check
blog: check
sleep:
sleep:
sleep:

hmmm. - seems I have some unfinished business to which I must attend

Check, please!

A day late, a blogpost short

If I keep back-dating these posts, I'll very soon reach the "what's the point?" point.

But I have enough of a stubborn streak (no, wait. I think it's pride) that I won't give up my latest "post-every-day-for-a-year" plan that easily.

The day was run-of-the-mill middle-age, middle-class routine: work, picking up the girls at school, dropping off someone else's kid who missed the bus to daycare, a trip to the library, a quick workout at the gym, home to make dinner, bedtime for the kids, a quick trip to the store to look (in vain) for just the right shade of new curtains, back home for a half hour of Friends viewing with D, collapse into bed before writing.

But the long list of what-I-did's doesn't tell the full story; the dark silver and shadow of the oak trees that grow next to the gym parking lot, the sweet matter-of-fact pre-grownup conversations between the kids in the backseat, or the trademark teasing banter at the dinner table, the light of the moon trying to pry its way through the temporary curtains and reach the bed. That's what it doesn't tell...

Home Depot Must Love Us

We spent a mess of money on new doors, new blinds for the new bedroom, wood for planter boxes and shoji screens, and wasp spray tonight.

If we feel overwhelmed by the bill for the upgrades, or by the work that we (read: D.) will have to do to make the home improvements, I suppose we can always apply the wasp spray to ourselves....

Sunday review

Okay, here's a bloggy snapshot of a typical weekend day in review...of no interest to anyone but me, really, but still in keeping with my desire to post an entry for every day that I'm forty. (Which is a pretty arbitrary but nonetheless adequate excuse for reintroducing the discipline of writing daily...)

The day went something like this:

*slept in (ah! how nice)
*went for a much-needed jog (had dreamed I was running, a sure sign that 4 days without it is too many)
*went to the grocery store (alone! another luxury!)
*D left for his weekly gaming session
*had friends over for a playdate (for both the girls and me)
*took R to a slumber party while my friend watched the little girls
*the friends left, & because S had been so crabby & whiny all day,
*I forced her to have a "rest time" which started with us finishing The Wide Window & ended in a 2+ hour nap (for both of us)*woke from nap, went shopping for new curtains (no luck),
*had dinner out at Applebee's (just right)
*then bedtime routine, and more sleep (ah! how nice)

And there's one more weekend day to go, with the chance of even more sleep. I love sleep. I love three day weekends.

Miss Malapropism

Judging by some of her latest word replacements, I think we may need to get S's hearing tested, even though it's her sister who's had chronic hearing problems over the years.

The other night at dinner, D. was eating spanakopita, and S. asked him if it was good. She wasn't having any, herself, because she doesn't like "Spanish coconut."

Today when I went to pick her up from a playdate, her friend marched into the room with a toy medical kit and warned me, "Your daughter is really sick." S. staggered in behind her and leaned against a table for support "Yes," she agreed in a dramatically weak voice. "I have Charlotte Fever."

(Whew, I think now. That's serious, but at least it's not Emily Disease or Branwell Complex.)

During the playdate, our youngest must have also been explaining the (misleadingly alarming) heritage of our dog. Albion's mother was an amazingly regal half-wolf dog owned by Kate. His father, as far as anyone knows, was a pitbull mix from the neighborhood. Our dog is therefore part this, part that, and not necessarily the kind of mix that you advertise to parents whose children are playing at your house, even though the reality is that he's 95% dopey noodlebrain, completely harmless, and wonderful with kids.

But S. apparently was sharing Albion's lineage with her friend today, because the friend's mother said (with a suppressed smile), "So. Your daughter tells me that your dog is part wolf and part pimple."

After we had a good laugh, I said, "Sure, he is." And sue me, but I just could not resist adding, "We call him the pussy pup."

Three days!

A three day weekend is especially sweet after one has had a one day weekend, as I just did.

The plan for tomorrow is for us to remove the single pane window in our bedroom and replace it with a double-pane window that his sister gave us - something like three years ago.

Actually, the plan is for D. to remove the window and for me to provide moral support and supervision of our kids and any other friends that are here. I never, ever, thought the word "playdate" would become so central to my existence. Does this mean that our girls will have full social calendars for the rest of their lives?

How does that happen?

I mean, genetically, do two introverts combined always breed only extroverts, like two negatives making a positive? How could a loner plus a loner equal children who already have more friends in elementary school than their parents have had, combined, in forty years? Go figure. Or maybe it's the fact that D. and I are Virgos, while our children are a loving Libra and a partying Leo, respectively. (btw, check out Suzanne's site for more horoscope musings and a suspiciously flattering birthday photo of yours truly with the Writers Group gals.)

Must go. My vanity is showing. And the weekend has begun!

Lost in the Now. Or just lost.

So I completely missed, as in forgot until many hours after the fact, two appointments within two days: an online writing session, and a hearing test for R. These are appointments that I was fully conscious of 24 hours before they were to take place. I'd talked to people about them, I'd envisioned myself there. Maybe I envisioned myself too well, and crossed them off some mental checklist as done.

But where I once would have spent a long time (longer than it's taking to compose this blog entry, email my writer friends and reschedule with the Dr. office) agonizing over why I'd been so stupid or forgetful, today I'm pretty much leaving it at this: Oops.

What I did with my time instead of these appointments was to post a blog entry and watch an episode of Friends with D. last night, and supervise the only slightly controlled mayhem of three eleven year olds (R. and the two most...um... energetic boys in her class) and S today. They literally chased each other around the house screaming, they did their homework, they had snack, and we walked to a nearby park with Albion the dog and explored the creek. The boys were fascinated by some elaborate graffiti under an overpass as the creek, wishing for a few drops of paint in the very empty spray cans they found ("But it's art!" they protested in futile earnestness when I called them away). The girls looked for frogs. The dog was in heaven, padding around in the shallow water and smelling a gazillion green and growing dog-detectable smells.

For dinner later, S. and I made pizza from scratch (Trader Joe's did provide the dough). The boys were delivered to their respective mothers. I crashed when the girls did (D. had to go back to work tonight), and have only gotten up to write this entry.

You know, the entry where I say that I so easily let it go that I'd missed those appointments, but where I nonetheless find it so important to write about what I did instead.

Linux convert

So about two weeks ago, I installed Linux (the Ubuntu version) on the secondary ide drive in my PC. This was toward the tail-end of a online Unix class I took to re-acquaint myself with vi editor and other the pleasures of line commands. I know. I'm a geek. But it's all relative. I'm only a geek compared to some. On a daily basis, I am surrounded by people who have more geekiness in their left pinky than I shall ever embody.

I've always preferred DOS over Windows. But Linux has DOS trumped.

I'm only in the earliest stages of playing with Ubuntu and have not yet fine tuned it, but so far, so good. Thanks anyway, Mr. Gates, but I think I've found something better for the non-Mac machine in our house. In honor of my latest toy, I've got a link to Ubuntu on the sidebar. Any other takers?

Pirate for Congress

Some of you may have already seen this out there, but my coworkers have been all abuzz lately about James Hill's run for Congress in Iowa. This is a candidate who is willing to expose his personal history and private convictions (or lack thereof) to public scrutiny. He's apparently someone who is so fed up by the corruption of politicians, he includes choice phrases in his site like, "Every day I fight the urge to drink, debauch women out of wed-lock and beat people on the street. One urge I do not have is to sell myself to the highest bidder."

He may offend many, but his honesty and ability to stand tall and say, "ARRRRR!" just in time for the upcoming Talk Like a Pirate Day have won the admiration of others.

And speaking of the admiration of others (not coy, I), I was blessed this evening by the inspirational and inspired gifts and really, really good chocolate from my colleagues Julia & Suzanne. I call it a writer's group. And it is that. But it's so much more as well! Thanks for spoiling me, gals.

For Nothing

As my sister says, I've reached the big "four nothing," or 40.
And you know, what? That's okay.

I've had more than one forty-plus friend tell me about the liberation that can come with reaching a milestone birthday like this - where you find that in spite of your keenest aspirations and best intentions, you haven't, after all, conquered the world or found a cure for cancer or written the Great American Novel by the time you were forty. And so the pressure is off now.

Whew.
Thank goodness for that.

It's been a splendid day. Just enough people acknowledged my birthday to make me feel special (which I love) without feeling like the Center of Attention (which I abhor).



Here's a shot for posterity, taken in Las Vegas at the end of last month, while at a tech conference for work. Dinner out at Nobu sushi. Yum.




Had sushi again tonight, followed by the obligatory birthday chocolate. The girls are in bed, and I'm ready to settle down to watch an episode of Friends with D. - we've come to the sitcom only now, via DVDs, having never had TV while it ran. And it's just plain silly fun for us, a good way to close out the day.

Onward with the journey...

The Gift

So, I realize that every day is a gift, but today feels like a real pre-birthday whiz-bang package all tied up with a big bow and a card with my name in fancy calligraphy.

I took the day off work even though I have pretty much NO personal time left because it's the girls' first day of school. R. is now in 6th grade, S. is in 1st. D. took the requisite First Day of School photo, which I will post as soon as I can borrow his camera to upload the shot.

And although I could have gone back to work for a few hours, I'm taking the entire day off instead. To do whatever, including (in no particular order):
jettison more paperwork
write (case in point)
go to the gym
garden
send my sister her late birthday present
balance my checkbook, pay the bills, fold the laundry, mow the lawn...

I know what some of you are thinking. Some of you are thinking that today should be about doing whatever I want, not about doing chores. Others of you already know that those "chores" are just what I do want to do.

I remember as a child that my friends would call me to come over and play whenever their mothers told them to clean their rooms. It was because they knew that I really liked organizing other people's stuff, turning chaos into cosmos, a disaster into some form of order. (And dear Suzy Woodward, wherever you are, I still remember that 4-year old Nilla Wafer we found in your Uncle Wiggly tree stump display.)

I'm not one to scrub the toilet daily. I'm not great about dusting and vacuuming. But I like things tidy, and although some mess is "good" for me, a lesson that the little things don't matter but relationships with people do - so have the guests over even if the house isn't clean, anyway - too much mess crosses the line into being just plain bad for my psyche.

So I'm going to pretend I'm visiting my friend's house, and that I have no weird (and unnecessary) attachments to the piles of papers everywhere, the travel guides from my grandmother's trips to Alaska and Greece in the '70s, the receipts from Christmas purchases ten years ago, the multiple drafts of the same short story. I'm going to have the recycle bin and a shredder and a good cup of coffee and I'm going to have some FUN, blast it all!

I'm also going to write down the goals I have before I reach the age of 40. I have until Monday to reach them, so I'll make them realistic.

Scratch off "marathon" but add "say no to babysitting someone else's child once a week for free for the third year in a row."

Omit "get a book of poetry published" but add "compile the manuscript and see where the holes are, and write one more poem to fill one of those holes."

Nevermind "weigh 150 pounds." Stick to "continue to eat healthily and exercise regularly, and be happy with the slow road to fit."

Instead of "finish remodel of bedroom" I'm putting down "find the bedroom floor."

I'm replacing "dig out adobe for path through front landscaping" with "water the vegetable garden."

Bird by bird, as Anne Lamott would say.

Meme thang

Ok, so I found this because I read Julie who discovered it through Josh.
If you'd like to see mine, it's here. Please feel free to contribute. I'll reciprocate.

R. is off at camp in the sierras until Saturday. We've received 2 postcards: one to the dog: "Bark Bark! I [heart] you all" and one to her sister, on the top of which she gives me instructions to have S. read: "I love you so much! Love, love R."

I guess we can see where parents rate in the whole ranking of correspondence. But I'm so glad to hear from her. I checked carefully, too, and there was no "I hate camp and you are cruel heartless parents for sending me here and you must come get me right now or consider the entirety of my childhood one long Oprah special in the making" anywhere to be found on the pre-stamped, pre-addressed card.

I've said it before. The world is rife with small mercies.

Gratuitous Celebrity Obsession Post

Some of you may already know this, but Jean Reno just re-married. And it wasn't to me.

Dang.

What was he thinking?

I mean, HELLO?
Pick me! Pick me!

Ahem.

Don't get me wrong.

If Jean Reno really showed up at my door and proposed to me on bended knee I'd refuse his offer, even if he had a diamond ring for me.

Because I don't like diamonds.

And. Okay, yes. And because I've already got someone better than he'll ever be. And I wouldn't trade my current, only, forever husband for ANYONE else.

But still. I wouldn't have minded the chance to turn down the proposal.

Let's see if I remember how this works...

So, I think the idea is that I get over the "it has to be perfect" or "it will take too long" whine and dawdle shuffle, and move straight to the "put your fingers to the keyboard and post a blog entry" sashay.

Like, before yet another month makes an appearance, already.

It's been hard to blog. It's been hard to do a lot of things, although I manage them well enough that I'm not sure I need to officially complain.

Except that I feel like I'm off my game, frankly. As though I just can't think straight.

I wonder if it's possible that I'm in some sort of perpetual fog because the death of a close family member does that to you. I'm hoping that's the case. I've certainly heard now from a number of people that the inability to concentrate, and general confusion, are very common symptoms of grief. And it's not like I'm talking about London pea-soup fog, or tule fog, exactly. Sometimes it's only a wispy haze. But I definitely feel impaired. More than usual, that is.

I think.

In fact, what's tricky about this fogginess is that I'm not at all sure that it isn't the way I've always been. Maybe I've been cloudy-brained for a long, long time, and I'm actually only clear enough now to recognize it. Maybe this is me better than I've been because I actually now recognize how bad off I am. Sound confusing? It is to me, too.

So I'm giving myself whatever time it takes, hoping (because I am by nature an optimist, in spite of being paranoid at the same time) that I will pull out of this into the clear sunlight and be able to count to ten again without stopping at six to wonder what I came into the kitchen to get.

And speaking of paranoid - thanks to Julia for the compliment. Tonight after our writers group meeting, when we couldn't set the alarm at first because of a fault with an unknown area in the building, I'd offered to scout out the dark, secluded warehouse section of the place in case someone had propped open a door or something - since we had, after all, seen cars drive through the otherwise empty parking lot earlier, and people could have been casing the joint. I had even suggested I could take of my boots so I would be in my socks, and better able to run if necessary. And Julia, bless her, said to me, "I like the way you think of everything."

That's just about the nicest way to call someone paranoid that I can imagine.

The rough outline of the last month (or at least the highlights):

S. turned 7 on Friday. The same day, my oldest brother turned 47, and D's father turned 76. And that's only 3/5ths of the Leos in our immediate family. Much royalty.

S. had a roller skating party. I never knew I had it in me to disco dance to The YMCA while skating.

I was in Las Vegas last week. My first real non-slots gambling experience. Perhaps worth a blog entry, but perhaps not as worthy to write about as my Road Warrior post-apocalyptic fantasies about what would happen to Vegas if the power failed.

I wrote a new poem. Or at least the first few drafts. (Not related to Vegas. Or the YMCA.)

D and I are remodeling our bedroom to look like a traditional Japanese room - complete with a new closet with custom shelves behind hand-made (D-made) shoji screens, a platform bed, tatami mats, and lots of space and light, sans clutter. It's full of clutter mid-process, of course, which is hard to live with, but it'll be a slice of Japan in Northern California when we're done.

Sound true?

So Josh tagged me to write 8 THINGS about myself, but it's easier to paste this little quiz engine response than to actually put thought and energy into prose. So the 8 THINGS will have to wait, and here's this for now. It might be a *little* tiny bit true, I suppose. Maybe.

Your Birthdate: August 28

You have a Type A personality so big it makes other Type A's shrink away in shame. You never shy away from adversity - and you love to tackle impossible problems. Failure is not an option for you, and more than a few people are put off by your ego. You tend to be controlling, and you hate leaving anything up to chance. Your strength: Your bold approach to life Your weakness: You don't accept help Your power color: Bronze Your power symbol: Pyramid Your power month: October

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

The only thing is, it appears that this quiz spits out the same blurb for whatever DAY of the month you enter, regardless of the month. A little disappointing. It's not the all-seeing Oracle I thought it was. (But it does confirm the fact that I don't really like leaving things up to chance...)

The Quick Recap

Consider this a post card scribbled on a bus between stops in a journey.

I've had a lot of proud-mama time lately. The girls have between them performed a gymnastics show, a school play, a ballet recital, and a horse show - and they did beautifully in all of them.

They're out of school for the summer, and are wrapping up their first two weeks of swim lessons.

I'm training a bit for another half marathon, which means I spend more of the week jogging & sweating.

I still write when I'm able (or am compelled by Writer's Group deadlines) to do so, and have a poem coming out in the next issue of The American Poetry Journal.

Tomorrow, my husband's sister is getting married. The girls are flower girls in the wedding. Tonight is the rehearsal dinner followed by a luau, complete with Polynesian dancers. The girls haven't even tried on the dresses that someone my sister-in-law knows has made for them, so if the fitting doesn't go well, there will be some night-before-the-wedding sewing, I'm afraid.

The day after the wedding, family from out of state (and out of country - an aunt and cousin from Montreal) will come to the house for a party. Is the house ready? No. Is the yard weeded? No. Has the menu been drawn up? Not really. Do I care? Well, I'm trying not to.

Also on my mind is that the party is on Sunday, and Monday I'm to be in Hemet to meet my oldest brother and sister to sort through Mom's things. I'm taking D's big truck down so I can bring back some furniture and boxes. My other brother, in Colorado, has a container that will be delivered to Mom's house for the few things he wants of what she'd left to him. The distribution of belongings has been very kind & gentle & civil. I just wish my siblings' schedules had enabled us to time it better, considering the frenzy of the next 3 days!

Yes, I'm Still Here

For what it's worth, I've thought about blogging.

That's all for now.

More later today.

Honest.

Mom

This is the post I didn't want to write, as though putting it off kept at bay the reality that has, in spite of it all, been sinking in.

I offer sincere apologies to anyone who is only now learning this news. My mom, Allison Fadeley Blauer, passed away April 23rd. An online obit can be found through Legacy.com's service for either the Denver Post or the Post Enterprise. (Search for last name Blauer.)

This is the first of what will be a forever of Mother's Days without Mom. A white carnation Mother's Day. And it's not just Mother's Day that will remind me of the loss of my mother and friend. It's those other days, those other moments, that I expect will sideswipe me with grief. I have tons of great memories of my mom to call up, but the tricky part, the part that will pang, will be all the future memories that I won't share with her.



There is plenty of writing that has already come out of this death. It's personal, it's my way of working through these early stages of mourning. It's not fit for public consumption.

But I couldn't put off updating my blog any longer. This is the first step of me moving away from the point of demarcation her death brings and into this next phase of my life.


So here's to the woman who raised me and my three siblings with a love that we're only now starting to fathom. To someone who was able to laugh even when times were extraordinarily hard. Mom was quiet and humble to a fault, and the one characteristic that those who knew her unanimously recall is that she was a "nice person" (which is, as my brother pointed out, a terribly undervalued virtue these days). She showed me what loving unconditionally means. She showed me the strength of finding humor in adversity. She spoiled my kids rotten. And I will miss her, every day, for a long, long time.


















Nothing was more important to Mom than her children.






She held each of us when we were small, and her death has brought us together as adults and held us again, in the space left by her leaving. We spent last weekend celebrating her life at her home with family, friends and neighbors. On Sunday, we gave her ashes to the Pacific Ocean according to her will. Her handwriting in the will shows that her first thought was to have her remains scattered "in the Colorado Mts" but she had scratched this out and modified it to read a Southern California beach. We dropped daises and roses in the waves. We saw sea lions sunning themselves on a buoy. A single dolphin splashed like a messenger in and out of the water as the boat returned to the harbor.







It was the first time the four of us children have been together for more than a day in nearly thirty years. Whatever differences we might have, we're united in this love, this loss.

Easter Eve

The single parent Easter bunny is hitting the hay.

After 4 hours in the car, and several more hours at the nursing home interrupted only by a very long walk in the neighborhood & dinner out (where they had to continue to behave), then grocery shopping and dying eggs after 9:30 pm, I think the girls were asleep ten seconds after their heads hit their pillows.

I'm going to follow suit.

Haven't worked on novel in days, owe emails to everyone & haven't even gone to look at my email account since yesterday mid-day. But I'm going to Scarlett O'Hara it, and leave it for tomorrow. Until then....

South for the holiday

The girls and I will leave shortly for Southern California, and as I don't expect to have internet access between now and tomorrow, I am posting something now.

SOMETHING.

There's been DRAMA! at work and DRAMA! at the girls' school. It will be nice to get away and spend time with family, and with the familial drama to which I have become accustomed.

In case you were wondering

"ACHTUNG!

Setdownthis may actually be a spider-human hybrid

Username:

From Go-Quiz.com


Thanks to Kate for the link to the above fun. I know a few Spidy fans who might appreciate the random results. And please note that the link on the sidebar to Kate's blog has been updated, and that I've added a link to Chris, Deneene & Wilder's blog. I am fortunate enough to know some truly amazing people who are living truly authentic lives. And although I am just not someone who has the habit (yet?) of spending much time in the blogosphere, let alone much time online (or even on the computer) once I'm home, I've got links to blogs that are great reads.

Enjoy!

And L, you're right. The importance of sushi for last year's work outweighs future sushi anyday.

Happy soggy April

April is National Poetry Month.

I'm thinking I should find a few words to rhyme with "deluge."
There's no end of the rain in sight.

National Poetry Month. Hmm. We mark days so that everyone will recognize them. But I think it's a little ironic that we should take something we honor, or something that looms large in our minds, and go to great lengths to have it officially recognized. I mean, If you have to remind people to remember it, how great can it be? I understand that we don't want future generations to forget what we know. I understand this personally, even. For example, we have daguerreotypes of relatives on my mother's father's side of the family whom I may never identify. They were surely important to someone while they lived, and probably for a generation or more after they lived. And they each have a story to tell. But it's lost because we did not honor or commemorate it. But I'm not suggesting we should have a National Day or Month to recognize my great-great-grand relatives.

Actually, this late at night, I'm not sure *what* I'm suggesting.

But a truly EVIL coworker double-dog dared me to blog daily for a year for another sushi dinner. This is not the same coworker who dared me into doing the same in 2005.

Will I give in to the pressure....?

It may be like child birth. Nature allows you to forget the agony so that you'll be SUCKERED into pushing another incongruously large, screaming animal out of your pain-wracked body. The hurt fades (for some mothers, anyway) and you find yourself ordering another round of the hair of the dog that bit you.

So I'm not exactly picking up the gauntlet (see, Julie, you're not the only person to mix metaphors with wild abandon) - but I am looking at it.

See the gauntlet.
"Pick me up!" say the gauntlet.
"I dare you!" says the gauntlet.
"I double dog dare you!" says the gauntlet.

I nudge the gauntlet with my toe.



Did I mention that my coworker was EVIL?

More progress

I returned yesterday morning from spending three full days with Mom. I got her moved from the hospital to a rehab center, aka a "skilled nursing facility" or "SNiF," a name which I personally think should be abandoned, as it's only one letter away from Snuf.

The nursing home is good, though, and the staff for the most part very good. In particular, the physical therapists are excellent. Within two days, mom went from being completely unable to assist us in transferring her from a wheelchair to the passenger seat of my rental car, to being able to walk about twenty feet with a walker - from her room to the dining room where I'd been waiting while she had her PT. After two weeks of inactivity, and weeks before that of declining health and lousy nutrition (she says only jello and orange slices tasted good), she is getting her strength back. The staff seems to know just how to encourage her to work, and just when to back off, when to allow for her weakness or the wound pain.

Much more significantly, she says she actually can imagine getting well now. To me, this is the most optimistic sign. She admitted that even when we'd visited her in February, she hadn't cared about anything. And while in the hospital, she'd felt so bad (and foggy from the drugs), that she had no real will to pull through.

We had some really good talks and lots of laughs while I was there, and Mom emphatically labeled it "such a nice visit."

There's still no saying how well things will continue to go, and I think everyone is "guardedly optimistic." She will always have congestive heart failure (35% functionality, the chart said), and fairly advanced kidney disease (IV), and right now, her wound is deep enough that it's like an anatomy lesson in itself (a whole chunk of muscle is just plain gone, and let me tell you, tendons are really white). But her spirits are so improved, and the time we've spent together was so good (for her, too - not just for me), that I feel like every day she's still around is a bright gift, instead of a roller coaster ride in the dark.

An update on Mom

Thanks to all of you who have offered support and get well wishes for my mother. She was in ICU for a few days last week because of an "incident" with her heart, then she was moved to a telemetry room where they could monitor her to see if she needed to have a defibrillator installed. In the meantime, though, she is not a candidate for surgery of any kind. Her blood pressure has occasionally been very low (80/33, for example), they've given her another 2 pints of blood, and her leg wound is no better (although it's also no worse, thank goodness). They're running more tests (biopsy on the leg, just in case, and the dreaded colonoscopy), and are trying to get her healthier in order to transfer her to a rehab center nursing home, and then later, to do a skin graft. I'm sure she's sick of being in the hospital, but her spirits are better, and her sense of humor is as healthy as ever. I fly down to see her early Thursday morning.

In the last week or so, I've had the great good fortune of a few heart-to-hearts with other women who are going through, or have just gone through, similar health crises with parents. We've talked about the importance of spending time with mom, of communicating with her as often as I can when I can't actually be there in person. We've discussed me talking to the kids about grandma's illness - and about mortality in general. These are obvious things, but I need to hear them. This is a moment in my life when I most need to be *present* but instead find myself using my standard defense mechanism against stress - distraction, distance, and denial. I'm detached, but not in any spiritually healthy way. This self-analysis is a prime example of my MO. Don't be fooled by it. I'm less a writer turning to the craft for comfort than I am a bundle of unfelt, unprocessed emotions. Hiding fluently behind prose.

I mean, I'm nearly 3 years divested from any spiritual system, feeling the need to talk to mom about the possibility of her death, but not knowing what I believe anymore. I wish she were willing to talk about it - about either death or faith. I don't know her current thoughts on either. I plan on broaching the subject when I see her, but for now, we're not missing an opportunity to tell each other how much we love each other. I know that she thinks I'm a wonderful daughter. She knows that I think she's the best mom and grandmother in the world, and the kindest person I have ever met, and that all sorts of people in my life are sharing their love and concern for her. For now, that will have to do, and for now, that's enough.

Unexpected travels

I spent last weekend in southern California, visiting my mother in the hospital. She's still there, and will probably be there for a few more days, but I am back home and going through the usual routines, while I wait to hear how she's doing. It's the waiting, 500 miles away, that is most difficult.

Mom has so many things going on with her, there's no short or simple way to explain why she's in the hospital. Her heart works at about 33%, but that's been the case for 7 years since her bypass surgery. Her kidney function is around 26%, but that's been true for about 2 years. As long as she stayed active - which she did, walking and swimming daily - and as long as she watched her diet, she was fine. A little slow-moving, but trim and happy and for the most part, really fine. What has brought her low is very minor surgery she had at the end of December for a squamous cell on her lower leg which has become a horrible, enormous wound that is excruciatingly painful. I'm told it looks and acts just like a diabetic ulcer (which may well never heal), with the exception that she can feel it, while a diabetic person might not. So she stopped being able to get around, and she was on pain meds that didn't exactly work, and she was too intimated by the pain to care for the wound correctly to begin with, and she had no appetite and didn't eat, and lost 10 pounds that she could ill afford to lose. Then she had another infection they had to locate, and blood loss they had to figure out, and the morphine they put her on for the pain and the 2 pints of blood they gave her helped, but not enough, etc. etc.

Her nurses have been excellent, as have most of the team of doctors (cardiology, nephrologist, wound care specialist, hospital drs). Yesterday, she was transferred to ICU for the first time because she had a cardiac "incident" - either a heart attack, or a response to all the meds she's been on, but she seems better in ICU than she did before. (She has been allowed to eat again, and snuck an "illegal" cell phone call to me from her bed.)

I'm glad I went to visit her, and I hope to go again soon, possibly with R., who really wants to see her. But it's a day-by-day, hour-by-hour wait, now, to see what happens next. This is hard for me, and harder for my sister, who, as primary care giver living near my mom has had to put her life, and the new career she's trying to start, on the back burner while she spends as much of her day as she can with Mom or making arrangements for what happens once she's out of the hospital.

As always, there is so much more to say here, so much more to write (which has always been my best tool for "processing" things), but limited time in which to compose.

So that's all the news, for now.

Dydd Dewi Sant

It is St. David's Day. St. David, the patron saint of Wales. I don't care much one way or another about saints (apart from the fact that we are all saints), but I do care about Wales.

The novel progresses slowly, all too often shoved aside while life gets big and hairy.

I've had about 50 minutes of sleep in the last 41 hours - a 10 minute nap at work this morning, a 40 minute nap this afternoon. I feel like I'm in an altered state, but one not entirely unwelcome. This is what drama queens and crisis junkies crave - the tilting priorities, the teeter-tottering significances, and emotional kaleidoscope. In a sense, you are left with nothing mattering because you really might actually already be dead. Everything is surreal in this way. In another sense, things have never mattered so much, or been so clear. And you want to remember this.
It's probably the exhaustion that makes you drop the baggage and just BE. It would be a great trick to master after a full night's sleep. Come to think of it.

The catalog for the girls' school auction is finished and was printed this afternoon. In case you were wondering why I pulled an all-nighter.

For the first time in seven years, I did not celebrate St. David's day by bringing pastries to work and forcing Welsh words on my colleagues.

My mother's surgery wound is now an ulcer that may take 2 years to heal.
My sister is fried from taking care of her.
My oldest brother is worried that this could turn into hospital bills that he can't afford to help pay for.

I think I will make a business card that states that I am a writer.
I think it will be square.

Vacation approacheth

The girls and I will head out of town in just over a week, with D. to follow later. Off to see family in Southern California and then go to the Magic Kingdom. (Really, what's the most magic about it is that I won't have to plan and cook a meal or answer a phone for 3 days.)

I did survive the half marathon Sunday, and in fact trimmed more minutes off my time. I can now officially run 13.1 miles in under 11 minutes per mile. A personal accomplishment, and best not compared with the runners who do the same distance at twice the speed. However, on the bright side, if I take 5 minutes off my time each of these runs, I figure, by the time I'm 80 or so, I'll be crossing the finish line before I cross the start line.

I have decided that I most likely will NOT try to run a marathon before I'm 40. Or ever. I think the half marathon distance is just about right for me.

What does that mean? That means time spent not training but hanging out with family and friends. Time spent in the garden. Time spent writing. Right? Write.

Culture

You know, it has taken me 5 days to write this tiny post, primarily because I want to give it a longer stretch of time and more depth, more detail. This is something I've seen other bloggers struggle with - one's desire to do something justice coming up hard against one's time constraints - resulting in no post at all rather than a partial or sketchy post.

But since web log silence is not something I want any longer, I'll just give you what I've got.





Last Sunday we had a spontaneous adventure - a trip to the deYoung Museum to see the Hatshepsut Exhibition. We brought one of R's riding buddies to make it more fun for all of us.

After having run 10 miles in the morning (my last long run before Sunday's Half), the walking from parking to the museum, and then all over the museum, and then back to the car, I felt like I'd had my exercise for the week. But the girls were real troopers, and I was gratified to see that S (who just officially turned six-and-a-half) really wanted to know all about all of the Egyptian artifacts.

The older girls' experience with museums had been fairly limited to hands-on childrens' museums like the Exploratorium, so they were a little frustrated by the lack of touchable, experimental exhibits. After we'd been there about 90 minutes and had left the Hatshepsut rooms, R's friend said to me, "You know, I didn't know there's be so much art here."

I pointed out it was, after all, an art museum, which she agreed explained the emphasis.

It was an educational experience, anyway. The older girls, examining the museum's map, insisted that we go to the African rooms. When we got there, and they saw the scores of dark wood carvings with, in many cases, prominent or exaggerated anatomy, there were cries of, "Oh! Don't look at that, S!" and "Don't look at that either!" until they beat a hasty and disillusioned retreat out of the area with hands to the sides of their eyes to avoid any other surprises. I would have happily strolled through slowly with them, reading about the art and discussing it, but they wouldn't hear of it. I explained that people in different parts of the world express themselves artistically in ways that are new to us, and that some other cultures just feel differently about the human body than people in our culture do. I pointed out that different doesn't mean bad - just different. They said they understood all that, and I think they did. But they were still clearly embarrassed as only pre-teen girls can be. Since they had been so hot to see the African art to begin with, I asked them what they thought the rooms would be like, and they admitted they'd been hoping for something that looked like Africa. I think they were expecting to step into a stage setting. Or maybe they were hoping the second floor of the deYoung had a Savannah tucked away in it.

We also made the mistake of starting to enter the photography exhibits, which were even more explicit than the African rooms had been, and weren't going to fly with my underage companions.

The girls were happier to see the 18th and 19th century paintings and portraits - especially because the rooms were more brightly lit. And of course, they really liked the little original Remington bucking bronco statue, although they had comments on the lack of realism (!) in the horse's build and pose.

Jeez. Everyone's a critic.

Well, hello again

I've been told by more than one person (thanks, both of you), that I've thrown off their morning routine in some way because I haven't been blogging. Flattery will get you everywhere.

The latest news from my life is not that riveting, but here it is for what it's worth.

I'm training for the Kaiser Half marathon in San Francisco, which means 3-5 mile runs during the week with interval training when I can, and about 6 miles Saturday and 8-10 miles Sunday. Why? Why, you ask? Because, I tell you. Because I really like food.

The girls are doing their thing in school. Parent teacher conferences were last week, and it's astonishing to learn that both kids, as different as they are in many ways, are described almost identically in terms of behavior by their teachers. Bright, but too talkative. Engaged and focused, but ONLY in what interests them. Thank goodness they're so sweet and lovable in general - I think it offsets the time the teachers have to spend getting them to stay on task. Honestly, I don't know where they get their susceptibility for distractio

Anyway. Where was I? Ah, yes.

D. has been working long days and will probably do so for a while, as the new employee in their 3 man shop spent too many days sick (here, the word "sick" means skiing in Tahoe until you look like a raccoon).

My mom is very, very slowly recovering from having surgery on her leg for a spot of skin cancer. My sister has been taking her to doctor's appointments and buying her groceries and generally trying to help her take care of herself so she can heal. I'd love to be there to help, but it's 500 miles away. I said to J., "I wish I lived closer," and she said wryly, "So do I."

The rain stopped long enough for us to remember that there's a sun out there after all, but today it is back. What a tease.

The novel is still being written.

Ahem. Let me rephrase that.

I am still writing the novel.

Where it took me 1 month to write 8 chapters, it may take me 8 months to write the last 2 chapters. But I still enjoy spending time with my characters, which is a relief.

There's more to say, but perhaps it's just as well that I'm out of time to say it right now. It gives me something for the next blog entry for those of you who have apparently become addicted to my compelling prose and amazing insights.

And speaking of intention...

At the end of the year, a coworker (you know who you are) mentioned that he appreciated some of my thoughts on living intentionally. I appreciate the comment. More than once, I thought about what was driving me to post blog entries in 2005. It looks like my motivation neatly sprang from most of the seven deadly sins.

There was rising to the challenge of the dare. (Pride)
And the promise of sushi (Gluttony)
There were the several positive comments I got (Vanity)
And my keen awareness of fellow bloggers' witty posts and the tons of positive comments they received (Envy)
I wanted the same kind of praise at the end of the day (Greed)

The only two that I didn't really cover were:
Sloth - although a number of posts were late in being written and bare-bones, and Lust.

That last one is pretty clearly absent. Try as I might, I just can't factor Lust into my raisons de posting last year. I mean, no one promised me any kind of pleasures of the body--and no, sushi doesn't count in this case--in exchange for my quotidian musings. It wasn't a case of "share your 2 bits every day and I'll share mine." Er. So to speak.

But I think that's just as well. I think the internet in general and the Blogosphere in particular has that one covered more than sufficiently without help from me.

But what about the seven deadly virtues? you ask. Did they play into the work at all? Let's see:
Faith. Well, it did take faith to believe the year would pass & I'd survive.
Hope. And I did hope that the habit of blogging daily helped me as a writer.
Charity. Hmm. My daily posts were free. Does that count?
Fortitude Okay, yes. There was some of this stuff involved. A lot, actually.
Justice Don't think so.
Temperance With the exception of the Evil Twin / Goth episode, I think, yes.
Prudence Not much of this, I'd say. Not much thoughtful, careful wisdom and consideration. Maybe that's what this year can be about.

Yeah. I'd say It's quality, not quantity, this year. While I redirect energy into poetry and finishing the novel & working on another draft of it, I expect I'll be writing just as much or more than I did in 2005. It just won't all be here.

A soggy New Year

So the North Bay is much in the news the last couple of days because of flooding. We've been fine, although we've seen some street closures near us, and the waters came close to reaching the front door of D's work three miles away.

We spent the afternoon at the restored Victorian home of D's mother & her husband, and then tonight after tucking the children in bed, have been up late watching The Thin Man movies. D's Christmas gift to me was the whole boxed DVD set - so much fun! (And so much alcohol consumed on screen!)

Tomorrow the girls are back in school but I have the day off - a rare event, indeed. I hope to make good use of the time, which might mean just sleeping for four hours while they're in class. Hey, wouldn't you?